Justifying My Love: On Madonna’s Celebration Tour

It’s always strange being in a sports arena and seeing ads for upcoming entertainments you’ve never heard of — learning, for the first time, about musicians and comedians who have somehow, entirely under your personal radar, garnered enough popularity to fill a 19,000-seat venue, sometimes for two nights in a row. It’s a stark reminder that, despite what the good people and puppets of the Walt Disney Corporation would have us believe, it is not a small world after all. It is a dwarfingly large one. One in which Kane Brown, Act:Promise, Sebastian Maniscalco, and $uicideboy$ (to name but a few) are drawing crowds comparable to those of the NBA (and in the case of my poor, hapless Atlanta Hawks, probably bigger). Who are these people? I wondered, as my friend Mary and I mountaineered our way to the upper deck — these mysteriously massive fan bases right in our midst? How is it possible they could remain so wholly anonymous to us, while simultaneously swelling their ranks to match those of the generational icon we were about to see? Or, to put it more bluntly, who the fuck is Sebastian Maniscalco, and how is he pulling down the same numbers as Madonna?

As it turned out, there would be plenty of time to ponder these matters, as we had made the grievous error of arriving half an hour early for a show that ultimately started an hour and a half later than advertised (in sports arena parlance, that’s what you call a 2-hour swing). Madonna, our phones soon informed us, is apparently notorious for this — she may well have invented the concept of being fashionably late — which, for us, meant an hour of chatting and people-watching, followed by another hour of an amiable hype DJ spinning populist throwback hits at filling-loosening volume. He was fascinating, both in how little he was actually doing, and how much less anyone was paying attention to what little he did. We shouted a few quips at one another speculating upon the artistic path one takes to being cheerfully ignored in the middle of a basketball stadium, but to quote the greatest film of the decade in which we were about to be engulfed, it was just too darn loud.

But finally, a little after 10, with our eardrums nice and softened, and the floor having reached capacity at a gelatinous crawl, the lights went low, and Atlanta’s own beloved Bob the Drag Queen sashayed in to start the show, making proclamations and throwing shade at the crowd like a flower girl flinging petals in a full-bustled Victorian ballgown. She would act as a kind of MC throughout the night, featuring in various interludes and entr’actes that afforded the lady of the hour an occasional breather or extra costume change, and reminding all us fine, upstanding Southern folk that, just in case we’d missed the memo, Madonna has always been queer as fuck, and we’d best be cool about it.

And so it began.

I won’t lie. There were moments, early in the evening’s festivities, when I wondered if I’d made a mistake buying these (very pricey) tickets; overestimated how much the queen of pop had left in the tank; miscalculated the potential for greatness a career-spanning showcase might hold. Indeed, despite Bob’s vociferous vouchings, in the back of my mind I could still hear our cranky friend mocking the purchase, crankily informing us that he was “bored to tears” when his friend dragged his cranky ass to see Madonna (for free) some years ago. I didn’t want to believe him, but sure enough, Act 1 was light on crowd-pleasers, and weighed down by both an extended video montage and some extremely grating skits, all mythologizing Madonna’s wide-eyed arrival to the fabulously seedy, peacock graffitied, so-much-cooler-than-it-is-now-you-have-no-idea Noo Yourk Sitty! of 1978–20 years old and with $35 in her pocket, determined to cut the round-the-corner line at CBGB’s and gogo-bootstrap her way to triple-platinum, triple-threat fame and success! Dear readers, it was a lot. And by the time she slung on an electric guitar and power-chorded her way through a lackluster “Burning Up,” I was beginning to fear our cranky friend was right.

Thankfully, this was all just preamble — so much limbering up to speed with her small platoon of extremely limber dancers. We didn’t know it at the time, but Act 1 was 1 of 7 (!), and as it closed with a bouncy “Holiday” that felt like the night’s true party starter (perhaps held in reserve for anyone fabulous enough to show up more fashionably late than Madonna herself), any doubts I had were emphatically quelled; swept away in a fun, sexy, and gloriously messy musical extravaganza the sheer excess of which I doubt I’ll ever see again, if only because there will only ever be one Madonna.

