Rebel Heart Tour media coverage added to our Rebel Heart Tour page
We have added a few scanned articles on the Rebel Heart Tour in our Rebel Heart Tour page (press section), please check them out HERE
Madonna strikes gold with Rebel Heart Tour in Atlantic City
A storm descended on Atlantic City Saturday night, and it didn’t have anything to do with rain or winds.
Madonna lit up Boardwalk Hall in lights, pyrotechnics and a team of extremely talented dancers. Nothing less was expected from the Queen of Pop on this stop of her U.S. leg of Rebel Heart Tour, presented by Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa.
People streamed into the hall wearing rain boots, heavy jackets and umbrellas, but were undeterred in their devotion to the singer. The crowd filled in on the floor around the cross and heart runway that extended the stage a couple hundred feet.
Complete article HERE
Madonna’s music, culture, fashion influences spans decades
Madonna’s career has had an effect on nearly every aspect of pop culture and has been a pattern that female pop stars still follow. It’s hard to come up with something she has not accomplished during her career.
Ahead of her “Rebel Heart” tour concert at Boardwalk Hall on Saturday, here is a timeline of the pop queen’s career.
1983 – Releases her debut self-titled CD, a groundbreaking dance pop effort, including three top-20 singles,“Holiday,” “Lucky Star” and “Borderline”
(…)
Complete article HERE
Madonna exclaims ‘B!#%$ I’m from Detroit’ at ‘Rebel Heart’ hometown show
Madonna performs at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit during her Rebel Heart Tour, which stopped in her home state Thursday evening, Oct. 1, 2015. (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive Detroit)
Tanya Moutzalias | tmoutzal@mlive.com
DETROIT, MI – “Motor City, your hometown girl is back.” Madonna made sure she let fans in Detroit know she’s from the Detroit area and she’s proud of it.
Madonna was born in Bay City and raised in the Detroit suburb of Rochester Hills.
Madonna at Joe Louis Arena, Rebel Heart Tour
Quick summary:
Madonna put on a visually stunning and energetic show at Joe Louis Arena on October 1, 2015, featuring numerous costumes and dancers who also performed some physically demanding stunts between Madonna’s costume changes.
Madonna has more top 10 hits (38) than any other music artist in history. On this tour, you would never know she is 57 years old. She performs at a very high level not many artists can duplicate.
Madonna looks like she’s in incredible shape. And, she has to be to dance and sing as much as she did, looking like a woman half her age. She also pulled off some very difficult dance moves. Her voice still sounds terrific, as heard clearly on the numerous ballads throughout the show.
Madonna Detroit quotes:
“Motor City, your hometown girl is back.”
After singing “Body Shop:” “If anyone can understand the trials and tribulations of working at a body shop, it’s the Motor City.”
“Detroit made me who I am today.”
“They told me I have two hours, so get in, get out. Umm, bitch, I’m from Detroit.”
“I’m very proud to be part of the going-up process in Detroit. I’ve been involved in a lot of projects with Dan Gilbert. From the Youth Boxing Program, to the Women’s Empowerment Program. Detroit is making a comeback, so watch out.”
“We are going to build this city back up.”
“Detroit has some good looking guys. Why did I leave?”
Unique to Detroit:
Madonna wanted to do something special for her hometown crowd, so she performed an acoustic version of “Frozen.” She said this was a special performance just for Detroit, and from what I’ve seen from her other tour dates so far, she did not perform that hit song anywhere else.
To read the full review and view the photo gallery visit MLive
Madonna brings spectacle — and new affection — to Detroit
After three decades of this, you thought Madonna might start taking it easy?
Certainly not this Madonna, the one who brought ageless energy, flamboyance and flash Thursday night to a packed Joe Louis Arena, homecoming stop on the pop queen’s Rebel Heart Tour. These days, the 57-year-old star seems eager to drive home a point: In a world brimming with pop contenders, there’s still only one of her.
With her father and daughter looking on, Madonna also served up the most Detroit-centric show we’ve ever seen from an artist who for years has been accused of spurning her roots. There were pep talks about the city’s resilience, celebrations of the city’s comeback (“Watch out!”), even a shout-out to developer and “incredible guy” Dan Gilbert.
The spectacle had started with a big helping of new “Rebel Heart” fare to go with Madonna’s latest foray into erotic religious imagery, her male dancers costumed as cross-bearing knights and their female counterparts as pole-dancing nuns. From there on through the euphoric “Holiday” encore, the two-hour-plus show kept up the brisk pace — a whirl of set changes, outfits that quickly went from lavish to skimpy, and tight, intricate dance numbers that often found their way down the lengthy catwalk.
