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The Celebration Tour

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The Celebration Tour is the twelfth concert tour by American recording artist Madonna . Launched as her first retrospective tour, it highlights her more than four decade-long recording career. Visiting Europe and North America, the tour comprises of 78 shows, which began on 14 October 2023 at the O 2 Arena in London, England.

• 1.1 Postponement
• 1.2 Rehearsals
• 2.1 Stage and lighting
• 2.3 Fashion
• 5 Recurring References

Development [ ]

Building off the excitement of week's announcement, Madonna turned directly to her fanbase as she builds out her Celebration Tour setlist, asking her fans "What song would you like to dance to at my show?" on her social platforms. California-born artist Jess Cuevas was in charge of tour's promotional poster.

Stuart Price, a former producer of the singer, informed the BBC that "a greatest hit doesn't have to be a song [...] It can be a wardrobe, it can be a video, or a statement." He went on further to state "many hits will be played in full, some will be interpolated into other songs, and still more will be used as "bridges" between acts." Mark Savage asked if there were comparisons to other tours that utilize different track rotations. Price stated "Madonna's reputation is for being highly precise and highly rehearsed across all departments. When you look at a tour of this scale, it has so many moving parts, so many elements, that everything has to be highly fixed... but there's one thing that's always dynamic, and that's Madonna herself. Her personality is so strong, her interaction with the audience is so strong, that it creates opportunities for variation from night to night."

Postponement [ ]

After Madonna developed a "serious bacterial infection" in late June, which led her to a several day stay in Intensive care unit (ICU), she announced the postponement of the initial North American leg via an Instagram post. The rescheduled dates were announced on August 15, 2023.

Speaking about her health struggles in the first show on October 14 in London, she reflected: "I forgot five days of my life, or my death [...] If you want to know my secret, and you want to know how I pull through and how I survive, I thought, 'I've got to be there for my children. I have to survive for them'".

Rehearsals [ ]

Rehearsals first began in New York City in April. In early June, the rehearsals moved to the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale but were temporarily stopped during Madonna's stay at the ICU at the end of the month and during her recovery. The rehearsals then restarted in mid August at the same venue. In early October, the team moved to Manchester to rehearse at the AO Arena. She made a total six weeks of rehearsals after her return from hospital. Stage director, Ric Lipson from Stufish, commented: "Madonna rehearses unlike most artists [...] Other artists, their dancers go and build the show somewhere and they come in a few weeks later".

Production [ ]

Madonna's crew onstage performers include some of her children, including David Banda playing the guitar and Mercy James in the piano.

Madonna enlisted Lewis James as the creative director and Jamie King. She collaborated closely with them, with James saying she "is extremely involved in the process, which is amazing. She has a lot of conviction in her ideas, and she knows what she wants". The Celebration Tour boasts a crew of 24 onstage performers, including some Madonna's children, and additional 175 crew members accompanied her, including 25 people working in the costume department.

London-based entertainment architecture company Stufish, designed the stage headed by Ric Lipson. Madonna also closely collaborated with the company. Lipson stated the stage was designed to create a vast network of "on-stage runways that allowed her to get up close and personal with nearly every section of the arena", and unlike her previous tours, it focused more on staging, lighting and photography.

Rolling Stone UK described the tour as a "masterclass in arena production". According to Thomas H Green from The Arts Desk , "It is spectacle on the very grandest scale" and a "biographical concept album as dance theatre".

Stage and lighting [ ]

The design of the stage evokes her historical wedding cake setup from the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards and Manhattan neighborhoods (where Madonna kickstarted her career in the early 1980s). It is a three-layered circular stage combined with a 230 m (750 ft) length of catwalk, as well as the shape of a clock, nodding to the element of time. With 4,400 square feet on stage, it is the largest square footage of any Madonna tour ever.

The production included various stage elements, including a circular lighting rig, a giant disco ball, a spinning carousel, a giant cube and several hanging retractable screens

The production equipment has 80 tons, and consists of 3700 amps of show power, 600 intelligent lights to illuminate the stage and 14 spotlights for the singer, as well 3600 square feet of LEDs to give a complete imagery to the show.

One of the stage’s most important props is a circular lighting rig, and an illuminated portal frame, designed to act like a time machine looking into the past, present and future where Madonna is lifted 9 m (30 ft) off the ground, and move at 4.5 m (15 ft) per second. It is also used by some of her children, including David Banda.

Other stage elements include a giant disco ball, a giant video cube, several laser turnbuckles emulating a boxing ring and a spinning carousel-like glass-architectures with large crucifixes. Described as a "city of portraits", the show have also several hanging retractable screens (which evokes the Who’s That Girl World Tour), and used the most amount of video ever in her tours. Speaking about the screens that came out constantly with projections on, according to Lipson, it allows singer's image and "key motifs" of her career to be "displayed to the entire crowd throughout the show".

Price became assigned as musical director for the tour following a call with Madonna congratulating her on the announcement of the tour. Although some of her children play instruments, for the first time in her touring career, there was no live band, which according to Price, the reason is "to let the original recordings shine". He also stated "There's a couple of spoken word sections in the show where we just use track. But it's all live vocals".

The Celebration Tour is designed as a retrospective across Madonna's recording career of over 40 years. It featured numerous of her songs that had not been performed live in decades, including "Justify My Love" (since The Girlie Show), “Bad Girl” (since Saturday Night Live), Erotica" (since The Confessions Tour with original song lyrics and production), and "Rain" (since the Girlie Show) “Bedtime Story" since 1995, as well "Nothing Really Matters" since 1999, "Die Another Day and "Mother and Father" both since 2004 and "Live to Tell" since 2006.

Upon the announcement, various publications elaborated their dream set list, including Rolling Stone , Consequence and Variety . On January 18, 2023, Billboard dedicated a list of potential songs across the four decades they would like to hear, as well as creating a poll for fans to comment on what song they would like to see be performed. On January 20, 2023, the poll showed the 1987 single "Causing a Commotion" as the leading contender.

Fashion [ ]

Initially, media reported costume designer Guram Gvasalia from Vetements was enlisted to be the costume director. In early April 2023, Madonna showcased her costume archives on Instagram ahead of the tour. She enlisted creative duo designers Yohannes and Rita Melssen. The costume duo created and designed almost all outfits paying tribute to her four decades of fashion; they began their research by looking at Madonna's polaroids and performances from her beginnings, commenting "we wanted to reference everything that she's done, and make something new out of that [...] We created a whole new world". According to Yohannes and Melssen:

She is involved in every single process of the costume design. She looks at all the fabrics, sketches, and buttons. She cares about who the characters are, and the clothes telling that story.

The tour also included designs of Dilara Fındıkoğlu, Almarow, Ruslan Baginskiy, Rosamario, Miu Miu, Víctor Barragán, Vetements, a catsuit by Donatella Versace and Jean Paul Gaultier whom created a brand new version of her cone bra made famous during the Blond Ambition World Tour in 1990, a black cone mini dress encrusted with black crystals. She also wore a halo-style headpiece by House of Malakai with a kimono by Eyob Yohannes. Having 45 wardrobe trunks, tour's wardrobe included hats and 45 pairs of boxing gloves.

Derrick Bryson Taylor and Ben Sisario from The New York Times described the new costumes as "sexy, religious and futuristic". Harper's Bazaar 's Jessica Davis similarly commented she has showcasing "some incredible designer looks on stage". Christian Allaire from Vogue described them as "epic" outfits.

Synopsis [ ]

The Celebration Tour is a two-hour-plus set with multiple-costume-change and more than 30 songs. The show was separated into five different sections: Uptown , Downtown , Midtown , East and West "grids". According to tour creative director Lewis James, the stage and show also serves as an archive of her life, celebrating her fans, and is a "continuation of her legacy" more than just a biography.

Through the concert, Bob the Drag Queen serves as an emcee, appearing during different moments of the show interacting with the singer, often dressed as Marie Antoinette (resembling Madonna's "Vogue" 1990 MTV Video Music Awards performance). During segments of the show, dancers appear wearing recreations of 17 outfits originally wore by Madonna, representing many of her reinventions.

The concert starts with the Shep’s Deeper Dub mix of Deeper and Deeper briefly play as Bob the Drag Queen (donning Madonna's costume from the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards) interacts with the audience while making his way to the stage. Upon reaching the stage, Bob declares that "It's Showtime!" as a spotlight shines on him and the lights of the arena turn off. The intro of "Lucky Star" plays, followed by the Benny Benassi remix of "Celebration" and then " Material Girl ", as Bob starts to talk about Madonna's beginnings from 1979 with clips from Madonna's music videos and previous content play on the video screens. Afterwards, Bob declares that "This isn't just a show, this isn't just a concert, this isn't just a party. It's a Celebration, bitches!" as he is lowered from the stage and the white video screen rolls up. White lights emit the stage as Madonna appears on the main stage dressed in a black kimono and a celestial headdress as she performs " Nothing Really Matters ". The song's arrangement consists of a mix between the album version and the Club 69 mix. After singing the first chorus of the song, the cameras pan on Madonna's right hand which shows the OM symbol. During the second chorus, the stage rotates counterclockwise referencing a clock traveling back in time. Madonna finishes the song by singing the last part of the bridge "In your arms" four times symbolizing four decades of her career.

