'Hung Up On The Art Of It All' - a review of Madonna's Sticky & Sweet concert, Wembley Stadium, London, 11 Sep 2008
Half-way through her rocket-fuel powered, rave-anthem rendition of Like A Prayer, Madonna messes up her lyrics. When she realises what she’s done, she smiles, turns around to look at a member of her band and curls her lips sheepishly.
It’s a perfect moment, despite being based on an error: the most famous woman in the world – the grand dame of all control freaks – forgets the words to one of her most iconic tracks and manages to turn the gaff into an endearing display of fallibility. A cynic would wonder if the incident is as choreographed as her show’s scalpel-edged dance routines. But there don’t appear to be many cynics in the Golden Circle tonight.
Which, in a way, is a shame because I’ve always felt Madonna’s music – and especially her concerts – are quite capable of standing up to cynicism, or at least to any form of criticism that can be bothered to probe a little deeper than the issue of whether she can still dance at the age of 50. Even though I’d read several reviews of the Sticky & Sweet show – most of them based on the Cardiff and Nice nights – I entered Wembley Stadium not really knowing what to expect. But that’s not the show’s fault. Unwilling, or unable, to engage with the gig on any but the most obvious levels, Europe’s media failed to convey even a tip-of-the-iceberg sense of the ways in which this concert operates. Having now seen the show myself, I am mystified by the press’ refusal to go out on a ‘critical limb’ and confront the concert in the ways it’s so plainly asking to be confronted. Maybe part of the problem is that the tour doesn’t rest easily within the confines of a traditional review... although, again, the world has had 18 years since Blond Ambition to grow accustomed to the fact that Madonna’s multi-sensory extravaganzas can’t be pigeonholed. Maybe the likes of Tracy Emin or Damien Hirst should be enlisted to give us their take on the night, but perhaps they’re not best placed to comment on its ultimate raison d’etre: the music?
I know I’m certainly not, but at least I’ve tried – in my own stumbling way – to meet the show half-way in its attempt to stimulate more than just a discussion on whether Madge’s cheeks are too gaunt or her biceps too pumped. Madonna’s genius has always been her ability to strike a balance between out-and-out commercial pop and coyly elusive modern art. It’s always been possible to appreciate her videos and concerts on a superficial level or see them as the site of interesting – if not always convincing – cultural commentary. She doesn’t always sustain her arguments, but then maybe she doesn’t try to. Maybe she just wants to throw the questions up in the air and let anyone who’s interested make what they will of them.
Thankfully, the Sticky & Sweet show doesn’t hold back on the questions. From the moment the split-screen candy-box opens to reveal the Queen seated on – what else? – a throne, to the time it closes with the words ‘Game Over’, the concert uses various elements of Madonna’s back catalogue as the basis for a two-hour discourse on how to save the world, pop music style. You can’t accuse Madge of shying away from the big issues!
The sound of a ticking clock can be heard as soon as the lights go down. Or, to be more precise, it’s the sound of Madonna pretending to be a ticking clock, the first of several instances where she’s likened to a machine, a construct of her own success. The glossy photo book which accompanies the show, and the first video interlude, portray her as a well-oiled, finely-tuned fighter, proud of the position she’s attained, but scarred, altered and isolated by the climb to the top. “Even the devil wouldn’t recognize you,” says one of the captions. The ticking clock gives way to more machinery: the sight of wheels and cogs spinning within a giant, diamond-encrusted letter ‘M’. The colours are pink and cheerful, the costumes seem inspired by Tim Burton’s euphoric take on Roald Dahl, but the underlying mood is restless. “On the beat goes,” she sings, “you don’t have the luxury of time.” By being laced with 4 Minutes, the classic Vogue moves beyond a simple homage to early 20th century Hollywood glam and becomes an insistent call to seek personal betterment beneath the surface of the lacy, high-fashion visuals flashing on the overhead screens. The parameters of the evening’s journey have been set out: now we just have to see where the trip takes us.