In a defiant assertion of her relevance, Madonna has long used her tours to emphasize her latest music, and Thursday was no different: The set was loaded with “Rebel Heart” material, and when she did tap the older stuff, it got unapologetically reinvented. She strapped on a guitar to dial up the riff wattage of 1983’s “Burning Up,” and turned “Dress You Up” into a colorful, festive number complete with some rumba and a conga line. She and guitarist Monte Pittman doubled on ukuleles for “True Blue,” and teamed up again with acoustic guitars on “Who’s That Girl.” “Like a Virgin” was stripped into a spare, throbbing number in a rare scene that saw Madonna alone on the stage, a shared moment of intimate nostalgia between artist and audience.
Elsewhere, the classics got nipped and tucked inside other numbers, leaving fans with brief tastes of songs like “Vogue,” “Into the Groove” and “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore.”
Thursday brought a lean-and-lithe Madonna who balanced seriously intense performances with a lighthearted, sometimes mischievous spirit. For all the sizzle — the dazzling set pieces, the splashy visuals, the eye-popping interludes by her supremely skilled dance crew — it was a show that planted some genuine heart in the proceedings.
That was certainly the mood as she deposited ample Detroit devotion throughout. More than a year after providing financial support to several community organizations, Madonna name-checked two of them (the Empowerment Plan and Downtown Boxing Gym) from the Joe Louis stage, and spoke enthusiastically about her working relationship with Gilbert, the Quicken Loans magnate and downtown developer.
“Detroit made me who I am today, so I want to say thank you with these next few songs,” she said while easing into a stretch that included “Rebel Heart,” dedicated to her dad somewhere out in the crowd, 84-year-old Silvio Ciccone.
She also veered from her tour’s stock set list to present a Detroit exclusive: a gentle version of 1998’s “Frozen.” The Motor City is “the heart of America,” she explained, thus transforming the song’s open-your-heart lyrics into a plea to the country to unlock Detroit’s potential.
To read more and view the photogallery visit Detroit Free Press
‘Hometown girl is back’ Madonna tells The Joe
Madonna returned home to Detroit on Thursday, bringing with her a joyous celebration of love, her hometown and her very favorite subject, herself.
The Material Girl’s Rebel Heart tour stop at Joe Louis Arena was a pure wowser of a show, an extravagant pop showcase only Madonna can pull off. While drawing heavily from this year’s “Rebel Heart” album, it pulled liberally from all corners of her career, and found Madonna dusting off hits and second-tier gems from her more than 30-year catalog.
There’s a reason legacy artists such as U2 and Madonna are still must-see concert acts, and part of it is the vast catalogs they have in their back pockets. They’ve put in decades of work and have a deep well of material, made up not only of those career-making global smashes everyone knows but those lesser known hits that are ripe for revisiting.
One of the great pleasures of U2’s 360 Tour was when the band pulled out the “Achtung Baby” album track “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)” during the encore, and Madonna had several of those moments Thursday. Some of her biggest hits were ignored – no “Like a Prayer,” no “Express Yourself,” no “Ray of Light” – while underappreciated fan favorites such as “True Blue” (reinvented as a campfire-style singalong), “Burning Up,” “Deeper and Deeper,” “Who’s That Girl,” “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore,” “Candy Shop” and “Frozen” were all given center stage. It was a night designed for and tailored to superfans, but it played to the masses. No one was left out of this dance party, and Madonna was a gracious host.
She shouted out Detroit early and often, announcing, “Motor City, are you ready to party? The hometown girl is back!” after opening the show with the highly-charged “Iconic.” Her father and daughter were in the audience and both got name checked, as did Dan Gilbert, whom she said she’s been proud to partner with in Detroit’s revitalization efforts. (Detroit’s Downtown Boxing Gym and the Empowerment Program were also given props.) “Detroit is making a comeback, so watch out!” she said late in the show, rousing the crowd. “I said watch out, get excited! Come on!”
There was plenty to get excited about. Madonna’s team of dancers – the best in the business, hands down – were never less than thrilling, especially in one sequence where they bobbed up and down on flexible stilts like the swinging polecats in “Mad Max: Fury Road.”