Madonna leaves the stage for a quick costume change as a short intermission taking the audience back to 1982 with collages of Madonna from her beginnings from the Lower East Side are shown on the screen accompanied by dancers dressed in punk clothing from the 80's, a vocal sample of "Where's The Party" and Bob the Drag Queen's voice acting as an emcee for the Danceteria playing in the background. Madonna returns to the stage dressed in a punk style corset and a coat with chains to sing her debut single " Everybody " and "Into The Groove" with elements from "Into The Hollywood Groove". Madonna then makes it to the runway and talks about her beginnings coming to New York City with $35 in her pocket and a dream. She is accompanied by a dancer in a latex mask dressed as her from the 80's as she then performs the demo version of "Burning Up" with her electric guitar. During the New York stops, Madonna performs "I Love New York" over the Burning Up instrumental before performing the latter. Several video screens lower down showing the Tamara de Lempicka painting "Andromeda" (that Madonna owns) and various other marquees as Madonna takes her coat off, runs to the runway, sits on a chair and sings "Open Your Heart" accompanied by three dancers. Throughout the song, Madonna references the song's music video and several male and androgynous paintings by Tamara de Lempicka are shown on the video screens. The dancers including Bob The Drag Queen (dressed as a doorman) returned to the stage re-enacting a club as he lets the dancers in except Madonna. Madonna and the dancers then put on black overcoats as they performed " Holiday " along with excerpts from "I Want Your Love" by Chic while a giant disco ball appears on stage. At the end of the song, one dancer falls unconscious and pretends to die on stage as Madonna takes her coat off and covers the dancer with it. She and the dancer gets lowered on the stage and the first few lines from "In This Life" plays in the background followed by "Live To Tell".

Madonna returns to the stage to perform the song while she is strapped onto a giant frame symbolizing a time machine travels to every part of the stage. The video screens lower down displaying pictures of several of Madonna's friends and various queer individuals who died of AIDS including her best friend Martin Burgoyne (who In This Life was written about), her dance teacher Christopher Flynn, former Blonde Ambition Tour dancer Gabriel Trupin, and icons such as Keith Haring and Freddie Mercury of Queen. The time machine lowers down to the stage as elements of the intro of the MDNA Tour play including Gregorian chants. The dancers dressed in black hooded robes then dress Madonna in the same hooded robe from the Blonde Ambition Tour as they hold alter sensers while traveling to the main stage that transformed into a carousel full of topless dancers in black balaclava masks. An excerpt from Sam Smith's song "Unholy" and Madonna's own song " Girl Gone Wild " plays as the latter performs "Like A Prayer" combining elements from it's extended version, the Act of Contrition and Girl Gone Wild. As Madonna leaves the stage for a costume change, her son David (dressed as Prince) appears to finish the song with an electric guitar solo of the Act of Contrition and Prince's own "I Would Die 4 You".

The next act consists of an interlude called "The Sacrifice" consists of the Offer Nissim Promo remix of Living For Love from the Rebel Heart Tour and various other 2015 performances play in the background with four dancers doing a choreographed performance similar to the “Breathwork” performance from The Madame X Tour . A video interlude called "Erotic" shows Bob The Drag Queen doing a monologue with the 12" mix of " Fever " plays in the background. After the video, the stage turned into several boxing rings and excerpts from "Justify My Love" plays as Madonna returns on stage with several male dancers to perform the original version of " Erotica " dressed in a black boxing robe and a pair of long lace up boots from The Sticky and Sweet Tour referencing the boxing motif from The Girlie Show . During the song, Madonna also sings the chorus from its original demo for the first time since its performance in The Confession Tour . The song ends with an extended sample of "Papa Don't Preach" playing over the drums of "Erotica" as a dancer dressed in Madonna's gold Jean Paul Gaultier corset from the Blonde Ambition Tour masturbates on stage on the red velvet bed from that same tour. After removing the robe revealing a red slip dress, Madonna and the dancer perform a routine referencing the Papa Don't Preach performance from the Blonde Ambition Tour as they masturbate and lay on the red bed. Afterwards, Madonna leaves the bed and joins several dancers in flesh toned underwear performing a mashup of Justify My Love and the instrumental of Kehlani's "Gangsta" (from Madonna's collaboration with Vogue called "The Enlightenment") while doing a choreography inspired by Busby Berkeley. Afterwards, Madonna sings an excerpt of "Fever" which ends with a cellphone ringtone playing the chorus of "La Isla Bonita". A dancer gives Madonna a flip phone. Madonna opens the phone as Tokischa appears on the background with her saying that she loves the drama. Madonna then performs "Hung Up On Tokischa" which eventually transitions to " Hung Up ". Hung Up was performed with parts of it's original choreography from 2006. It is accompanied by the disco ball and pink lights as a reference to Madonna's previous performances from that era and the Confessions Tour. It ends with Madonna and her dancers being covered by a large black lace veil. The latter's daughter Mercy James appears on stage along with a piano as she plays "Le Regret Op 332" which transitions to " Bad Girl ", making the song's first appearance since Saturday Night Live back in 1993.

The next act is called "Ballroom" as it opens with Madonna's daughter and one of the twins Estere on the carousel playing "Up Down Suite" along with excerpts from the David Morales mix of "Deeper and Deeper", MikeEQ's track "Let It All Out", the samples from "Love Break (Ohhh I Love It)" that was used in "Vogue" and the Queens Mix of Beyonce's "Break My Soul" before transitioning to an extended intro for Vogue. The dancers appear in several extravagant costumes for each category for the ballroom including a recreation of a Thierry Mugler Haute Couture outfit from 1997. During the long intro, samples of "Walk For Me" and excerpts of the Queens Mix of Break My Soul play and Bob The Drag Queen returns to the stage to recite Big Freedia's excerpts from the latter sample, Madonna then returns to the stage to perform Vogue dressed in a new Jean Paul Gaultier conical corset with a matching cut out blazer. After performing the first chorus, Madonna makes it to the runway and takes off her jacket to reveal the corset and performs the rap section before sitting down with a member of the audience to re-enact a Ballroom scene as both Madonna and the guest act as judges. After Vogue, dancers acting like bondage style Policemen show up and arrest Madonna as she performs a short version of " Human Nature " while being strapped onto several leather straps and belts. After she sing the line "I didn't know I couldn't talk about sex", a dancer punches her as another dancer dressed as Madonna's character from the Human Nature video appeared to fight the policemen off. Later, Madonna sings a short version of "Crazy For You" which ends with the line "Absolutely No Regrets!" from the music video of Human Nature. Madonna then lights a match and throws it on the main stage as it is set ablaze for the next intermission.

The next intermission consists of the return of "The Beast Within" since it's appearance on " The Reinvention Tour " in 2004, which also brings back the visuals from the "X-Static Process" by Steven Klein that was used as a video introduction from that same tour accompanied by dancers dressed in burkas and war clothing referencing the performance of "American Life" and The Beast Within's performance from "The Girlie Show". It ends with one dancer left alone on stage and he is lowered down through the lifts. The video screens show a quote by G.I Gurdjieff as Madonna returns to the stage to perform "Die Another Day" (for the first time since 2004 and 2012) dressed in a leather western trench coat and cowboy hat while the Tree of Life symbol appears on the video screens. A clip of several horses running in the sunset appear as Madonna performs "Don't Tell Me" with it's original choreography accompanied by several dancers dressed in Western costumes, her son David and one of the twins Stella and Bob The Drag Queen. For "Mother and Father", the video screens show several pictures of Madonna's late mother "Madonna Fortin Ciccone", Madonna's father "Silvio Ciccone" and the biological parents of Madonna's adopted children. The song was accompanied by a cello player and Madonna's own son David on guitar. During the rap section, Madonna ends it with a scream. Madonna then makes it to the runway and does a speech for the audience before getting a guitar to sing a short acapella of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and transitioning to " La Isla Bonita ". During one of her speeches, Madonna talked about her near death experience in the ICU. Another speech in one of the shows, Madonna talked about the death of her eldest brother Anthony. During later shows, Madonna performs an acoustic version of “Express Yourself” on the guitar. During the show in St. Paul Minnesota, she pays tribute to Prince by covering his song “Kiss”. During one of the shows in Inglewood, Madonna brought Australian pop singe Kylie Minogue on stage to perform “I Will Survive” and a short a cappella version of Kylie’s signature song “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”.

