Photo: Getty Images
Our style blogger Seth Plattner, 24, was a Madonna tour virgin until last night. (He's young! I hear that's a very natural condition at his stage in life.) Read on for his cherry-popping report from her Madison Square Garden show...
Having always considered it a gay rite of passage, I prepared accordingly for my first Madonna concert with almost religious dedication: revisiting her repertoire, reviewing lyrics, picking the right outfit and then another right outfit, meticulous grooming -- it was as if I was about to come face to face with a deity. Having so exhaustively readied myself, the wait for Madge to take the stage was borderline excruciating, but it made the euphoric relief of her entrance that much more satisfying.
It had everything you could want in a spectacle concert. Designer costumes! Lights! Smokin-hot dancers! Multiple video screens flashing a seizure-inducing montages of images! And, as my friend said to me during a particularly club-like mash-up, "You just can't go wrong with green lasers." What the concert lacked in thematic continuity, Madonna made up for with her how-the-hell-can-she-still-be-doing-this energy. Most of her songs were remixed with either a dance or rock edge, but she incorporated most of her classics. (She was short on songs from her Confessions album, an omission that left me a little dissatisfied.) And while some of her best knowns might have been more fun to hear in their original versions, like "Vogue" and "Into the Groove," for others a remix suited the crowd and venue well.
The fulcrum of the night was an intense, gayified, out of control dance mix of "Like a Prayer" that had the entire crowd belting their lungs out and dancing like crazy. If I was prepared for any religious-like moment during the concert, this was it. She moved straight into "Ray of Light," continuing the dance-a-thon, and for half a second we could have all just been in a bigger, sweatier, gayer version of Splash. And, though the set list calmed down from that point, she finished the night with a extended playing of "Give it 2 Me." After it ended and she abruptly disappeared from the stage completing the concert with no encore, I was left for the first time in my life wishing I was older. Then I could have seen her other tours, because this one felt like it could be her last of this caliber. Nevertheless, I can now die a happy gay man.
Attention Popnography readers: It turns out very few of the more, uh, seasoned staffers at Out felt compelled to see this show at all -- perhaps a telling statement in itself. But we'd love to hear tour reports back from longtime Madonna fans, whether you loved, hated, or loved-and-hated her new outing. Write us and we'll publish the best in Popnography!
I saw it last night at MSG - I've seen every tour since Drowned World and have been a fan since 1984. She outdid herself! She moved so much! It was amazing. I didn't think she could still surprise me but she did!
Posted by: Billy Anderson | October 07, 2008 at 05:35 PM
Oh, yeah, just "amazing"! And all you minions SHALL render homage!!!
Posted by: reviewer | October 08, 2008 at 02:59 PM
The best thing about the concert was the fact that I know have developed a total respect for the power of botox. Now that I that I have left my twenties well and truly behind, her "madge"esty has convinced me that this surely is the best invention since the wheel. She looked hot, and as will I this day next week.
Posted by: Cathal | October 08, 2008 at 03:05 PM