As always, Madonna toyed with and tweaked themes of sexuality and religion, combining them in ways designed to provoke and push buttons. During “Holy Water,” dancers dressed in modified religious habits danced on stripper poles that doubled as crosses, and the performance built to a recreation of the Last Supper with Madonna sprawled out on the table as the main course. (A bit of “Vogue” was mixed into the song, with religious iconography flashing on the video screens during the song’s roll call of Old Hollywood stars.) That led to “Devil Pray,” where Madonna’s arms were bound in red rope as she begged for forgiveness from a priest-type figure.
As if sensing things were getting a bit heavy, next up was “Body Shop,” which unfolded in a playful recreation of a mechanic’s garage. “If anyone can understand the trials and tribulations of working at a body shop, it’s the Motor City,” Madonna said.
Where Madonna’s last tour, the MDNA outing, was a heavy and often violent affair, there was a lighthearted tone in the air on Thursday. And Madonna seemed as loose and freewheeling as ever, cracking jokes with the crowd and going off script several times.
Meanwhile, the 130-minute show was a pure delight to watch unfold. It was a masterful production, tightly choreographed and precise, a study in exactitude. Anytime your eyes fixed on one thing on stage, something else was happening or getting ready to happen at the other end. A long catwalk stretched nearly the length of the arena and lit up the venue, bathing it in pink while Madonna sang “La Vie En Rose” (in French! While playing the ukulele!) late in the night. (She dedicated the song to her daughter.)
“Like a Virgin,” which has been given numerous stylistic overhauls over the years, was reinvented Thursday as a mid-00s hip-hop jam — think Ciara’s “1, 2 Step” – and it worked amazingly well. The show’s undisputed highlight was the gypsy-style, Cuban flavored “Dress You Up,” which segues into “Into the Groove” and “Lucky Star.” “Pretty good for a small town girl from Detroit,” Madonna said, boasting the city “made me what I am today.” (She worked overtime to distance herself from the negative comments she made about her Michigan upbringing earlier this year, at one point even calling Michigan the “heart of America.”)
It was another heart on display the rest of the night. During the intro to “Rebel Heart,” Madonna proudly categorized herself as one, saying, rebel hearts are “not always popular, but we will survive.” Madonna’s been a survivor her entire career, and Thursday’s concert showed her rebel heart is still tick, tick, ticking away.
agraham@detroitnews.com
@grahamorama
To read more and view the photo gallery visit The Detroit News
Review: Madonna shows plenty of home town heart at Joe Louis Arena
By Gary Graff, ggraff@digitalfirstmedia.com,, @GraffonMusic on Twitter for MACOMB DAILY
DETROIT — “Motor City — the home town girl is back!” Madonna declared near the start of her Rebel Heart Tour stop Thursday night, Oct. 1, at Joe Louis Arena.
And it was a proud home town girl at that.
The Bay City-born pop icon, who graduated from Rochester Adams High School, may have ruffled feathers earlier this year when she referred to the area as “provincial” on Howard Stern’s satellite radio show, but she was in Detroit booster overdrive during the two-hour and 10-minute spectacle. Acknowledging the city’s financial problems and bankruptcy she told the exuberant (though not sold out) Joe Louis crowd that, “You’ve got a lot of great things going on in Detroit right now,” noting her own involvement with entrepreneur and philanthropist Dan Gilbert in women’s empowerment and youth boxing programs as well as “some new schools we’re building.”
“Detroit is making a comeback people, so watch out,” Madonna said. “We got heart, baby. We’re in the heart of America. With all of its heart and all of this love we are gonna build this city back up. Believe that!” She also noted that “Detroit made me who I am today” — and so did her father, Silvio “Tony” Ciccone, now a winemaker in Traverse City — who was in the crowd on Thursday. Madonna thanked him “for making me so strong and instilling this drive in me to survive,” dedicating her performance of “Rebel Heart” to him.
She also gave a shout-out to her daughter Lourdes — referring to her as Lola — who’s in her second year at the University of Michigan and was also at Thursday’s show. “She’s the first person to teach me how to love,” Madonna told the crowd, and also credited her for inspiring Madonna to play the ukulele — which she did on “True Blue” and Edith Piaf’s “La vie en rose,” which Madonna also sang in French.