For La Isla Bonita, Madonna performs it along with the cello player and her son David on guitar being strapped onto the time machine while pictures of several icons such as Frida Kahlo, Che Guevara, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Nina Simone, James Baldwin, Martha Graham, Sinead O' Connor, David Bowie and Marlon Brando and several others appeared on the screens. She then wears the Pride flag and sings a short acapella of "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" next to a dancer dressed as a mix between Madonna's character from the "American Life" video and Charlotte Rampling's character Lucia from The Night Porter while the latter turns back to show the sign "No Fear" written in the back of the dancer.

The next act opens with a video interlude showing several news clips and additional content from Madonna's career and the controversies surrounding her plays in the background as a mash between Vogue and the Honey Dijon remix of “I Don't Search I Find" soundtracks the video. Bob The Drag Queen returns to perform the entire interlude. It ends with one line from Madonna's speech from the Billboard Music Awards back in 2016 "The most controversial thing I have ever done is to stick around" before it fades out. Madonna then returns on stage to perform a modified arrangement of " Bedtime Story " (complete with arpeggios, chopped up and reverbed samples and vocoders) dressed in a mirrored catsuit and a straight long wig. Madonna enters on the C-stage as the stage lifts transform into a giant cube showing psychedelic sceneries and an avatar of Madonna singing the song. The time machine then flies to Madonna's direction as the song transitions to the Junior's Sound Factory Mix and eventually the Sasha Ultra Violet mix of "Ray Of Light". Madonna then performs the latter while strapped onto the time machine. The latter's arrangement consists of the Sasha Ultra Violet Mix combined with elements from the original recording. The time machine lowers down as several splices from the "Frozen" music video play in the background. Madonna then performs a modified version of the original recording of "Rain" while she dons the large parachute coat from the " Sticky and Sweet Tour ". During the shows in Toronto and Detroit, Rain was replaced by a new arrangement of "Frozen" which contains both elements of the original recording and the Sickick remix. While “Take A Bow” was performed during the show in St. Paul Minnesota using an arrangement similar to the one from The Rebel Heart Tour .

The final act symbolizes the present which opens with a dancer dressed as Michael Jackson appeared along with another dancer dressed as Madonna's 1984 Video Music Awards look to perform Michael's songs "Billie Jean", "Smooth Criminal", "Dangerous", "You Rock My World" and "The Way You Make Me Feel" and then using excerpts from Madonna's own "Express Yourself", "She's Not Me" and "Celebration" as it transitions to "Like A Virgin". As a silhouette of Madonna and Michael appeared on the large white screen and several pictures of them appeared on the video screens. Excerpts of "Gimme All Your Luvin'" play as several dancers dressed in Madonna's iconic looks took the stage. Madonna appears on stage in another corset and a white veil as she performs "Bitch I'm Madonna" along with Bob The Drag Queen returning as Madonna's 1990 Video Music Awards look. In the bridge, a clip of Nicki Minaj performing her lines appeared on the screens along with watercolor paintings of Madonna's imagery. Madonna, Bob and the dancers make it to the main stage. The final song for the evening is a reprise of the Benny Benassi remix of "Celebration" accompanied by excerpts of "Music" and "Bitch I'm Madonna" as Madonna thanks Bob The Drag Queen for emceeing the evening. Madonna ends the show wrapping herself in her white veil as she is lowered down the stage as the lights go out. After a few seconds, the arena's lights turn back on.

Set list [ ]

• "It's a Celebration" (Bob the Drag Queen intro, preceded by " Deeper and Deeper (Shep's Deeper Dub)" accompanied by elements from " Lucky Star ", " Celebration (Benny Benassi Remix)" and Material Girl , along with excerpts from " Express Yourself ", " Vogue ", and " Bitch I'm Madonna ")
• " Nothing Really Matters " (With elements from the "Club 69 Remix")
• " Everybody " (With elements from " Where's the Party ")
• " Into the Groove " (With excerpts from " Into the Hollywood Groove ")
• " Burning Up " (With elements from the 1981 demo)
• " Open Your Heart "
• " Holiday " (With elements from "I Want Your Love" by Chic) / " In This Life " (Interlude)
• " Live to Tell "
• "The Ritual" (Interlude, with elements from the MDNA Tour intro and "Birjina Gaztetto Bat Zegoen")
• " Like a Prayer " (With elements from "Unholy" by Sam Smith and Kim Petras, " Girl Gone Wild " and " Act of Contrition ")
• " Living for Love " (Offer Nissim Remix, dance interlude with elements from "Let's Go Crazy" by Prince )
• "The 90s" (Video interlude, with elements from the 12" mix of " Fever ")
• " Erotica " (With elements from " Justify My Love ," "Erotica (Final Demo 2)" and " Papa Don't Preach ")
• "Justify My Love" (With elements from "Gangsta" by Kehlani) / "Fever" (Snippet)
• " Hung Up On Tokischa / Hung Up " (contains a snippet of " La Isla Bonita ")
• " Bad Girl " (With Mercy James on piano, preceded by a piano solo of "Le Regret, Op. 332")
• "Vogue" (With elements of " Up Down Suite ," "Deeper and Deeper," " BREAK MY SOUL (THE QUEENS REMIX) " by Beyoncé and Madonna, “Everybody Everybody” by Black Box, “Let It All Out 2012" by MikeQ and "Walk 4 Me" by Robbie Tronco)
• " Human Nature " / " Crazy for You "
• " The Beast Within " (Video interlude, with elements from the Re-Invention World Tour backdrop)
• " Die Another Day "
• " Don't Tell Me " (With elements from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly")
• " Mother and Father "
• " I Will Survive " / " La Isla Bonita " / " Don't Cry for Me Argentina " (Acoustic medley)
• " I Don't Search I Find " (Bob The Drag Queen solo) (Honey Dijon Remix) (Video interlude) (contains the drums from " Vogue ")
• " Bedtime Story " (With elements from "Junior's Sound Factory Remix") / " Ray of Light " (Sasha Ultra Violet Remix)
• " Rain " / (replaced by " Frozen " (contains elements of the Sickick Remix - only performed in Toronto and Detroit) and eventually "Take A Bow")
• " Like a Virgin / Billie Jean" (Video interlude, with elements from "Express Yourself," “Celebration”, “She’s Not Me”, "Smooth Criminal," "Dangerous," "You Rock My World" and "The Way You Make Me Feel" by Michael Jackson , and " Angel ")
• "Bitch I'm Madonna" (With elements from " Give Me All Your Luvin' ")
• "Celebration" (Benni Benassi Remix, with elements from " Music " and "Bitch I'm Madonna," outro)
• An a cappella snippet of " Little Star " dedicated to Lourdes Leon was performed on the first London show, before the acoustic medley.
• The "Like a Virgin / Billie Jean" interlude, "Bitch I'm Madonna" and "Celebration" were not performed on the second London show due to venue curfew restrictions and Madonna being late to start.
• the second Antwerp show
• the second Amsterdam show
• the fifth and sixth London shows
• the second and third New York City shows
• Washington DC
• the fifth New York City show
• Philadelphia
• the second Chicago show
• the first Seattle show
• the second San Francisco show
• the first three Inglewood shows
• " Sôdade " by Cesária Évora was included in the acoustic medley in Lisbon, before "I Will Survive."
• "Burning Up" was mashed with " I Love New York " in New York City.
• An a cappella snippet of "This Little Light of Mine" was performed on the first Boston show and in Vancouver, before the acoustic medley.
• Starting from the first concert in Boston, "I Will Survive" was replaced by " Express Yourself ," except during the sixth New York City show and the third Inglewood show.
• "Rain" was replaced by " Frozen " in Toronto and Detroit.
• Tokischa joined Madonna on stage to perform "Hung Up" on the sixth New York City show.
• An a cappella snippet of " This Used to Be My Playground " was performed on the second Chicago show, before the acoustic medley.
• An acoustic version of "Kiss" by Prince was performed in Saint Paul, between "Express Yourself" and "La Isla Bonita"
• Starting from the Saint Paul show, "Rain" was replaced by " Take a Bow ."
• An a cappella snippet of "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X was performed on the second San Francisco show, before "Burning Up."
• Madonna was joined by Kylie Minogue on stage to perform "I Will Survive" and " Can't Get You Out of My Head " on the third Inglewood show.

Recurring References [ ]

Madonna made several references and brought several costumes and props back from her past tours and videos throughout the entire show.

• The Red Velvet bed from the Blonde Ambition Tour during Like A Virgin
• The sheer black hooded robe from the Blonde Ambition Tour during Papa Don't Preach
• The censers from the MDNA Tour during it's introduction
• The Disco Ball from The Girlie Show during Express Yourself
• The Boxing Motif from The Girlie Show during Erotica
• The Papa Don't Preach choreo from the Blonde Ambition Tour during the latter.
• The Masturbation scene from the Blonde Ambition Tour during Like A Virgin
• The Beast Within performance and visuals from both The Girlie Show and The Reinvention Tour
• The Hung Up choreography from the Confessions Tour during the latter
• The OM symbol on Madonna's hand from the Frozen video
• The Church bells from the MDNA Tour intro mixed with Birjina Gaztetto Bat Zegoen from the Enlightenment for Vogue Magazine.
• 1 Erotica Photoshoot
• 2 Ray of Light Photoshoot

Madonna Unveils Ultimate Greatest Hits Show ‘The Celebration Tour’

By Larisha Paul

Larisha Paul

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Rolling Stone may receive an affiliate commission.

