At Garden, Madonna rewinds her career as a hitmaker and provocateur — from the very first time to now
The origin story of Madonna is the stuff pop-star dreams are made of: College dropout from the Midwest crash-lands in New York with $35 in her pocket and dreams of taking over the world, succeeds. During the Michigan-born belter’s ascent in the ‘80s and the decades that followed, the word “Madonna” has been a lightning rod, with her unabashed sexuality, blunt honesty, and preternatural ability to identify underground trends and recast them in her image combining in combustible fashion — and laying the self-reinventing, fan-army-inspiring blueprint for the throngs of pop stars who followed in her wake.
Madonna’s current “Celebration Tour” is a dizzying trip through the singer and dancer’s career, incorporating dozens of songs from her gem-studded discography (and a few selections from her influences and followers) into its free-flowing, megamix-styled set list. Clocking in at around 2 hours and 15 minutes, the show, which commenced its 2024 leg at TD Garden on Monday night, packed in the hits and some unexpected delights (the glitchy, gnarled James Bond theme “Die Another Day,” the acid-tongued “Human Nature”) while also spotlighting the musical and movement talents of four of Madonna’s six children and showcasing a throng of dancers.
With the commanding Bob the Drag Queen serving as the night’s de facto emcee, Monday night’s show — the first of two at the Garden, rescheduled after the singer’s health scare last summer — whirled through Madonna’s catalog in a way that helped tell the stories behind the songs. Madonna thrashed through her New Wave-y early single “Burning Up” while surrounded by screens evoking the East Village punk stronghold CBGB; the jubilant “Holiday,” which was performed under a giant disco ball, was mashed up with disco titans Chic’s storming “I Want Your Love.” The haunting 1986 ballad “Live to Tell” doubled as a reminder of the AIDS epidemic’s toll, with images of those who died from the disease, including pop artist Keith Haring and Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, superimposed on scrims that hung from the rafters. Madonna performed the heady “Erotica” while in a shiny boxing robe, slyly winking at the fights she had with gatekeepers over her sexual imagery; the celebration of ballroom culture “Vogue” turned into a full-on serving competition, Madonna’s dancers flouncing and posing as the singer thrilled in their display.
After dedicating the “American Life” cut “Mother and Father” to her own mother, who passed away when she was 5, and the biological mother of her adopted son David, Madonna strapped on an acoustic guitar and asked the crowd to turn on their phones’ flashlights. The stands lit up, and Madonna responded to the display by singing the gospel standard “This Little Light of Mine,” encouraging the audience to sing along folk-mass style; after a verse, she segued neatly into “Express Yourself,” her 1989 funk-pop ode to not going “for second best, baby.” In a sense, it was the perfect Madonna pairing — particularly in the way it illuminated how the newer song’s self-determined lyrics were also a call to “let it shine.”
“The most controversial thing I have ever done is to stick around,” Madonna intoned at the end of a video package chronicling her wild career, full of hits and headlines, near the show’s close. As heated as reactions to the punked-up wedding dress of her “Like a Virgin” era and the playful sexuality of the “Justify My Love” video could be, watching Madonna do things her own way — and succeed wildly, again and again — similarly aggravated sensibilities back then, and continue to tweak them 40-plus years after the release of her debut.