So it was a happy homecoming, and Madonna certainly pleased her fans with her usual dazzling blend of intricate group dance routines and provocative physical and video imagery — from scantily clad nuns and a carnal Last Supper scene during a medley of “Holy Water” and “Vogue” to plenty of sexually suggestive choreography and motifs set in an auto repair garage, a 1920s-style jazz cabaret, a bullfight and carnivale, and a Geisha-flavored routine during “Bitch I’m Madonna.” During “Heartbreak City,” which included a bit of Rose Royce’s “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore,” she and one of her dancers created an arresting physical dialogue on a spiral staircase at the end of the ramp that stretched deep into the arena floor, while “Material Girl” was performed with a line of tuxedoed suitors who Madonna summarily dismissed, pushing them one down a sloped platform.
Madonna: “Provincial” home town was good for her
You’d hardly call anything Madonna does modest, but the Rebel Heart Tour show was certainly one of her most relaxed productions, less focused on an overarching theme or story arc and more about delivering a bunch of intriguing and, often, boundary-pushing performances. The night’s energy was front-loaded, with the latter third of the show more chatty and ebb-and-flow — and, at times, dragging — but thumping versions of “Music,” “Candy Shop” and the buoyant encore “Holiday” came along in time to regain any momentum that was lost.
And while recent Madonna tours have gone relatively light on familiar material in favor of the then-new albums, Thursday’s show had a more fan-pleasing balance. A generous 10-song sampling from this year’s “Rebel Heart” certainly provided the framework, but Madonna nodded frequently to the past, albeit with new, often spare arrangements of favorites such as “Like a Virgin,” “Deeper and Deeper,” a medley of “Dress You Up,” “Into the Groove” and “Lucky Star,” and a hard-rocking treatment of “Burning Up” that featured Madonna on electric guitar. She performed “Who’s That Girl” acoustically and tossed in an unplugged version of “Frozen” especially for Thursday’s show.
After waving the Detroit flag for much of the night Madonna finished with an American flag as she was hoisted into the rafters at the end of “Holiday.” “My home town,” she said, “It’s so good to be home.” And you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone at Joe Louis whose feelings weren’t mutual.
LIVE REVIEW: AT THE ALTAR OF POP WORSHIP WITH MADONNA AND THE PHANTOM DEITY
It’s a generally understood notion that songs are meaningless and trite, and that if one wants to be a productive member of society, avoiding music is a prudent choice. Songs are traps, or so goes this common wisdom, filled with, at best, fantasy notions and, at worst, dangerous and destructive ideas; even worse are artists, who attempt to peddle their songs as a means of stringing them together into a narrative arc which, by using a nice beat and/or a catchy melody, can fool an innocent passerby into conflating their own emotions with that of the artist. The master artists, the ones who amass fortunes with multi-decade careers, are experts at this storytelling, creating a proxy persona through the proliferation of recorded songs — often resulting in the creation of a phantom deity, plastered on t-shirts and advertisements and music videos, that speaks to society and culture conveying ambiguous messages within a framework of relatability and emotional resonance. The artist’s perceived drama becomes real within the psychic æther of our shared mental space, our aspirations and fears and fantasies.
Although music is a powerful tool of persuasion, this artist-as-locus-point-of-psychic-power phenomenon is a relative rarity; only a few individuals have managed to punch through the noise of our current electronic lifestyle to overlay their own emotional map onto the waiting cortex of society as a whole. One of the most powerful of these musical artists has entranced, globally, at least three distinct generations of susceptible media consumers: her name is Madonna Louise Ciccone, and she is not just a master musician but a grand wizard able to spin gold out of the dross that is the raw emotional flotsam burbling violently beneath the surface of her haughty persona.
Madonna honored the City of Boston with her presence on Saturday night, September 26, arriving with an intimidating crew of dancers and musicians to a staged piece of formal pageantry fitting to an artist who is a full two-and-a-half decades into the regal phase of her career. Where she was once a scrappy street urchin, a failed ballet student gnawing at the table scraps of late-’70s NYC post-punk culture, by the end of the ’80s she ached to be more than an ephemeral pop presence competing with the likes of Cyndi Lauper or Pat Benatar. Her first taste of fame on the heels of hits like “Everybody” and “Holiday” were narcotic for the budding star — asked at the end of 1983 by Dick Clark what she hoped to achieve in the years ahead, she giggled “To rule the world!” The perversity of our pop culture world, the way that our celebrity machine occasionally lets dream actualization occur through will-to-power, allowed this wish to come true.