Truth or dare? ? Madonna has rarely ever been one to shy away from the latter. In an announcement video that nods to her documentary of the same title, a slate of special guests prompts her with a challenge: “I dare you to do a world tour and play your greatest motherfucking hits.”

Madonna: the Celebration tour will span 40 years of the singer’s career, bringing her greatest hits to 35 cities across North America and Europe. “I am excited to explore as many songs as possible in hopes to give my fans the show they have been waiting for,” Madonna shared in a statement.

On Thursday, she added an additional 13 dates due to “overwhelming demanded.”

General sale for the Celebration tour begins Friday, Jan. 20, at 10 a.m. local time. More information is available via the official Madonna website .

Bob the Drag Queen – who appears in the announcement video alongside Diplo, Judd Apatow, Jack Black, Lil Wayne, Bob The Drag Queen, Kate Berlant, Larry Owens, Meg Stalter, and Eric Andre – will join as support across the entire tour.

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This story was updated on Jan. 19 at 5:15 pm ET to include Madonna’s additional tour dates in bold .

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Madonna announces Celebration greatest hits world tour

Singer will celebrate four decades in music with a 35-date run beginning in Vancouver on 15 July, with one date at London’s O2 Arena on 14 October

Madonna has announced a tour celebrating her 40 years as a recording and touring artist. Dubbed the Celebration tour, the 35-date run will begin in Vancouver, Canada, on 15 July, and run through to winter, ending on 1 December at Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome.

First teased in a promotional video for last year’s dance chart No 1s album Finally Enough Love, the Celebration tour was officially announced in a clip parodying Madonna’s 1991 tour film Truth or Dare. In the video, celebrities including Diplo, Jack Black, Lil Wayne and Amy Schumer play a game of truth or dare with Madonna, which culminates with Schumer “daring” Madonna to embark on a greatest hits tour. “You think people would come to that show?” Madonna asks. “The answer is – fuck yeah.”

Per a press release, the Celebration tour will showcase “Madonna’s artistic journey through four decades and pays respect to the city of New York where her career in music began.”

Supporting Madonna on all dates is drag performer Bob the Drag Queen, AKA Caldwell Tidicue. Best known for winning season eight of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Tidicue has also released a handful of singles, starred in a production of Angels in America at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, and hosts a podcast, Sibling Rivalry, with Monét X Change.

The Celebration tour is Madonna’s 12th concert tour. The last time she went on the road was in 2019 and 2020, when she performed in intimate venues in support of her album Madame X. That run saw her play 12 shows at the 2,200-capacity London Palladium, with similarly lengthy stints in New York, Los Angeles and more.

The only UK date of the Celebration tour announced thus far is on 14 October at London’s 20,000-capacity O2 Arena. In a statement, Madonna said: “I am excited to explore as many songs as possible in hopes to give my fans the show they have been waiting for.”

Live Nation, the producer of the Celebration tour, has faced criticism in recent months, with the US government currently in the midst of an antitrust investigation into the touring giant and Ticketmaster parent company over whether it has abused its power in the entertainment industry. Scrutiny intensified in November, when Taylor Swift slammed Ticketmaster over the bungled pre-sale for her own greatest hits shows, dubbed the Eras tour.

In a letter to the company, the US Senate’s antitrust committee chair Amy Klobuchar expressed “serious concern about the state of competition in the ticketing industry and its harmful impact on consumers”.

Tickets for the Celebration tour go on sale on 20 January and are available from Madonna’s website .

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Madonna's tour for her 40-year catalogue of music will start on July 15.

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Pop superstar Madonna has officially announced dates for “ Madonna : The Celebration Tour” in a video that was a nod to her 1990 film “Truth or Dare.” The video features a slew of celebrities, including Judd Apatow, Jack Black, Lil Wayne, Diplo, Bob the Drag Queen, Kate Berlant, Larry Owens, Meg Stalter, Eric André and Amy Schumer.

In the video, Schumer dares Madonna to go on tour and play her hits. To the joy of Madonna ’s fans, she has accepted the challenge. Here’s what you need to know about Madonna’s upcoming tour.

When does the tour kick off?

Related articles, selena gomez took four years off from social media. she talks about that -- and more -- at rare beauty's mental health summit  , 'fancy like' country star walker hayes to front new menswear line for jcpenney, what are some major stops on the tour.

The 35-city global tour, produced by entertainment company Live Nation, will include stops in Vancouver, New York, Detroit, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, London, Barcelona, Paris, Copenhagen, Antwerp, Lisbon and Stockholm concluding in Amsterdam on Dec. 1.

Who are the special guests on the tour?

Bob the Drag Queen, actor, comedian and Season Eight winner of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” will be a special guest on all dates of the tour.

How do I get tickets?

Tickets go on sale starting Friday, Jan. 20 at 10 a.m. local time at Madonna.com/tour. Citi is the official card of the tour. Citi cardmembers will have access to presale tickets beginning today, Jan. 17, at 2 p.m. local time through Jan. 19 at 6 p.m. local time through the Citi Entertainment program.

Legacy members of Madonna’s Official Fan Club will have a pre-sale opportunity beginning on Jan. 17 at noon ET through Jan. 18 at 5 p.m. ET for all North American shows, and from 9 a.m. GMT/10 a.m. CET to 5 p.m. GMT/6 p.m. CET on Jan. 18 for U.K. and European shows.

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Madonna announces north american and european dates for 2023 celebration tour.

The superstar will explore her musical journey across four decades through concerts announced in a video featuring Amy Schumer, Lil Wayne, Kate Berlant, Jack Black, Judd Apatow, Eric Andre, Diplo and more.

By Abbey White

Abbey White

Associate Editor & News Writer

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Madonna announced dates for her Celebration Tour on Tuesday with the help of some Hollywood friends.

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The tour will kick off this July in Vancouver and end in December in Amsterdam, spanning 35 cities in total across North America and Europe. Other major stops during the first leg include Detroit, Chicago, New York, Miami and Los Angeles, with 11 additional dates outside North America — in London, Barcelona, Paris and Stockholm, among others — slated for the fall and early winter.

Produced by Live Nation and featuring Bob the Drag Queen (Caldwell Tidicue) at all dates on the tour, the music event will honor Madonna’s musical journey across four decades with a special celebration of New York, the city where her career began. “I am excited to explore as many songs as possible in hopes to give my fans the show they have been waiting for,” Madonna said in a statement included in her tour announcement .

Celebration Tour tickets go on sale at madonna.com/tour starting Friday at 10 a.m. local time. U.S. Citi cardmembers, European and Canadian AMEX cardmembers as well as Legacy members of Madonna’s official fan club will have access to separate presales. VIP packages — featuring premium tickets, exclusive access to a behind-the-scenes tour, a group photo onstage, a pre-show reception, a limited edition lithograph and more — will also be available at vipnation.com . 

The Celebration tour arrives nearly 40 years after Madonna’s 1985 North American Virgin Tour. Madonna last toured in 2019 and early 2020 as part of her Madame X theater tour.

More on the Celebration tour, including its dates and presales, can be found at madonna.com .

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Madonna Sets Dates For 2023 Hit-Filled ’Celebration Tour’ – See Complete Roster

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Madonna has announced details about her upcoming world tour, dubbed The Celebration Tour , confirming the project in a starry video that mirrors a scene from the 1990 documentary Truth Or Dare.

The video – see it below, but it’s probably NSFW – features the singer at a dinner party with guests including Jack Black, Lil Wayne, Judd Apatow, Diplo and others, with each playing the Truth or Dare game. When it comes to Amy Schumer’s turn, she dares Madonna to go on a tour performing her many hits. Madonna takes the dare.

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Bob the Drag Queen will appear as a special guest on the tour.

Tickets go on sale Friday, January 20 at 10 a.m. local time at madonna.com/tour.

