Madonna: The MDNA Tour- Los Angeles / Staples Center 10/10/2012 Concert Review

Thirty years ago this week, Madonna’s first single Everybody hit the radio. It got some decent airplay, but nothing huge. The video cost $1,000 dollars to make, and looked it. Based on that extremely cheesy (yet extremely catchy) little ditty, who could have guessed Madonna would become one of the biggest pop music acts of all time? Who could have guessed that she’d be playing to a packed Staples Center crowd of 18,000 people, and that her current tour is on track to be one of the biggest grossing tours of all time? Certainly Madonna herself could have never predicted it, even though it is exactly what she wanted.

There has always been something about Madonna that makes people love her or outright hate her, but maybe now more than ever her haters have the loudest voice. Her refusal to retire and just go away drives her detractors crazy (I don’t see similar rallying cries calling for the retirement of the equally 50-something Bono, or the 70-something Rolling Stones, I should add. I’d have to guess it is because Madonna is a woman, but we’re beyond that kind of sexism in this culture… right?)  Maybe it’s because of the great pop icons of the 1980’s, she’s the one who was viewed as the lesser talent, and yet she’s the one who not only survived, but thrived. Michael Jackson’s career self-destructed a good fifteen years before he himself did. His sister Janet, who once rivaled her brother for popularity, seems to have up and vanished. And poor Whitney Houston, the wholesome “girl next door” alternative to Madonna’s scandalous ways, ended up being way more scandalous in real life than Madonna could ever hope to be, and drowned in a foot of water. Prince has still got it, but he tours so infrequently, it’s like he pops his head out once every six or seven years and reminds everyone how badass he is, then drops off the face of the Earth again. And Mariah? Well, you can catch her on Home Shopping Network on the odd Sunday afternoon. Madonna is still the one who stayed famous for actually doing what she became famous for in the first place, performing great pop music and putting on a hell of a show. And she’s still doing it, as evidenced by her brilliant show at the Staples Center last night.

Madonna’s MDNA Tour (not the most inventive name, I sort of hate when Madonna names her tours by just using the album name, but that’s just me) went on at 10:30 P.M, a good two and half hours late, in typical diva fashion. We did get a pretty awesome DJ set from French EDM artist Martin Solveig for a good hour prior, and as I happen to be a big fan of his, that didn’t suck. The show is split into four acts, which is how Madonna has been doing concerts now since The Drowned World Tour in 2001. (choreographer and creative director Jamie King has had a hand in all of her tours since then, and they all bear his style) The first act, Transgression, opened with a giant thurible swinging over the stage, a chorus of monks chanting, and Madonna doing an act of contrition in a floating confession booth. Behind her, a giant Gothic cathedral was constructed on the massive video screens, and about half way through the chanting, Madonna smashed it open with her fist. The booth shatters, and she starts threatening her poor dancing monks with a rather large gun. All the Catholic imagery is very reminiscent of her Like A Prayer/Blonde Ambition era, but at this point Madonna has been around long enough that she can reference herself if she wants to. The first song is the Britney Spears-esque Girl Gone Wild, followed by Revolver, one of the newer songs from her most recent Greatest Hits package Celebration . Things get swiftly darker and more Tarantino-esque as M goes into Gang Bang, one of the more fun and ridiculous tracks off MDNA. The idea behind the song is a revenge saga where Madonna kills her ex (who is totally former hubbie Guy Ritchie, who is all but named) Considering their two sons Rocco and David are on tour with Madonna, I gotta wonder if she sat down and explained about “this is the song where Mommy just pretends to kill Daddy”  The whole song takes place in a moving seedy motel room, where various masked rapists and killers come in through the window and M takes them out one by one (“now drive bitch/and while you’re at it die bitch!” she lovingly croons) The whole song and performance of it is very tongue in cheek.

This portion of the show ends with her first classic song of the night, Papa Don’t Preach. For this one, her dancers dressed in military clothing and masks and tie her up, leading into her 2005 dance anthem  Hung Up, where Madonna utilizes slacklining while her dancers slide under ropes. This portion of the show is pretty spectacular and very Cirque de Soleil. She closes the first section performing another MDNA track, “I Don’t Give A…” on guitar while Nicki Minaj is seen in the video screens sitting on a throne declaring “There’s only one queen, and that’s Madonna….bitch.”

The next portion of the show is entitled  Prophecy, and things take a less murdery vibe. In a nod to her Superbowl performance, Madonna, decked out in Cheerleader gear, does a soaring version of Express Yourself, with a marching band drumline performing while suspended in mid-air. It is pretty spectacular, one of the most spectacular things M has pulled off in any of her tours to date. One of the more controversial aspects of her show is when she mashes up Express Yourself rather seamlessly with Lady Gaga’s Born this Way. Well, controversial to Gaga’s “Little Monsters” mostly, who bristle whenever someone reminds them that with their idol, a good portion of her schtick Madonna did first, and sometimes more than twenty years ago. M continues the cheerleader vein with her lead single from MDNA, Gimme All Your Luvin’. Now, I pretty much think GMAYL is one of her weakest singles ever, but the drumline version she does here is pretty damn great, and it almost becomes another song entirely. Another MDNA track is next, and while I think Turn Up The Radio is one of the better tracks off the album, the live version doesn’t do much for me. The video interlude right before this features snippets of Madonna classics like Lucky Star, Into the Groove, Ray of Light and Music. I sort of feel bad for the casual Madonna fans in the audience right now, because you know they would rather hear any of those songs over anything from MDNA, but Madonna only teases them with brief snippets.