On Saturday night, to the opening whump of “Iconic”, amidst a squadron of dancers decked out in samurai-or-is-it-warrior-from-300 uniforms, Madonna, in a cage made of enormous metal spears, was lowered from the rafters. “If you try and fail, get up again/Destiny will choose you in the end,” she lustily intoned, chopping the air with flailing limbs emerging from her red kimono-slash-warrior-outfit. As the first line of the show, it was also the first lie of the evening, sending the audience the message that not only was her ascent to stardom a preordained result of her lengthy incubation period of struggle, but that the obstacles she continues to face as the most popular female musical artist of all time can all be bested by dogged determination.
If this is understood to be at the very least a kind untruth, it is also a bedrock moral foundation of American popular culture — Madonna’s strength as a force and a brand can be conferred to her following if they just allow themselves to be touched by the mental persuasion of determination as a weapon for personal triumph. When an artist such as Madonna is seen as an ’80s artist, it fundamentally has to do with that artist’s adherence to this maxim — if the existence of the cesspool of culture that is the 1990s has taught us anything, it is that basing cultural mores on failure and dispirited ennui tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The lie of determination is the fist in the air that allows musical art to infiltrate our minds and poison our reason, if only by deluding us that we are masters of our own destiny.
Visit Vanyaland.com to read the full review
Madonna teases, wows, and stuns Chicago during ‘Rebel Heart’ tour stop
Madonna has been around for three decades, but this doesn’t mean her live shows are predictable (unless you’ve been reading the latest raving reviews). Her latest outing with “Rebel Heart” is a two hour party with lots of stunning choreography, shimmering costumes, a Britney Spears lookalike, and flashy set pieces. Leaning heavily on material from her newest album,Madonna entered the stage from above in a cage and launched into “Iconic” as soon as she was set free. In a flowing red kimono and surrounded by armored dancers, she snapped, locked, and twirled in tune with all her significantly younger dancers. After the hyperactive “B****, I’m Madonna,” she threw longtime fans a bone with an electric guitar rendition of “Burning Up.” Standing in the middle of the crowd on her cross shaped stage wielding a guitar made for a great photo op.
The singer was up to her old tricks regarding religion and sexuality during songs like “Holy Water,” which had scantily clad nuns twerking and twirling on stripper poles and “Devil Pray” where she rolled and gyrated on a table that was previously used for a sexy rendition of The Last Supper. Some say she was trying to be shocking, but fans knew it was nothing but classic Madonna and they ate up every second. During mellow sections where she belted out “Heartbreak City” mashed with “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore,” she traversed a spiral staircase, yet never missed a note. It was during these points where you could really hear how much she’s improved as a singer. Take that everyone who thought she was too nasally.
Unlike some of her other tours, this one focused heavily on her latest album with just about half the set list coming from “Rebel Heart.” It was great to hear stellar tracks like “Living for Love,” which recreated the matador vs bull setting from the video, “Unapologetic B****,” and the haunting “Ghosttown.” The magic of Madonna is she made the questionable tracks, such as “Body Shop,” “Iconic,” and “Holy Water,” featuring scantily clad nuns spinning around stripper poles, sound better than they did on the LP. If you didn’t love these songs before the concert, you couldn’t get them out of your head afterward.
To the disappointment of many, there was no “Like a Prayer” or “Express Yourself” and a snippet of “Vogue” during “Holy Water” wasn’t nearly as satisfying as hear the entire song, but she did sing some classics with a new flair. “Like a Virgin” presented one of the few times Madonna was on stage alone, bumping and grinding to its new reggae beat, while “La Isla Bonita” kept it’s original Latin flair, Madonna took the opportunity to apply the flamenco guitars and hard stomps for a medley of hits that included “Lucky Star” and “Into the Groove” that breathed new life into the songs. She performed “Who’s that Girl?” in similar fashion while she played an acoustic guitar. “True Blue” saw her playing a ukulele and “Material Girl” was done in a new jazzy style that both jaunty and a lot of fun.
Madonna proved to be more than physically fit as she never missed a beat with her younger dancers and she sounded so amazing you began to wonder if she was indeed lip syncing. You couldn’t miss the big smile spreading across her face as she twisted and shimmied her toned body. She was in good spirits and showed nothing but love for the Chicago crowd, where she reminded them she filmed a “baseball movie” here once. Though there were slow, heartbreaking moments where she sang “Heartbreak City” mashed with “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” the show ended a high note with “Holiday.” At the end, Madonna was lifted into the air and disappeared behind the LED screen while waving goodbye to the crowd. She may be on to the next stop on her tour, but Chicago is still buzzing from her show.