THE CELEBRATION TOUR NORTH AMERICAN DATES:

Sat Jul 15 – Vancouver, BC – Rogers Arena

Tue Jul 18 – Seattle, WA – Climate Pledge Arena

Sat Jul 22 – Phoenix, AZ – Footprint Center

Tue Jul 25 – Denver, CO – Ball Arena

Thu Jul 27 – Tulsa, OK – BOK Center

Sun Jul 30 – St. Paul, MN – Xcel Energy Center

Wed Aug 02 – Cleveland, OH – Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse

Sat Aug 05 – Detroit, MI – Little Caesars Arena

Mon. Aug 07 – Pittsburgh, PA – PPG Paints Arena

Wed Aug 09 – Chicago, IL – United Center

Sun Aug 13 – Toronto, ON – Scotiabank Arena

Sat Aug 19 – Montreal, QC – Centre Bell

Wed Aug 23 – New York, NY – Madison Square Garden

Thu Aug 24 – New York, NY – Madison Square Garden

Wed Aug 30 – Boston, MA – TD Garden

Sat Sep 02 – Washington, DC – Capital One Arena

Tue Sep 05 – Atlanta, GA – State Farm Arena

Thu Sep 07 – Tampa, FL – Amalie Arena

Sat Sep 09 – Miami, FL – Miami-Dade Arena

Wed Sep 13 – Houston, TX – Toyota Center

Mon Sep 18 – Dallas, TX – American Airlines Center

Thu Sep 21 – Austin, TX – Moody Center ATX

Wed Oct 04 – San Francisco, CA – Chase Center

Sat Oct 07 – Las Vegas, NV – T-Mobile Arena

THE CELEBRATION TOUR EUROPE DATES:

Sat Oct 14 – London, UK – The O2

Sat Oct 21 – Antwerp, BE – Sportpaleis

Wed. Oct. 25 – Copenhagen, DK – Royal Arena

Sat Oct 28 – Stockholm, SE – Tele2

Wed Nov 01 – Barcelona, ES – Palau Sant Jordi

Mon Nov 06 – Lisbon, PT – Altice Arena

Sun Nov 12 – Paris, FR – Accor Arena

Mon Nov 13 – Paris, FR – Accor Arena

Wed Nov 15 – Cologne, DE – Lanxess Arena

Thu Nov 23 – Milan, IT – Mediolanum Forum

Tue Nov 28 – Berlin, DE – Mercedes-Benz Arena

Fri Dec 1 – Amsterdam, NL – Ziggo Dome

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Madonna’s Celebration Tour: 13 Numbers That Give a Sneak Peek Into the Global Trek

The hotly anticipated tour will feature plenty of songs and looks from four iconic decades.

By Joe Lynch

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Madonna’s wildly anticipated new tour opens in London at the O2 Arena on Saturday (Oct. 14) night. The Celebration Tour covers four decades of classics from the Queen of Pop’s culture-shifting career.

Originally set to kick off July 15 in Vancouver, B.C., the tour’s start was postponed after a “serious bacterial infection” put Madonna in the hospital for several days in June. The new dates find the fully recovered pop star opening the tour with six shows in London, a city Madge once called her home away from home.

While fan speculation as to what the tour will entail is all over social media (and we’ve certainly indulged ), we do know a few things about The Celebration Tour so far.

In an interview with the BBC , Stuart Price – the tour’s musical director (and co-producer of her 2005 classic Confessions on a Dance Floor ) – said the trek will incorporate 40 of her iconic hits but clarified that doesn’t always mean songs. “A greatest hit doesn’t have to be a song. It can be a wardrobe, it can be a video or a statement.”

And some of those songs will pop up in the form of the OG studio recordings. “There are live musicians that perform at different parts of the show,” Price told the BBC. “But what we realized is that the original recordings are our stars. Those things can’t be replicated and can’t be recreated, so we decided just to embrace that.”

Additionally, reps for Madonna have provided some fresh details into what attendees of Madonna’s The Celebration Tour can expect. Below, find 13 by-the-numbers facts about the Queen of Pop’s new tour.

Layers of a circular stage in place of a main stage. The design evokes her wedding cake setup from the 1984 VMAs.

The number of Madonna’s children on stage during the show.

This is her eighth tour working with tour director Jamie King.

Countries the Celebration Tour will hit.

The number of archival outfits recreated for this tour.

The number of onstage performers.

The number of people in the costume department for this tour.

Pairs of boxing gloves involved.

Wardrobe trunks making this trek with Madge.

The number of merch items, including recreations of items from past tours (the Blonde Ambition bomber jacket, for example).

Shows in total on this tour.

Tons of production equipment. (Lift with your knees!)

The number of square feet on stage – the largest square footage of any Madonna tour ever. The setup is inspired by Manhattan’s grid layout, with uptown, downtown, midtown and east and west stages.

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The dates were announced via star-studded video, with Amy Schumer daring the megastar to hit the road

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Madonna has announced dates in North America and Europe as part of The Celebration Tour , kicking off in July.

Shop the best of Madonna’s discography on vinyl .

The run will take fans on the global pop icon’s artistic journey across four decades, paying respect to the city of New York, where her extraordinary career began. “I am excited to explore as many songs as possible in hopes to give my fans the show they have been waiting for,” Madonna said in a press release.

Gracie Abrams Returns With New Single ‘Risk’

The tour was announced with a star-studded video featuring the likes of Diplo, Judd Apatow, Jack Black, Lil Wayne , Bob The Drag Queen, Kate Berlant, Larry Owens, Meg Stalter, and Eric Andre. The clip culminates with Amy Schumer daring Madonna to hit the road once more and perform her four decades of mega hits.

The tour will begin in Vancouver, BC, on July 15, before taking Madonna – the best-selling female solo touring artist of all time – across North America. Included in her itinerary are stops at Madison Square Garden, the crypto.com Arena, and more.

In October, she will head to Europe, beginning that leg at London’s The O2 before journeying across the continent.

Joining Madonna at the one-of-a-kind experience will be special guest Bob The Drag Queen, aka Caldwell Tidicue. Tickets for The Celebration Tour will go on sale at 10am local time on Friday (January 20).

Legacy members of Madonna’s official fan club will be able to access a special pre-sale before the general sale. Fans in North America will be able to gain access from 12pm ET today (17) through 5pm ET tomorrow (18), while European fans will be able to access it from 9am GMT tomorrow.

Last week (13), Madonna released the deluxe international edition of her 2019 album Madame X . It had previously been available only on CD in select countries.

The International Deluxe eAlbum features the 15 original tracks on the album’s deluxe edition as well as the three bonus tracks from CD2 of the original release that are previously unreleased digitally. The version of “Back That Up To The Beat” on the new digital collection is the final, studio version, rather than the demo version that was released on December 30.

View Madonna’s official website for more information.

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Madonna Celebrates Four Decades of Hits With Career-Spanning Spectacle

After a health-related delay, the pop superstar launched her Celebration Tour in London with a performance devoted to her full catalog of hits.

By Derrick Bryson Taylor and Ben Sisario

Derrick Bryson Taylor reported from London, and Ben Sisario from New York.

They wore pearls with crucifixes, lace gloves, tulle skirts and body-sculpting corsets. Some even crimped their hair and drew on fake beauty moles, while others wore simple white T-shirts with only the letter M on the back. Spanning generations, the concertgoers arriving at the O2 Arena in London used Saturday night as an opportunity to dress in their favorite Madonna era, even if that was decades before they were born.

Madonna, 65, is on the road for the first time since 2020 with her global Celebration Tour, a stage spectacle touching on more than 40 of her hits across four decades. The show opened at the O2, a 20,000-capacity arena, three months after its planned first date, following a health scare for the pop icon. In June, Madonna was hospitalized shortly before the tour’s scheduled debut in Canada. At the time, her manager said she had a “ serious bacterial infection ” that resulted in the singer staying in an intensive care unit for several days.

Madonna swore that the tour — her first devoted to her full catalog of hits, rather than to a specific album release — would go on. In recent weeks, she has filled her Instagram account with tantalizing , and very on-brand, images from rehearsals, showing her dressed in a lacy black bustier, practicing onstage steps and resting her fishnet-clad knees .

Fans waited out a 30-minute delay before Madonna arrived onstage in London, opening with a medley of hits before acknowledging the challenges that had led to the moment. “How did I make it this far? Because of you,” she said, adding, “But I will take a bit of credit, too.”

It was clear from the beginning that this concert would be as much a journey through Madonna’s career as it would a bona fide dance party. Set on an elaborate stage that jutted out into the audience, several hanging retractable screens showed images of the singer. At other times, they displayed powerful portraits, as when she launched into “Live to Tell” and the screens displayed images of Freddie Mercury, Arthur Ashe and more people who died from AIDS.

For more than two hours, with the help of her dancers and some of her six children, Madonna blazed through her catalog of songs, singing several hits like “Holiday,” “Like a Prayer,” “Hung Up,” “Ray of Light” and “Bad Girl.” Her costumes were sexy, religious and futuristic.

Though the show had been in the works for months, it was not without technical difficulties. Early on, Madonna paused the show so the sound could be reset. She entertained the audience during the delay by speaking at length about her rise to stardom while technicians worked behind the scenes. Later in the show, between songs, Madonna expressed concern for those affected by violence in Israel and the Gaza Strip. “It breaks my heart to see children suffering, teenagers suffering, elderly people suffering, all of it is heartbreaking,” she said. “Even though our hearts are broken, our spirits cannot be broken.”

