Called “The Celebration Tour,” the trek is her 12th tour and kicks off in October in London.
Madonna turns 65 today, August 16. Last July 27, her self-titled debut album turned 40.
How is she celebrating? Personally, with a party with family and friends in her one-time home of Lisbon in Portugal. Professionally, with a new concert tour that will take her across Europe, the UK, the US, and Canada.
Called “The Celebration Tour,” the trek is her 12th tour and the first since “The Madame X Tour” in 2019-2020. It will be the first pure career retrospective in her touring history, which started in 1985 with the US-only “The Virgin Tour.”
It was originally scheduled to launch last July 15 in Vancouver, Canada but was pushed back after a “serious bacterial infection” sent her to the ICU for several days in late June. The tour will now start on October 14 in London.
Before Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour,” Madonna was the highest-grossing female touring artist of all time according to music industry bibles Billboard Boxscore and Pollstar, with an estimated total gross of almost $1.4 billion. Only the Rolling Stones and U2 have grossed more, $1.84 billion and $1.67 billion, respectively. In terms of number of tickets sold, Madonna’s 11.6 million is tops among female artists worldwide. To date, she is the only female artist with two entries in the list of the Top 30 Most Attended Concerts in History.
Her “Who’s That Girl Tour” show in Paris on August 29, 1987 is at #17 with an attendance of 130,000 and the “The Girlie Show World Tour” show in Rio de Janeiro on November 6, 1993 hosted a crowd of 120,000 stands at #30.
I think the most controversial thing I have ever done is to stick around,” Madonna famously intoned in her speech accepting the Billboard Woman of the Year award in 2016.
Sure, Taylor Swift and Beyonce may have larger venues and are outselling Madonna—and reportedly stimulating local economies along the way—with their current “Eras Tour” and “The Renaissance Tour,” respectively, but the Queen Mother, as Beyonce calls Madonna in the Queen’s Remix of her hit song Break My Soul, isn’t exactly slacking.
In fact, on the first day of the general sale for “The Celebration Tour” last January 20, over 600,000 tickets were sold, according to Billboard. For the London dates alone, over 200,000 fans queued online. On the same day, more than 90% of hotels around the concert venue, London’s O2 Arena, were booked up for Madonna’s shows. In Spain, the official website, Ticketmaster, crashed for several moments due to heavy online traffic.
Not bad for a sexagenarian artist who’s been called a “has been” for ages now entering her fifth decade in an industry ever increasingly obsessed with youth.
“I think the most controversial thing I have ever done is to stick around,” Madonna famously intoned in her speech accepting the Billboard Woman of the Year award in 2016. She added, “Michael (Jackson) is gone. Tupac (Shakur) is gone. Prince is gone. Whitney (Houston) is gone. Amy Winehouse is gone. David Bowie is gone. But I’m still standing.”
Still standing in spite of all the vitriol of “blatant sexism and misogyny and constant bullying and relentless abuse” she has received since Day 1. Standing tall and proud because of it. “To the doubters and naysayers and everyone who gave me hell and said I could not, that I would not or I must not—your resistance made me stronger, made me push harder, made me the fighter that I am today,” she said in the same speech. “It made me the woman that I am today.”
Taylor Swift and Beyonce may have larger venues and are outselling Madonna—but the ‘Queen Mother,’ as Beyonce calls her, isn’t exactly slacking.
That woman has a legendary career brimming over with several industry records that remain unbroken in 2023. These are just some of them. * Most Successful Solo Artist in Billboard Hot 100 history * Female Artist with the most Top 5 in Billboard Hot 100 with 28 including a record 16 consecutive from Lucky Star (1983) to Cherish (1989) * Female Artist with the Most Top 10 UK Singles with 63 including a record of 36 consecutive Top 10 from December 1984 to August 1994 * Female Artist with the Most Number 1 Albums in the UK Charts with 12 (tied with Bruce Springsteen) * Artist with the Most Number 1 European Hot 100 Singles with 17 * Female Artist with the Most Number 1 Singles in Australia (11), Canada (25), Italy (23), Spain (21), Finland (7), Netherlands (5), and Ireland (8).
Her first greatest hits album, “The Immaculate Collection,” is the Best-Selling Compilation Album of All Time by a Solo Artist with at least 32 million copies sold worldwide But beyond the records, Madonna’s greatest legacy is in how she changed pop music as art and commerce and the way she reshaped pop culture worldwide.
From introducing underground sounds to mainstream audiences and pushing the use of the visual artform to enhance not only the music but also the experience of it, to elevating the live concert to performance art and exploring creative ways to market music products, to steering important conversations about gender stereotypes and social taboos, and actually challenging and breaking them, to redefining what it means to be a star and further pushing the role of music artists as agents of social and cultural change, Madonna has done more than any other artist has, save perhaps for Elvis Presley, in the history of pop music.
But despite all these singular, indelible, and incomparable achievements, the artist some people still call Material Girl remains a hot magnet for criticism. Sure, it’s par for the course for superstars like her but a big chunk of the attacks against her specifically stem from gender-based discrimination, stuff that male artists of the same stature don’t receive.
“There are no rules — if you’re a boy,” Madonna noted in her 2016 Billboard speech. “If you’re a girl, you have to play the game. What is that game? You are allowed to be pretty and cute and sexy. But don’t act too smart. Don’t have an opinion. Don’t have an opinion that is out of line with the status quo, at least. You are allowed to be objectified by men and dress like a slut, but don’t own your sluttiness. And do not, I repeat, do not, share your own sexual fantasies with the world.”
This speech sounds pretty much like the instantly iconic centerpiece monologue in the movie Barbie. Madonna actually predated that one by 7 years. She continued, “Be what men want you to be. But more importantly, be what women feel comfortable with you being around other men. And finally, do not age. Because to age is a sin. You will be criticized, you will be vilified, and you will definitely not be played on the radio.”
Madonna encouraged women “to start appreciating our own worth and each other’s worth. Seek out strong women to befriend, to align yourself with, to learn from, to collaborate with, to be inspired by, to support, and be enlightened by.”
At the 2023 Grammy Awards in February, she revealed another of her learnings from her four decades in the industry. “If they call you shocking, scandalous, troublesome, problematic, provocative or dangerous, you are definitely onto something,” she noted. “I’m here to give thanks to all the rebels out there, forging a new path and taking the heat for all of it. All you troublemakers out there need to know that your fearlessness does not go unnoticed. You are seen, you are heard and, most of all, you are appreciated.”
Thank you, Madonna, for being pop’s greatest rebel.