Four out of Five stars
Visit The Examiner to read more
Ever Rebellious – Where other stars have faded, the ever-unpredictable Madonna remains atop the pop music world
Madonna gets right to the point during the opening of her “Rebel Heart Tour,” which makes an A.C. stop 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 3, at Boardwalk Hall.
The Material Girl starts with two tracks from her new “Rebel Heart” album — “Iconic” and “Bitch I’m Madonna” — and follows them with “Burning Up,” one of her earliest hits from the ’80s.
The not-so-subtle message from Madonna seems to be, “I’m still a pop superstar who can collaborate with trendy hit-makers, while still finding relevance in my catalog of past hits.”
Meanwhile, many of her ’80s diva peers have hung up their heels or gone missing from the lineup.
Tina Turner has retired. Cyndi Lauper is still performing and recording, but has won more note of late as the composer of the Tony-winning Broadway musical “Kinky Boots.” Janet Jackson has emerged with a new album and tour, but her impact is not yet known.
Even some younger pretenders to Madonna’s throne such as Britney Spears have retreated, with the former Disney star now going the Vegas residency route.
That Madonna can (rightfully) make legit claims to the throne at the relatively old pop-diva age of 57 is testament to her unique combination of talent, ambition and sheer will. (She probably also owes a shout out to a legion of cosmetic surgeons, personal trainers and massage therapists.)
Madonna is at the point of her career where she could be logging a victory lap, by cashing in on her many hits, or even “retiring” as a touring artist. See: Cher’s seemingly endless “farewell” tours.
Instead, Madonna is putting herself out there once again, with an entirely new production inspired by her latest album. For the album “Rebel Heart” she tapped the talents of a who’s who of producers, including Diplo, Avicii and Kanye West, winning much better reviews than for her two previous releases “Hard Candy” and “MDNA.”
The live show peppers new tracks such as “Living for Love,” “Holy Water” and “Devil Pray” throughout the set, but will also satisfy Madonna’s diehard fans with a good sampling of her favorites such as “Like a Virgin,” “Material Girl” and “Music.” Some old songs get new treatments, such as an acoustic version of “True Blue.” Others, surprisingly, have gone missing from the lineup. What? No “Like a Prayer,” “Express Yourself” and “Vogue”?!
Whether you’re a fan of the ’80s synth of early Madonna, her star-making “Like a Virgin” phase, her explorations of Catholicism and attempts to push the sexual envelope, or her latter day determination to remain a force in club land, it’s all there on the virtual dance floor. The only period missing from the setlist are her late ’90s, New Age-style ruminations from her “Ray of Light” album.
Where Madonna goes next as she closes in on being pop’s most rebellious senior remains to be seen. But my guess is that she will cling to her moment in the zeitgeist for as long as she credibly can.
MADONNA REBEL HEART TOUR
WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 3
WHERE: Boardwalk Hall, 2301 Boardwalk, Atlantic City
HOW MUCH: Tickets, priced at $49.50, $160, $260 and $360, are available at the Boardwalk Hall box office and TIcketmaster
Read more at Atlanticcityweekly.com
Madonna still pulling out all the stops as tour heads to Detroit
She may not stir quite as much instant outrage anymore. The Top 10 hits may not come as consistently as they used to. There’s a new generation of pop starlets grabbing the headlines and social-media oxygen.
But don’t go betting against Madonna.
Having kicked off her Rebel Heart Tour earlier this month in Montreal — launching a global jaunt scheduled to run through the spring — the Michigan-born pop star will swing into Joe Louis Arena Thursday, scene of her hometown tour stop in 2012.
At 57, Madonna seems to have moved into the stage of her career where she reigns as a kind of confident, impervious pop matriarch, grabbing what she pleases from the music of the day, still happy to titillate when she can — even if she’s no longer single-handedly reshaping the boundaries of popular culture.
The Joe show brings Madonna home to a region that’s been very much on her mind this past year. In summer 2014, she pledged funding to three Detroit organizations — Downtown Youth Boxing Gym, Detroit Achievement Academy and the Empowerment Plan — after touring a host of community groups in the city.
It was the start of what she called a long-term commitment to Detroit, where “a piece of my heart will always be,” as the Rochester Hills-bred star said.