Madonna also reflected on her health struggles this year. “I forgot five days of my life, or my death,” she said. “I don’t really know where I was, but the angels were protecting me.

“If you want to know my secret, and you want to know how I pull through and how I survive, I thought, ‘I’ve got to be there for my children. I have to survive for them,’” she said. She then led the crowd in a singalong of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”

The 24 performers onstage notably did not include a live band: Stuart Price, the tour’s musical director, told the BBC that “the original recordings are our stars.” The stage, which encompasses 4,400 square feet, was designed to echo Manhattan neighborhoods, as well as the wedding cake from Madonna’s 1984 MTV Video Music Awards performance of “Like a Virgin.” During the show, she is swept across the venue in a square-framed box 30 feet off the ground.

Carla Nobre, 38, of Nottingham said that seeing Madonna in concert had been on her bucket list, but that she had been disappointed with the performance.“There was too much talking,” she said.

Jenni Purple, 54, from the southern coast of England said the concert, which was her first time seeing Madonna live, had been “absolutely incredible.” “I loved all the medleys, I loved the costumes, I loved all the dances,” she said with a broad smile. “Everything was just mind-blowing.”

In the past, Madonna’s tours have been news-making events tied as much to her latest music as to her cycle of stylistic reinventions. But Celebration is essentially the pop superstar’s Eras Tour , as Taylor Swift has styled her latest outing: a staged romp through decades of hit songs and signature looks, giving fans a chance to relive her career as a stages-of-life experience. (Seventeen of Madonna’s previous costumes were recreated for the tour, and some of the merchandise for sale includes replicas from past treks.)

With her Virgin Tour in 1985, Madonna introduced herself as a punk-glam dance star whose every crucifix pendant or flap of denim was zealously adopted by fans. Who’s That Girl (1987) and Blond Ambition (1990) grew increasingly elaborate as Madonna pushed the fashion envelope with looks like Jean Paul Gaultier’s memorable cone bra and set the bar for bold, imaginative pop megatours. The Girlie Show (1993), in which Madonna appeared as a dominatrix, was the accompaniment to a period of daringly explicit material like her “Sex” book and “Justify My Love” video, which was banned from MTV.

After an eight-year absence from the road, Drowned World (2001) reintroduced Madonna as a new mother, an electro-pop heroine and an acolyte of kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism. In more recent years, her Confessions Tour (2006) cast her in late-70s disco style, and Rebel Heart (2015-16) found her playing guitar, in addition to executing the complex choreography for which she is known. Her most recent tour, Madame X, which was cut short by the Covid-19 pandemic, saw Madonna looking to reinvent her stage performance once again in a more intimate, almost cabaret form, mostly eschewing arenas for spaces like the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

For Madonna, the 78-date Celebration Tour is a chance to assert her star power in a year when live music has been dominated by Swift and Beyoncé — women who, like Madonna before them, have used talent and deep media savvy to remake pop stardom in their own image. In July, Beyoncé acknowledged the debt, when Madonna, making one of her first public appearances after her hospitalization, attended Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour in New Jersey. “Big shout-out to the queen,” Beyoncé called out during a performance of the “Queens Remix” of her song “Break My Soul,” which blends in Madonna’s 1990 smash “Vogue” — another hit that mined, and honored, gay dance culture of that period.

Madonna returned the acknowledgment on Saturday, playing a bit of the same remix during an interstitial moment.

When Madonna’s latest tour was announced in January, it immediately became one of the year’s big-ticket events — and yielded a micro-flood of hot takes about the singer’s age. But the tour appears to be far from sold out; Ticketmaster still shows many seats available at some major venues like Barclays Center in Brooklyn, where Madonna will start the North American leg of the tour with three shows in December.

Back in 2009, Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet Tour set box-office records when it sold more than $400 million in tickets. Since then, the economics of live music have exploded; Beyoncé has already well exceeded that amount with her Renaissance shows, and Swift may well sell close to $2 billion in tickets by the time her Eras Tour is completed.

Legacy has clearly been on Madonna’s mind lately. Last month, the 1989 Pepsi commercial that introduced her song “Like a Prayer” — before it was pulled amid outrage over its music video, which featured an interracial kiss and the singer dancing in front of burning crosses — was finally aired again during the MTV Video Music Awards.

Madonna, who had been paid $5 million for the promotion — and kept the money — said on social media : “So began my illustrious career as an artist refusing to compromise my artistic integrity.” She added, “Thank you @pepsi for finally realizing the genius of our collaboration. Artists are here to disturb the peace.”

It was clearly on fans’ minds as well. Aisha and Maia Letamendia Moore, 17-year-old twins from southern England, near Brighton, wore looks that drew on the Vogue and Like a Virgin eras. “I think she’s such an influence,” Maia said. “She did so many things that were so controversial. She wasn’t scared to do it, she wasn’t scared what people would say.”

Others mentioned rumors that Celebration could be Madonna’s last tour. Helen Dawson, 47, who said she first saw Madonna during the Who’s That Girl Tour in 1987, would abide no such thought. “Never, she won’t give up,” Ms. Dawson said. “This is just a new celebration, a new era.”

Derrick Bryson Taylor is a general assignment reporter. He previously worked at The New York Post’s PageSix.com and Essence magazine. More about Derrick Bryson Taylor

Ben Sisario covers the music industry. He has been writing for The Times since 1998. More about Ben Sisario

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MADONNA ADDS NEW DATES TO THE CELEBRATION TOUR

Due to overwhelming demand, Madonna today announced the addition of 13 new dates in North America across The Celebration Tour. Produced by Live Nation, the 35-city global tour now includes second shows in Seattle, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Boston, Miami, Houston, Dallas, Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas along with a third show in New York. Tickets for the newly added performances go on sale tomorrow – FRIDAY, JANUARY 20TH at 10am Local Time alongside the shows already announced in each respective city. The highly anticipated tour will kick off on Saturday, July 15th at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, BC with stops in Phoenix, Chicago, Los Angeles, and more before making its way to Europe where she will perform in 11 cities throughout the fall, including London, Barcelona, and Stockholm, among others. The Celebration Tour will wrap on Friday, December 1st in Amsterdam, NL at Ziggo Dome. Following Madonna’s viral video that announced the tour earlier this week, the response has been incredible, with fans looking forward to seeing the best-selling female solo touring artist of all time perform her unmatched catalog of music from the past 40 plus years in a live setting. The tour toasts to the incomparable movement of individualistic celebration, creativity and cutting-edge innovation Madonna has created over the course of her career. The Celebration Tour will offer a one-of-a-kind experience with special guest Bob the Drag Queen a.k.a. Caldwell Tidicue across all dates on the global tour. TICKETS: Tickets for newly added dates will go on sale tomorrow, Friday, January 20th at 10am local time. Visit madonna.com/tour for complete tour and ticket listing. ADDITIONAL SHOWS: As previously announced, tickets for performances in Phoenix, Denver, St. Paul, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Washington, and Atlanta will go on sale Friday, January 27th at 10am local time. Citi is the official card of Madonna The Celebration Tour. Citi cardmembers will have access to presale tickets starting Tuesday, January 24 at 10am local time through Thursday, January 26 at 6pm local time. For complete presale details visit www.citientertainment.com . Legacy members of Madonna’s Official Fan Club will have a pre-sale opportunity starting Monday, January 23 at 10am local time through Wednesday, January 25th at 5pm local time.  VIP: Fans can also purchase VIP Packages, which may include premium tickets, exclusive access to a behind the scenes tour, group photo on-stage, pre-show reception, limited edition lithograph & more. For more information, visit vipnation.com .

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Madonna Announces “The Celebration Tour” [UPDATED]

The pop icon commemorates 40 years in music

Update: Madonna has revealed the updated itinerary for “The Celebration Tour,” her sold-out, career-spanning live set that was  postponed  in late June after the Queen of Pop was hospitalized for a serious bacterial infection.

— Original Story —

Madonna will commemorate 40 years in music by embarking on “The Celebration Tour” in 2023.

The global tour will kick off in North America on July 15th in Vancouver, with additional concerts scheduled in cities like Detroit, Chicago, New York, Miami, Houston, Dallas, Austin, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and more. A UK/European leg kicks off in October, including dates in London, Barcelona, Paris, Stockholm, and Amsterdam.

Tickets for Madonna’s “The Celebration Tour” have largely sold out. As of Friday, January 20th, 36 shows — totally more than 600,000 tickets — are sold out. However, fans can still get access to these dates via Stubhub — where your order is 100% guaranteed through Stubhub’s FanProtect program.

Editor’s Note: Head here for more details on how to buy tickets to Madonna’s “The Celebration Tour.”

