Music
12 Oct 23

Madonna Celebration Tour shows to feature more than 40 songs

Madonna, Rebel Heart tour, Antwerp 2018. Credit: Pascal Mannaerts

Madonna's first ever greatest hits tour is set to be a monumental "documentary through her vast career," including 40 hits from the star's back catalogue.

Speaking in a recent interview with the BBC, Madonna's musical director Stuart Price said that the show will draw on nearly four decades of archival footage and studio recordings, to create an evocative portrait of the musician's story.

"A greatest hit doesn't have to be a song," he said. "It can be a wardrobe, it can be a video, or a statement."

Commencing at London's O2 Arena on Saturday, the tour will chart Madonna's journey to stardom; from her meteoric rise following the 1984 release of 'Holiday,' era-defining hits like 'Vogue' and 'Like a prayer,' to fan favourites like 'Live To Tell and Don't Tell Me' and 'Hung Up.'

Icon: Madonna by Lorraine Day, 1990.

Price added that Madonna was back to full strength, following a major health scare this summer.

In June, Madonna was found unconscious in her New York home and rushed to hospital, where she received medical treatment for a serious bacterial infection — the iconic singer-songwriter later expressing that she was "lucky to be alive."

Price reassured fans that the 65-year-old had fully recovered, however, saying: "The person that is going to take the stage looks incredible, sounds incredible, performs incredible."

Madonna's sold-out Celebration Tour was postponed from July to October, with Price explaining that the three-month delay had been taken to polish the show.

"Madonna has very high expectations of how much hard work people will put into something, It's very uncompromising - but she's equally as hard on herself."

"So when she took a break, that pause created an opportunity to further enhance the show," Price said. "And I'm sure the opportunity [for her] to focus on being 100% well was greatly received as well.

"every great moment she's had, we took a bit of it..."

"Many hits will be played in full, some will be interpolated into other songs, and still more will be used as 'bridges' between acts," Price explained.

The upcoming show is set to be an immersive, multimedial affair, drawing on news footage, classic costumes and music videos.

"One of Madonna's skills is that she's able to cross-pollinate ideas between different projects," said Price. "In this case there'd been consideration about doing a biopic [which gave] this tour the potential for having a documentary aspect to it as well."

"With Madonna, everything is always about recontextualising stuff, finding ways to take strong original messages and see how they resonate in the era that we're in now," Price said.

"A lot of the powerful moments [in this show] are to do with where the music intersects with something that society was going through, especially something emotional, like the Aids crisis."

"Those moments are incredibly powerful..."

Madonna is set to take to London's O2 Arena stage this Saturday, October 14th — with later Celebration Tour dates in the Netherlands, Spain, Germany and Denmark.