What comes next, though, either pleased or frustrated some fans, as M performs one of her biggest hits that she has not performed in over twenty years, Open Your Heart. But she performs it in a heavily altered form with the Kalakan trio from the Basque country of Northern France. Personally, I love it when Madonna re-invents her classic songs in a whole new way; if I want to hear exact versions that came out back in the day, I have the originals for that in my iTunes. But I know there are a lot of fans who don’t feel this way.

After this, Madonna spoke to the audience and said it was “time to have our serious chat.” And Madonna started to speak about Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani girl who currently clings to life in hospital bed, after being shot by Taliban extremists for daring to advocate for the rights of girls to be educated. “This made me cry, the 14-year-old schoolgirl who wrote a blog about going to school. The Taliban stopped her bus and shot her. Do you realize how sick that is? Support education! Support women!” The crowd roared in approval. “One thing I’ve realized during my travels is how lucky we Americans are. We are for sure an imperfect country with an imperfect government. But I tell you — the shit I have seen in the Ukraine and in Russia… May I remind you that two members of Pussy Riot are still in jail. In St. Petersburg, 75 men were arrested for being gay.” But before things got too serious and bummed everyone out too much, she launched into one of her first and most iconic hits, Holiday. Seriously, you just can’t go wrong with Holiday. Instead of ending this act here, she goes into her sappy ballad Masterpiece from her movie W.E. Yeah, for me this is a good time for a bathroom break.

The third portion of the show, Masculine/Feminine was by far my favorite portion. The video interlude is an updated version of her 1990 #1 hit single Justify My Love, shot in glorious and grainy black and white, just like the original. Madonna is smart enough to know that with just the right amount of filters and with black and white footage she can just about pull off looking twenty years younger, at least on film. When she returned to the stage, it was for an elaborately costumed Art Deco version of Vogue, costumed by longtime collaborator Jean Paul Gaultier. Gaultier re-imagines M’s infamous cone bra, and costumes her dancers with 1920’s style dresses, including many of the male dancers. Next up is a much improved version of  Candy Shop, the opening track from M’s so so album Hard Candy, remixed  with snippets of Erotica integrated into the song. Next, Madonna segues into her 1995 hit Human Nature, all while removing articles of clothing as shifting mirrors move around the stage. This number is brilliantly and elaborately staged, but her vocals really started to suffer in this section. After much of her clothes has come off and ended up on the floor, we see that Madonna has written “Malala” on her back, and she dedicates Like a Virgin to her, which is re-imagined a slow and sad waltz.  This third portion of the show ends with an acoustic version of  Love Spent, easily my favorite track from MDNA. The final video interlude features a remixed version of Nobody Knows Me, from Madonna’s much hated 2003 album American Life. Even though I hate that album rather passionately, I respect the fact that Madonna doesn’t give a crap and uses a song from this album, her biggest flop of her career. And honestly, she recreated it rather spectacularly, as the video is stunningly put together, and includes a tribute to teens who took their lives after being bullied and ridiculed, including Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi. I would say overall, this was the most interesting, cohesive and successful part of the show.

The final act of the show Redemption starts with my two other favorite tracks from MDNA, I’m Addicted and I’m A Sinner. During I’m A Sinner, Madonna’s dancers, many of whom are clearly double jointed, hop from moving box to moving box. While it is pretty clear that at 54, Madonna can still get her groove on more than many half her age, her days of doing things like singing Vogue while arched backwards on a moving platform are behind her. So Madonna has compensated by getting what is possibly her best and most accomplished troupe of dancers on any tour to date for this one. The show’s penultimate number is one of M’s most iconic songs Like A Prayer, performed with a gospel choir backing her. This is much as was done on the original recording. This was almost identical to her rendition of LAP from the Superbowl, only instead of a snippet of it, we get the song in its entirety. Madonna closes the show with Celebration, the title track of her most recent Greatest Hits compilation. It’s kind of an odd choice, as it isn’t one of her iconic hits; I would have figured Music would have gone here, but maybe M figured after performing Music in her last four tours and the Superbowl, she’d give that one a well- deserved rest. Celebration is more than good enough though in the end, and ends a spectacular show rather spectacularly. And as a cute added bonus, the final number has Madonna’s 12-year- old son Rocco join the party, and he is clearly following in his mother’s footsteps and has the dancing gene. Everyone has always expected Madonna’s daughter Lourdes to follow in her footsteps, but I think it is Rocco who might be the heir apparent.

So the final verdict? I’ve seen five Madonna concerts in the past eleven years. I would still say this doesn’t rate as high as her 2006 Confessions Tour, which is the best of her modern concerts in my opinion. This is certainly superior to the Sticky and Sweet Tour, which was her last tour (and the highest grossing tour by a solo artist of all time, I might add) and probably on par with The Re-Invention Tour from back in ’04, which was the closest thing that M has ever come to a Greatest Hits tour. As I mentioned earlier, M can’t quite move like she used to anymore, but man can she find the people who can, and combined with the incredible theatrics she takes the concept of pop music concert to a whole other level.

It will be interesting to see what the future brings for Madonna. She has two tours and two albums that she must deliver by 2018 to make good on her massive Live Nation contract that she signed in 2007. But as she gets older, it gets more and more difficult to find new ways to top herself and re-invent herself. And let’s face it, after thirty years and 38 top ten hits to her name, it is likely that Madonna will never have another Billboard top ten hit again, especially as she makes youth oriented dance pop, and the airwaves are not exactly looking for a dance pop diva in her 50’s. Unlike equally legendary artists like her frenemies Elton John and Cher, Madonna flat out refuses to do a straight up  Vegas style Greatest Hits tour, even if that is what parts of her ever-aging fanbase wants. In the end, though, Madonna can and will do whatever she wants, and the faithful fans who have loved her since childhood like me (and Youtube “bar mitzvah boy” sensation Shaun Sperling, who was in the front row last night) will follow her wherever she takes us.