Madonna 2023-2024 Tour Dates:

10/14 – London, UK @ The O2 10/15 – London, UK @ The O2 10/17 – London, UK @ The O2 10/18 – London, UK @ The O2 10/21 – Antwerp, BE @ Sportpaleis 10/22 – Antwerp, BE @ Sportpaleis 10/25 – Copenhagen, DK @ Royal Arena 10/28 – Stockholm, SE @ Tele2 11/01 – Barcelona, ES @ Palau Sant Jordi 11/02 – Barcelona, ES @ Palau Sant Jordi 11/06 – Lisbon, PT @ Altice Arena 11/12 – Paris, FR @ Accor Arena 11/13 – Paris, FR @ Accor Arena 11/15 – Cologne, DE @ Lanxess Arena 11/16 – Cologne, DE @ Lanxess Arena 11/19 – Paris, FR @ Accor Arena 11/23 – Milan, IT @ Mediolanum Forum 11/25 – Milan, IT @ Mediolanum Forum 11/28 – Berlin, DE @ Mercedes-Benz Arena 12/01 – Amsterdam, NL @ Ziggo Dome 12/02 – Amsterdam, NL @ Ziggo Dome 12/05 – London, UK @ The O2 12/06 – London, UK @ The O2 12/13 – Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center 12/14 – Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center 12/16 – Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center 12/18 – Washington, DC @ Capitol One Arena 12/19 – Washington, DC @ Capitol One Arena 01/08 – Boston, MD @ TD Garden 01/09 – Boston, MD @ TD Garden 01/11 – Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena 01/12 – Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena 01/15 – Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena 01/18 – Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre 01/20 – Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre 01/22 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden 01/23 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden 01/25 – Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center 01/29 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden 02/01 – Chicago, IL @ United Center 02/02 – Chicago, IL @ United Center 02/05 – Pittsburgh, PA @ PPG Paints Arena 02/08 – Cleveland, OH @ Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse 02/13 – St. Paul, MN @ Xcel Energy Center 02/17 – Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena 02/18 – Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena 02/21 – Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena 02/24 – Sacramento, CA @ Golden 1 Center 02/27 – San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center 02/28 – San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center 03/01 – Las Vegas, NV @ MGM Grand Garden Arena 03/02 – Las Vegas, NV @ MGM Grand Garden Arena 03/04 – Los Angeles, CA @ Kia Forum 03/05 – Los Angeles, CA @ Kia Forum 03/07 – Los Angeles, CA @ Kia Forum 03/09 – Los Angeles, CA @ Kia Forum 03/11 – Los Angeles, CA @ Kia Forum 03/16 – Phoenix, AZ @ Footprint Center 03/19 – Denver, CO @ Ball Arena 03/24 – Dallas, TX @ America Airlines Center 03/25 – Dallas, TX @ America Airlines Center 03/28 – Houston, TX @ Toyota Center 03/29 – Houston, TX @ Toyota Center 04/01 – Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena 04/04 – Tampa, FL @ Amalie Arena 04/06 – Miami, FL @ Kaseya Center 04/07 – Miami, FL @ Kaseya Center 04/14 – Austin, TX @ Moody Center 04/15 – Austin, TX @ Moody Center 04/20 – Mexico City, MX @ Palacio De Los Deportes 04/21 – Mexico City, MX @ Palacio De Los Deportes 04/23 – Mexico City, MX @ Palacio De Los Deportes 04/24 – Mexico City, MX @ Palacio De Los Deportes

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Madonna announces "the celebration tour" [updated].

Madonna announces The Celebration global world tour to mark 40th anniversary

The Celebration tour will mark four decades of Madonna's greatest hits, starting with her self-titled debut album, and will include a date at London's O2 Arena. The star revealed the news with a video announcement - featuring cameos from several other well-known stars.

By Gemma Peplow, arts and entertainment reporter

Tuesday 17 January 2023 16:56, UK

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Madonna has announced a major world tour marking her 40th anniversary, including a show at London's O2 Arena.

The announcement comes after weeks of speculation the Queen of Pop had been planning something big to celebrate her career since the release of her self-titled debut album, which launched her on the path to stardom with hits including Holiday, Lucky Star and Borderline.

Writing on Instagram - after previously clearing her page to make way for the news - Madonna simply said: "Come join the party!" In a statement sent to Sky News, she said: "I am excited to explore as many songs as possible in hopes to give my fans the show they have been waiting for."

The Celebration tour will feature the 64-year-old artist's four decades of greatest hits, starting in Vancouver, Canada, on 15 July. The star will play gigs across Canada and the US between July and October, before launching the European leg at the O2 on 14 October.

She will follow this with shows in cities including Barcelona, Paris and Berlin, finishing in Amsterdam on 1 December - taking in 35 cities in total.

Tickets will likely sell out quickly, so it is possible there could be an announcement of further shows to come.

As the tour was revealed on big screens featuring clips from her back-catalogue in London, Madonna also released a video featuring stars including Diplo, Judd Apatow, Jack Black, Lil Wayne and Bob The Drag Queen, culminating with Amy Schumer daring the star to take on the tour of her career so far.

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Madonna is one of the biggest-selling artists of all time and the best-selling female artist in the world, holding numerous records in the US and UK - with 13 number one singles in the UK she has more than any other female artist, as well as 12 number one albums.

In 2022, she became the first woman to chart in the US Billboard top 10 in every decade since the 1980s.

Her last tour was the smaller Madame X tour in 2019 and 2020, which saw the star performing at more intimate theatre venues. However, the shows were delayed due to the singer suffering knee and hip problems, and some were cancelled due to the pandemic. This time round, she will be on stage at major arenas, including Madison Square Garden in New York.

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'She needs no introduction'

Over the years, Madonna has been known for continuously reinventing her music and her image, with hits including Like A Virgin, Into The Groove, Papa Don't Preach and Like A Prayer in the 1980s; Vogue, Justify My Love, Erotica and Frozen in the 1990s; and Music, Hung Up, Sorry, and collaborations with Britney Spears (Me Against The Music) and Justin Timberlake (4 Minutes) in the 2000s.

Her first greatest hits album, The Immaculate Collection, released in 1990, is one of the best-selling albums of all time, with reported sales of around 30 million. Overall, she is reported to have sold up to 300 million records worldwide.

A multi-Grammy, Brit and Ivor Novello winning performer, she was also inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2008, her first year of eligibility, for which she was described in her introduction as "the record-setting, line-crossing, sexuality-flaunting, ever-evolving Material Girl".

It continued: "Madonna is an icon. With her larger than life persona and penchant for provocation, she needs no introduction."

As well as her music, the star is almost as famous for pushing boundaries with fashion and her choices of controversial and even explicit outfits over the decades.

In the early days of her career, she pioneered the "underwear as outerwear" trend by wearing a corset bodysuit with conical bra cups, designed by Jean Paul Gaultier, and in 1992 published Sex, a book of erotic photographs.

In 2016, she attended the Met Gala in a bondage-inspired Givenchy outfit featuring leather, lace, thigh-high boots, a thong and nipple pasties; in 2021, she hit out at Instagram for taking down provocative photographs in which her nipple was exposed.

Read more from Sky News Entertainment: Taylor Swift: The Ticketmaster tour chaos explained Blur announce reunion for one-off Wembley gig Peter Kay announces first stand-up tour in 12 years

In 2022, the singer revisited a number of tracks which made her an international star, including a new take on her 1998 classic Frozen, which she recorded with Canadian musician Sickick, and a remix of her dance hit Hung Up with Dominican rapper Tokischa.

It followed a reformed partnership with her previous long-time record label Warner Music Group, which produced her debut single in 1982.

Tickets for Madonna: The Celebration tour will go on sale on Friday.

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Madonna’s ‘Celebration’ Show Is Very Late but Worth the Wait at U.S. Tour Launch: Concert Review

By Ramin Setoodeh

Ramin Setoodeh

Co-Editor-in-Chief

• ‘Challengers’ Heats Up: How Zendaya’s Star Power and a Sexy Love Triangle Could Give Gen Z Its Next Movie Obsession 1 week ago
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Hello, Brooklyn. Is Madonna in the house? It’s after 10 p.m. on Wednesday night, and the Material Girl is nowhere to be found on the first hometown stop of her career-retrospective “Celebration” tour.

Popular on Variety

The vibe inside the Barclays Center had started off with puffs of pot smoke and Fire Island-circuit, party-ready club music curated by DJ Honey Dijon. Costumed fans decked out in glitter, Madonna T-shirts, hoodies and even a “Like a Virgin” wedding dress grew increasingly impatient. It’s a power move for a stadium artist to keep his or her concert-goers waiting … and waiting … and waiting, and it’s certainly one that Madonna is (in)famous for. But this isn’t the ’90s, and New York is no longer the city that never sleeps. People were starting to get drowsy. Those gummies had started to kick in.   

Finally, at 10:45 p.m., the evening’s host, Bob the Drag Queen, sauntered onstage in a pink Marie Antoinette-like ruffled gown. As he invited fans to travel back to 1978 New York City, with “Madonna at 19 years old,” he declared, “This is not just a show. This is not just. This is not just a partttty. It’s a celebration, bitches!” 