First stop is the recent past: the early 80s. We’ve moved from the world of glitzy bling to the industrial backdrop of the inner city, the site of Madonna’s Borderline video. But even here, nothing is what it seems. At first sight, Into The Groove plays out like a familiar dance escapade, but the almost hypnotic screen projections suggest something more political is at work. Multi-coloured figures interconnect with each other and literally emerge from each other’s bodies. On stage, the dancers hold hands and move as one. The “groove” becomes more than the beat of the song: it becomes the rhythm of the world. “Are you ready to jump” into it? Madonna certainly seems to be, double-dutching herself into a frenzy which causes her to collapse to the floor in exhaustion. And even though she quickly gets up and tells us – in Heartbeat – that dancing on her own is what she likes doing best, the number’s actual dance routine – wherein her limbs have to be propped up by various members of her entourage – suggest that she requires as much interconnectedness as anyone else. We’re reminded of the title of her Malawi documentary: I Am Because We Are. And then the journey continues: a train appears, headed for ‘Freshville’.
Unexpectedly, ‘Freshville’ turns out to be even further in the past, somewhere between Mount Fuji and Transylvania, a place where cloaked figures don’t recognise each other and need to be taught each other’s language: “Entiendo means I get it.” The disparate cultural strands seem to be coming together. We’re stopping off in various corners of the globe, trying to link locations that are “miles away” from each other. The Buddhist peace of the east melds into the Moorish history of Europe, a time when years of cross-cultural harmony succumbed to the greed of territorialism. We’re all taken to La Isla Bonita, where the high spirits are infectious, but the mood can’t last forever. “Where do we go from here? This isn’t where we intended to be,” Madonna sings. It would be all too easy to tuck ourselves away and live, literally, on an island, but there’s work to be done and the outside world can’t be avoided.
So much so that it intrudes on proceedings with a brash, unashamedly blatant montage of society’s ills. Once again, we’re running out of time. Tick tock tick tock tick tock. Donning battle-armour – a cross between an American football uniform and a Samurai outfit – ‘intergalactic space-warrior Madge’ warns we’ve got only four minutes to save the world. But what’s our secret weapon? Prayer. And not just any prayer. A tectonic-plate-shifting, all-encompassing, raging chant, spelling out – literally, on the screens – that all prayers are one and the same, even though they may come in different tongues. The prayer “feels like home”, which is exactly where we get to when the next song covers us in its stellar laser beams. Finally, the machine-imagery reaches its resolution as the ‘M’ motif turns into a space-ship, blasting all opposition out of existence, daring the world to “give it to me.” Madonna goes back inside the box – is she the product contained therein or its maker? – and proceedings are over.
As we come crashing back to planet earth, trying to piece together what we’ve experienced, it doesn’t take long to realise all’s not well. The achievements of the show notwithstanding, it is apparent that significant numbers of people in the Golden Circle saw little, if anything, of the on-stage wizardry. Some are complaining that even the sound was substandard and didn’t compensate for the restricted views. Perhaps Wembley Stadium isn’t the ideal venue for a spectacle of such intricacy? Perhaps the stage needed to be raised a couple of feet? Perhaps the dissatisfaction of many audience members is a sign – as some have suggested – of the growing resentment between Madonna’s new ‘record label’ and her ‘clients’ (aka loyal fans)? Whichever way you look at it, the evening cannot be called an unqualified success. In a rare move, Ticketmaster have now posted a message on their site inviting people to send in complaint emails if they found certain aspects of the concert unsatisfactory.
It’s a real shame, especially when the show itself is clearly as detailed, thought-provoking and life-affirming as anything Madonna’s ever done. But then, what good is a gig if you can hardly see or hear it? Maybe instead of complaining, the ‘clients’ should bombard Live Nation with a petition requesting that Madonna schedules extra dates in smaller London arenas, perhaps as a coda to the South American shows. Certainly Sticky & Sweet deserves a rerun in Europe’s most important capital city. Not least so that people can have another opportunity to appreciate its accomplishments. But also so as to give the nation’s top journos another stab at appraising what is a visionary kaleidoscope of ideas from the woman who has made the ‘theatrical pop opera art installation’ a genre all her own. She’s got her boxing gloves on and she’s up for a fight. But no-one seems ready to step into the ring.