Before we even knew what was happening, Act 2 had begun; her early days in the punk and ballroom scenes fading out along with a final, echo chamber refrain of “Holiday! Celebrate!” that slowed to a dizzy, discomfiting crawl and transitioned directly into a “Live to Tell” in memoriam segment for the many friends she lost to AIDS. This somber moment, however, was immediately followed by a slowly spinning carousel of Vitruvian studmuffins rising up out of the mainstage like a flock of six-packed phoenixes to the cathedral strains of “Like a Prayer,” as if to say “Don’t worry my darlings. Every time a party ends, another one begins. Every time Madonna sings, a hot guy gets his wings.”

This kind of self-important absurdity would come to define the night, and while part of me found all this tonal whiplash jarring at times, by introducing it early, and via one of her most universally beloved songs, Madonna made it clear what warp-speed wavelength she was riding on, and easy enough to climb aboard and follow her supersonic comet tail. Did I laugh out loud when skyscraper images of civil rights activists and political revolutionaries — everyone from Angela Davis to Che Guevara — flashed onscreen during “La Isla Bonita”? You bet your ass I did (this is truly what they fought for). Did I roll my eyes at the odd, shambolic wedding of kabbalah imagery to the early-aughts Bond theme “Die Another Day”? Yes, without question (though considering she was only a few months removed from her own literal near-death experience — a severe bacterial infection that had postponed this very show from last September to April Fool’s Day, of all days — it was fair to wonder if her quirky mysticism just might help her live forever). To again put it bluntly, she made a lot of choices.

That said, I never got the impression that they were made out of ignorance, or that the reactions they were eliciting from me weren’t exactly what she intended. This is a woman, after all, who’s been reinventing herself on the regular for 45 years; runway-walking any number of razor-thin lines between allyship and appropriation; sovereignty and exploitation; good and bad taste. How could she possibly cover that breadth of variety — that sheer quantity of life lived — without coming off a little self-importantly absurd? Is it even possible? To graciously acknowledge one’s own place in pop cultural history? To mount a career-spanning “Celebration Tour” of one’s already-canonical work that somehow still plays it humble? And having reached such a lofty career peak, would there even be much point in trying? Bitch, she’s Madonna! Absurd self-importance is kind of the brand. Why would she stop now? Why would we even want her to?

As such, the overall vibe was something akin to the richest, prettiest, most popular girl in school inviting the whole class to her lavish sweet sixteen to watch her open a mountain of increasingly expensive presents that culminates with her yanking the giant bow off a brand new car (perhaps the practical, snow white Kia parked forever in the Northwest corner of the State Farm Arena loge). Which is to say that it was exciting to be there, and be included — a spectacle of the highest order — but that it was also, by its very nature, not a particularly communal atmosphere. She talked to us a lot, but despite all her grandiose visual nods to historical and sociopolitical concerns, the subject remained almost exclusively herself — her struggles and her triumphs — her virtues and her flaws. There was a kind of guileless immaturity about her — like parts of her had had to grow up so fast that other parts never even had a chance — like her whole life had just been a kaleidoscope of variations on throwing that perfect sweet sixteen.

She did not thank us for being there, or pander to telling us what a great audience we were (to be fair, I’d say we were just ok). She never once turned the mic our way for one of those all-together-now, arena-sized group sings (though there were songs where she surely would’ve heard us loud and clear). She apologized for her own noticeably cracking voice, before defensively reminding us that this was the 81st of a 94-show world tour (I never heard anyone complain). At one point, I think she even spit on a guy. And yet, the community was undeniably there. I felt it all around, and she clearly fed on it — the collective energy of all our disparately unique loves for her, and whatever it is for each of us that she so powerfully represents. If I had to pick one thing this show impressed upon me more than any other about its ageless, timeless, centerpiece centerfold, it’s that no matter how much fun it is to dance around to Madonna all together, her music has primarily always been about the individual; the fiercely authentic self; the journey toward being, confidently and unapologetically, exactly who you are.