Photos: Ricardo Gomez

The song, and the dance, felt apt: Madonna may have dodged fate only very recently. She addressed the bacterial infection in a rambling speech to fans, between songs, early on, standing next to an actor dressed as Madonna, meant to represent her as a young woman.

“Oh my god,” the real Madonna said. “It’s so great to be back in New York. You have no idea. The enthusiasm, the joy, it’s just coming out of my pores. It’s amazing. Touch me right now. Please someone, touch me.” Madonna, at 65, looked at her younger doppelganger. “Touch me. Yes. Thank you. So uh — the relief. People can speak my language, the language of c–t! Uh, I don’t know where to begin. First of all, no one is more surprised that I have made it this far than me. Yeah, four decades, motherfuckers! And I got to tell you, I didn’t think I was going to make it this summer, but here I am. Thank you for having me. Thank you for standing by me, for your support, your love.

“You don’t understand — the love from a New Yorker is like making a big fat smelly rat come up to you and put your arms around you: ‘I made it.’ I’m not comparing you guys to rats,” she continued. “I know that sounded weird. First of all — I mean, fifth of all, I want you to meet myself. Have you met myself? She was little bit shy back in the day. Let’s see if she’s ticklish.” The real Madonna poked the other Madonna, hugged her, and then seemed peeved to be sharing the spotlight, so she ordered her to sit down. 

Madonna, after all, doesn’t co-headline with anyone — not even herself. But for all that she’s changed music, she may, today, be chasing the descendants her fame helped create. “The Celebration Tour” is coming at the end of the year defined by three other superstar artists on the road — Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour, which became the first concert in history to gross $1 billion globally; Beyonce’s “Renaissance”; and SZA’s “SOS” tour. In all honesty, “The Celebration Tour” doesn’t fall in the same league as those transcendent fan experiences — and it’s also no match for Madonna’s greatest concert of this century, 2005’s “Confessions” tour, based on her tenth studio album “Confessions on a Dance Floor.”

But Madonna is still Madonna, and that’s probably enough even if the “Celebration” show doesn’t always stick the landing. Throughout the night, there are too many costume changes to count, yet Madonna is best when she puts the music front and center, focusing on her vocals instead of trying to outdance her competition. The booming acoustics inside the Barclays Center may have also thrown her off her game, as Madonna asked fans if they could hear her, and she complained at one point, “It’s an echo bowl in here.”

It’s enough to make you pine for a time when New Yorkers could really stay out all night dancing to Madonna on a weeknight. At least, among those willing to wait to be transported, the indestructible Madonna could give us a ride in her time machine.

• Celebration Intro/Nothing Really Matters
• Into The Groove
• I Love New York/Burning Up
• Open Your Heart
• Live To Tell
• Like A Prayer
• Act of Living For Love/The 90’s (Interlude)
• Erotica/Papa Don’t Preach
• Justify My Love/Fever
• Hung Up On Tokischa
• Vogue (Estere’s Ball)
• Human Nature/Crazy For You
• The Beast Within (Interlude)
• Die Another Day
• Don’t Tell Me
• Mother And Father
• Survive/La Isla Bonita/Argentina
• I Don’t Search I Find (Interlude)
• Bedtime Story
• Ray of Light
• Billie Jean vs. Like A Virgin
• GMAYL/Bitch I’m Madonna

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Bon Jovi docuseries 'Thank You, Goodnight' is an argument for respect

Eric Deggans

Jon Bon Jovi at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn., in 2013. David Bergman/Hulu hide caption

Jon Bon Jovi at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn., in 2013.

Hulu's docuseries Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story , spends a lot of time building up the Bon Jovi legend — exploring the band's almost unbelievable 40-plus-year run from playing hardscrabble rock clubs in New Jersey to earning platinum albums and entry into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

But what moved me most in the four-part series was something more revealing: its close look at the struggle by lead singer Jon Bon Jovi to overcome vocal problems which nearly led him to quit the band.

Footage of the singer croaking through vocal exercises, undergoing laser treatments, enduring acupuncture and finally turning to surgery is sprinkled throughout the series, which toggles back and forth between his problems in 2022 and a chronological story of the band's triumphs and tragedies from its earliest days.

Refusing to be Fat Elvis

Jon Bon Jovi was interviewed for Thank You, Goodnight . Disney/Hulu hide caption

Jon Bon Jovi was interviewed for Thank You, Goodnight .

Through it all, a question hangs: Will Bon Jovi ever recover enough vocal strength to lead a 40th anniversary tour?

"If I can't be the very best I can be, I'm out," he tells the cameras, still looking a bit boyish despite his voluminous gray hair at age 62. "I'm not here to drag down the legacy, I'm not here for the 'Where are they now?' tour ... I'm not ever gonna be the Fat Elvis ... That ain't happening."

Filmmaker Gotham Chopra — who has also directed docuseries about his father, spiritualist Deepak Chopra, and star quarterback Tom Brady — digs deeply into the band's history, aided by boatloads of pictures, video footage and early recordings provided by the group.

Former Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora in Thank You, Goodnight Disney/Hulu hide caption

Former Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora in Thank You, Goodnight

Chopra gets folks from the group's tight inner circle to speak up, including former manager Doc McGhee and guitarist Richie Sambora, who quit the band in 2013. ("Are we telling the truth, or are we going to lie, what are we going to do?" Sambora cracks to his offscreen interviewer. "Let's figure it out.")

But anyone expecting gossipy dish will walk away disappointed. Even major scandals in the band's history are handled with care, including the firing of founding bassist Alec John Such in 1994 (and the admission that his replacement, Hugh McDonald, already had been secretly playing bass parts on their albums for years), drummer Tico Torres' stint in addiction treatment and Sambora's decision to quit midway through a tour in 2013, with no notice to bandmates he had performed alongside for 30 years.

Alec John Such, a founding member of Bon Jovi, dies at 70

Sambora's explanation: When issues with substance use and family problems led him to miss recording sessions, Bon Jovi got producer John Shanks to play more guitar on their 2013 record What About Now . And Sambora was hurt.

"[Bon Jovi] had the whole thing kinda planned out," Sambora says, "which basically was telling me, um, 'I can do it without you.'"

Building a band on rock anthems

Jon Bon Jovi with guitarist Phil X. Disney/Hulu hide caption

Jon Bon Jovi with guitarist Phil X.

The docuseries shows how young New Jersey native John Bongiovi turned a job as a gofer at legendary recording studio The Power Station – owned by a cousin — into a recording of his first hit in the early 1980s, Runaway . His song eventually caught the ear of another little-known artist from New Jersey called Bruce Springsteen.

"The first demo I got of Jon's was a good song," says Springsteen, a longtime friend of Bon Jovi. "I mean, Jon's great talent is these big, powerful pop rock choruses that just demand to be sung by, you know, 20,000 people in an arena."

Music Interviews

Rock star jon bon jovi comes full 'circle'.

Thank You, Goodnight shows the band really took off by honing those rock anthems with songwriter Desmond Child, while simultaneously developing videos that showcased their status as a fun, rollicking live band. Hits like You Give Love a Bad Name, Livin' on a Prayer and Wanted: Dead or Alive made them MTV darlings and rock superstars.

Through it all, the singer and bandleader is shown as the group's visionary and spark plug, open about how strategically he pushed the band to write hit songs and positioned them for commercial success.

"It wasn't as though I woke up one morning and was the best singer in the school, or on the block, or in my house," he tells the camera, laughing. "I just had a desire and a work ethic that was always the driving force."

I saw that dynamic up close in the mid-1990s when I worked as a music critic in New Jersey, spending time with Jon Bon Jovi and the band. Back then, his mother ran the group's fan club and was always trying to convince the local rock critic to write about her superstar son – I was fascinated by how the band shrugged off criticisms of being uncool and survived changing musical trends, led by a frontman who worked hard to stay grounded.

Bon Jovi was always gracious and willing to talk; he even introduced me to then-New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman at one of his legendary Christmas charity concerts. (And in a crazy coincidence, the band's backup singer Everett Bradley is an old friend from college.)

I think the docuseries captures Bon Jovi's skill at leading the group through challenges musical and otherwise — from metal's slow fade off the pop charts to the rise of grunge rock — something the singer rarely gets credit for achieving.

Still, much of Thank You, Goodnight feels like an extended celebration of the band and its charismatic frontman, leavened by his earnest effort to regain control of his voice. If you're not a Bon Jovi fan, four episodes of this story may feel like a bit much (I'd recommend at least watching the first and last episodes.)

More than anything, the docuseries feels like an extended argument for something Bon Jovi has struggled to achieve, even amid million selling records and top-grossing concert tours – respect as a legendary rock band.

The audio and digital versions of this story were edited by Jennifer Vanasco .