It’s a perfect moment, despite being based on an error: the most famous woman in the world – the grand dame of all control freaks – forgets the words to one of her most iconic tracks and manages to turn the gaff into an endearing display of fallibility. A cynic would wonder if the incident is as choreographed as her show’s scalpel-edged dance routines. But there don’t appear to be many cynics in the Golden Circle tonight.
Which, in a way, is a shame because I’ve always felt Madonna’s music – and especially her concerts – are quite capable of standing up to cynicism, or at least to any form of criticism that can be bothered to probe a little deeper than the issue of whether she can still dance at the age of 50. Even though I’d read several reviews of the Sticky & Sweet show – most of them based on the Cardiff and Nice nights – I entered Wembley Stadium not really knowing what to expect. But that’s not the show’s fault. Unwilling, or unable, to engage with the gig on any but the most obvious levels, Europe’s media failed to convey even a tip-of-the-iceberg sense of the ways in which this concert operates. Having now seen the show myself, I am mystified by the press’ refusal to go out on a ‘critical limb’ and confront the concert in the ways it’s so plainly asking to be confronted. Maybe part of the problem is that the tour doesn’t rest easily within the confines of a traditional review... although, again, the world has had 18 years since Blond Ambition to grow accustomed to the fact that Madonna’s multi-sensory extravaganzas can’t be pigeonholed. Maybe the likes of Tracy Emin or Damien Hirst should be enlisted to give us their take on the night, but perhaps they’re not best placed to comment on its ultimate raison d’etre: the music?
I know I’m certainly not, but at least I’ve tried – in my own stumbling way – to meet the show half-way in its attempt to stimulate more than just a discussion on whether Madge’s cheeks are too gaunt or her biceps too pumped. Madonna’s genius has always been her ability to strike a balance between out-and-out commercial pop and coyly elusive modern art. It’s always been possible to appreciate her videos and concerts on a superficial level or see them as the site of interesting – if not always convincing – cultural commentary. She doesn’t always sustain her arguments, but then maybe she doesn’t try to. Maybe she just wants to throw the questions up in the air and let anyone who’s interested make what they will of them.
Thankfully, the Sticky & Sweet show doesn’t hold back on the questions. From the moment the split-screen candy-box opens to reveal the Queen seated on – what else? – a throne, to the time it closes with the words ‘Game Over’, the concert uses various elements of Madonna’s back catalogue as the basis for a two-hour discourse on how to save the world, pop music style. You can’t accuse Madge of shying away from the big issues!
The sound of a ticking clock can be heard as soon as the lights go down. Or, to be more precise, it’s the sound of Madonna pretending to be a ticking clock, the first of several instances where she’s likened to a machine, a construct of her own success. The glossy photo book which accompanies the show, and the first video interlude, portray her as a well-oiled, finely-tuned fighter, proud of the position she’s attained, but scarred, altered and isolated by the climb to the top. “Even the devil wouldn’t recognize you,” says one of the captions. The ticking clock gives way to more machinery: the sight of wheels and cogs spinning within a giant, diamond-encrusted letter ‘M’. The colours are pink and cheerful, the costumes seem inspired by Tim Burton’s euphoric take on Roald Dahl, but the underlying mood is restless. “On the beat goes,” she sings, “you don’t have the luxury of time.” By being laced with 4 Minutes, the classic Vogue moves beyond a simple homage to early 20th century Hollywood glam and becomes an insistent call to seek personal betterment beneath the surface of the lacy, high-fashion visuals flashing on the overhead screens. The parameters of the evening’s journey have been set out: now we just have to see where the trip takes us.