Even at a show packed with gaggles of daughters, mothers, and probably more than a few grandmothers, she refused to play the jukebox nostalgia act. At 65, she is still remarkably spry and adamantly NSFW. As I recall, my own mother — only a year older than Madonna and a grandmother of six — was never a fan. Of her, or the lascivious pop idolatry she represented (or of much popular music in general, but that’s another essay), and Act 3 was entirely devoted to reaffirming why. Reveling in four decades’ worth of sundry sins — the cone bra! The divorces! Britney at the VMA’s! — and sweatdrenched in gleefully smutty choreography simulating masturbation, lesbian erotics, and orgiastic rave-ups with her throng of scantily clad (and occasionally fully topless) dancers — it was pure, unbridled sex; an emphatically horny reminder that Madonna doesn’t just court scandal. She is scandal. And while her insistence upon her own naughtiness could occasionally feel a bit dated within the nonbinary fluidity of the 2020’s, by the time she and Bob were “Vogue”ing their way into a drag-heavy Act 4 they’d left no room for doubt — Madonna remains a boldly transgressive artist whose fearlessly confrontational sex-positivity played a huge role in mainstreaming us to where we are today. As she once noted herself, in what has to be the greatest quote of a highly quotable career: “People say that I’m so controversial, but I think the most controversial thing I’ve ever done is to stick around.”

Sprinkled throughout, and driving this unprecedented longevity home, were tributes to David Bowie, Prince, Sinead O’Connor, both of her parents, and most conspicuously of all, Michael Jackson, painting a self-portrait in omnivorous aggregate of Madonna as both heavy-hearted survivor, and tireless generational witness — arguably the last, best-accomplished ambassador for an era that has come to define how we understand pop music to this day. Say what you will about the decision to open Act 7 with a provocative (to put it mildly) mash-up of “Billy Jean” and “Like a Virgin” whilst performing a towering, floor-to-ceiling shadowbox dance routine with an MJ silhouette — a kind of ghostly, exonerative pas de deux — but it was pretty cool, and kind of sweet, and one last firm reminder that Madonna doesn’t give two fucks what you think about her, or her deeply troubled, dearly departed friend. If you love the 80’s — and it seems that America, as a society, has largely decided that it does, and forever will — then you have to love them too. You can’t have the decade without them.

In the end, the whole shebang lasted about three hours, and she could’ve filled a fourth without even trying. She didn’t play “Papa Don’t Preach” (an obvious, and welcome omission in our post-Roe political climate), “Lucky Star” or “True Blue” (a little disappointing), “Express Yourself” (majorly disappointing), or anything but “Vogue” off of her divisive Dick Tracy jazz album I’m Breathless (this came as no surprise, though for my money it includes some of the strangest, most audaciously creative work she’s ever done and is long overdue for reevaluation).

But most notably of all, she didn’t play “Material Girl,” and as the spectacular finale took shape — Madonna, surrounded by the trappings of nearly a half-century of superstardom, boarding a kind of floating hydraulic picture frame from atop a VR hypercube depicting avatars of herself racing across an array of opulent digital vistas — tigress-roaring a colossal, sound-bath “Ray of Light” amidst an all-out laser cannon barrage — it felt fair to assume she’d outgrown that flighty, boy-crazy consumerist anthem of her youth.

We may be living in a larger, more material world than ever before — even more than the corporate chic, “me generation” 1980’s — but for her part, Madonna long ago pivoted to more spiritual concerns. She still likes nice things, sure, but she can buy them for herself, thank you very much. She may be absurdly self-important, but she’s also actually, genuinely important, to millions of people, and clearly understands the weight of that responsibility. She maxed out her maximalist aesthetic on her own triple-platinum credit card, and she’s been sharing the rewards with all of us ever since. She did it her way, with a wink, and a lipstick kiss; with a tutu, and a cowboy hat; and with a flip of the double bird to anyone who dared bet against her. Those acts I mentioned in the opening paragraph might be having a moment, but not one of them will be playing NBA arenas ten years from now (let alone forty). They can’t hold a candle. And if this article reads a little all over the place — both embarrassed and enamored; contrarian, and self-contradictory — then I hope that too reads as stylistic tribute. Because all critical caveats aside, this show was an unmitigated blast; a more-than-worthy celebration. The messiness is what made it. The messiness is what makes her. She knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s always known. Bitch, she’s Madonna.