It was about that time when word emerged that her teen daughter, Lourdes Leon, had enrolled at the University of Michigan — the school Madonna briefly attended before heading off to New York to kindle her dance career. (Lourdes and Madonna’s father, 84-year-old Silvio Ciccone, are expected to be on hand Thursday, a source close to the Joe Louis show tells the Free Press.)
And then there was the Rochester Hills dustup in March, when she took to “The Howard Stern Show” and criticized her hometown as straitlaced and stifling. Those remarks — later reiterated in an US Weekly interview — prompted rebukes from the city’s mayor and U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell.
Click HERE to read full report at Detroit Free Press
• VOGUE • A MADONNA TRIBUTE NIGHT – SAT 28 NOV 15 MAGIC ANTWERP – AFTERPARTY
Ladies with an attitude
Fellows that were in the mood
Don’t just stand there, let’s get to it
Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it
• VOGUE •
SAT 28 NOV 15
MAGIC ANTWERP
• VOGUE •
A MADONNA TRIBUTE NIGHT
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On saturday the 27th of November the Queen of Pop returns to Belgium, no better playground than Antwerp to serve you the best of MADONNA ! The party doesn’t stop… We invite all you rebelhearts to dance the night away at Antwerp’s most exclusive shelter of Pleasure. MAGIC ♥
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Chris Jones, Grace Jones Brother and Vogue cover model !
Will serve a very special disco & pop set in honour of the queen of pop.
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No better duo to host this warm up than our beloved Bernard Gavillan, Prince of Fashion and Bernard Tournemenne. They will serve you a fashion forward Madonna tribute.
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Special thanks to MADONNAUNDERGROUND
Fore more info click HERE
More info regarding Rebel Heart Tour Early Entry Paris and Amsterdam
Some fans have spotted a map of the Rebel Heart Tour stage in Bercy Paris with a separate area near the front of the stage for Early Entry ticket holders. However we have contacted the venue and can confirm that there will be no separate area in the venue, this map was created by Viagogo to single out Early Entry tickets.
We can also confirm once again that in Amsterdam there won’t be a golden circle and people with an Early Entry ticket will only have earlier access than the people with regular standing tickets. You will be the first to find a good spot, but you will be standing in the same area.
More info to follow
Vintage Oregon: Desperately seeking Madonna fans from 1985 Portland show
In April 1985, Madonna played a pair of sold-out shows at Portland’s Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.
Were you there?
As the “Rebel Heart” tour’s Oct. 17 stop at the Moda Center approaches, we’re desperately seeking Portland area residents who were at Madonna’s first Portland shows 31 years ago.
We’d especially love to talk to Danette Dollar, Bart Allen, Kimberly Meade, Michele Uanno, Liz Ephren, Linda George and April Simmons. The Oregonian’s coverage of the concerts included photos of those seven MTV generation teens dressed in “Catholic a go-go,” like their “favorite video performer,” as the newspaper described it.
Look at the photos above. Do you recognize yourself from 1985? Are you out there? I’d love to talk to you?
Are you still Madonna fans? Do you call her Madge or the Material Girl? What do you remember about the shows? Do you still have the outfits you wore? What was she like before the Kabbalah year, the foray into children’s books and fake British accent?
I have so many questions.
Strike the pose and give me a call at the number at the bottom of this post.
Of course, based on the breathless-yet-stuffy coverage by The Oregonian, you would have thought the pope was coming to town.
From stories about teens upset about how tickets were sold to the concerts’ aftermath, the newspaper dedicated 13 stories with photos to the event in less than a month.
Of course, much of the coverage was awash in skepticism, with reporters trying to figure out why children of the 1980s were so obsessed with the Material Girl.
“Hordes of Portland-area fans of rock singer Madonna, the latest overnight superstar in that volatile calling, are miffed in the extreme,” wrote reporter John Painter Jr.“They came to that state when tickets to the steamy, overtly sexual singer’s two Portland concerts set for April 15-16 in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall were quietly put on sale last Friday and quickly sold out.”
Click HERE to read the full article and see the vintage pictures by The Oregonian
Madonna shocks Chicago audience, but not in way they expected
Madonna performed for a sold-out audience at Chicago’s United Center on Monday evening, and judging by comments from people leaving the show, it was the best concert Madonna had given in Chicago during her 30-year performing career. Madonna brought out the best in herself and her fans. Madonna made performers like Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, and Lady Gaga seem like “Beta” pop stars, and that’s saying a lot, since all the mentioned performers are great.
Read more HERE