First stop is the recent past: the early 80s. We’ve moved from the world of glitzy bling to the industrial backdrop of the inner city, the site of Madonna’s Borderline video. But even here, nothing is what it seems. At first sight, Into The Groove plays out like a familiar dance escapade, but the almost hypnotic screen projections suggest something more political is at work. Multi-coloured figures interconnect with each other and literally emerge from each other’s bodies. On stage, the dancers hold hands and move as one. The “groove” becomes more than the beat of the song: it becomes the rhythm of the world. “Are you ready to jump” into it? Madonna certainly seems to be, double-dutching herself into a frenzy which causes her to collapse to the floor in exhaustion. And even though she quickly gets up and tells us – in Heartbeat – that dancing on her own is what she likes doing best, the number’s actual dance routine – wherein her limbs have to be propped up by various members of her entourage – suggest that she requires as much interconnectedness as anyone else. We’re reminded of the title of her Malawi documentary: I Am Because We Are. And then the journey continues: a train appears, headed for ‘Freshville’.
Unexpectedly, ‘Freshville’ turns out to be even further in the past, somewhere between Mount Fuji and Transylvania, a place where cloaked figures don’t recognise each other and need to be taught each other’s language: “Entiendo means I get it.” The disparate cultural strands seem to be coming together. We’re stopping off in various corners of the globe, trying to link locations that are “miles away” from each other. The Buddhist peace of the east melds into the Moorish history of Europe, a time when years of cross-cultural harmony succumbed to the greed of territorialism. We’re all taken to La Isla Bonita, where the high spirits are infectious, but the mood can’t last forever. “Where do we go from here? This isn’t where we intended to be,” Madonna sings. It would be all too easy to tuck ourselves away and live, literally, on an island, but there’s work to be done and the outside world can’t be avoided.
So much so that it intrudes on proceedings with a brash, unashamedly blatant montage of society’s ills. Once again, we’re running out of time. Tick tock tick tock tick tock. Donning battle-armour – a cross between an American football uniform and a Samurai outfit – ‘intergalactic space-warrior Madge’ warns we’ve got only four minutes to save the world. But what’s our secret weapon? Prayer. And not just any prayer. A tectonic-plate-shifting, all-encompassing, raging chant, spelling out – literally, on the screens – that all prayers are one and the same, even though they may come in different tongues. The prayer “feels like home”, which is exactly where we get to when the next song covers us in its stellar laser beams. Finally, the machine-imagery reaches its resolution as the ‘M’ motif turns into a space-ship, blasting all opposition out of existence, daring the world to “give it to me.” Madonna goes back inside the box – is she the product contained therein or its maker? – and proceedings are over.
As we come crashing back to planet earth, trying to piece together what we’ve experienced, it doesn’t take long to realise all’s not well. The achievements of the show notwithstanding, it is apparent that significant numbers of people in the Golden Circle saw little, if anything, of the on-stage wizardry. Some are complaining that even the sound was substandard and didn’t compensate for the restricted views. Perhaps Wembley Stadium isn’t the ideal venue for a spectacle of such intricacy? Perhaps the stage needed to be raised a couple of feet? Perhaps the dissatisfaction of many audience members is a sign – as some have suggested – of the growing resentment between Madonna’s new ‘record label’ and her ‘clients’ (aka loyal fans)? Whichever way you look at it, the evening cannot be called an unqualified success. In a rare move, Ticketmaster have now posted a message on their site inviting people to send in complaint emails if they found certain aspects of the concert unsatisfactory.
It’s a real shame, especially when the show itself is clearly as detailed, thought-provoking and life-affirming as anything Madonna’s ever done. But then, what good is a gig if you can hardly see or hear it? Maybe instead of complaining, the ‘clients’ should bombard Live Nation with a petition requesting that Madonna schedules extra dates in smaller London arenas, perhaps as a coda to the South American shows. Certainly Sticky & Sweet deserves a rerun in Europe’s most important capital city. Not least so that people can have another opportunity to appreciate its accomplishments. But also so as to give the nation’s top journos another stab at appraising what is a visionary kaleidoscope of ideas from the woman who has made the ‘theatrical pop opera art installation’ a genre all her own. She’s got her boxing gloves on and she’s up for a fight. But no-one seems ready to step into the ring.
Comments
Take Care/Melinda