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September 2019

Madame ❌ appreciates all who enjoyed the show with their eyes and ears only

Sunday, 22 September 2019
madonnalicious is pleased with the no-phone rule. Previous tours have seen me being focussed on getting pictures for this site, now I can just be selfish and enjoy the show for me! (although I would like to have my phone available to keep occupied while waiting for Madame X to arrive!).

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Why Madonna’s Madame X Tour Is the Gloriously Insane Mess of Your Dreams

Saturday, 21 September 2019
Madonna has never shied away from taking chances. Thirty years after she set fire to the Eighties with the disco basilica Like a Prayer, she’s as gloriously weird as ever. Hence her excellent new Madame X tour, a testament to the genius in her madness. Instead of a full-blown tour, she’s doing these shows as residencies in intimate venues, starting with 17 nights at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House. The tiny rooms are the perfect place for Our Lady to strut her stuff. Like her Madame X album, the show is messy, but anyone who’s scared of a mess should avoid Ms. Ciccone entirely, because as any fan knows, her weirdness is where she finds her greatness.

The show follows Madonna’s adventures around the globe. “Everybody knows I moved to Lisbon to become a soccer mom,” she said on Thursday night. “I found myself alone, without friends, a little bit bored.” So after too many Sundays at her son’s soccer games, she started going out to Lisbon clubs and flipped for Portugal’s fado rhythms, which got her creative juices flowing again. As she announced, “From now on, I’m Madame X and Madame X loves to dance!”

The show started extremely late - she didn’t go on until nearly 11 p.m., which she kept joking about all night. “Forgive me if I kept you waiting too long this evening,” Madonna purred seductively, stretched out on top of a piano. “I don’t like to keep you waiting. But I have an injury. I have six kids. I have a LOT of wigs.” Then she had a couple of her dancers help her off the piano and improvised a pop melody: “I bet you had more sleep than meeee!” No rest for the wicked, indeed.

It was a cellphone-free show, with the audience’s phones locked into Yondr pouches that got unsealed at the end of the night. (Honestly, all shows should be this way.) Madonna kept mentioning how much she enjoyed looking into the audience and seeing our eyes as opposed to screens. “The eyes are the window of the soul. But there’s one window you’re forgetting.” She opened her legs, to a blast of orchestral music. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is what it’s like to have Mozart coming out of your pussy! I am one classy broad!”

To read the rest of the review visit: www.rollingstone.com/music-live-reviews

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As Madame X, Madonna Is Her Most Authentic Onstage Self In Years

Saturday, 21 September 2019
The joy of being a Madonna fan is that she’s a true artist, an incisive creative eye who embeds meaning and shades of emotional grey into her work; the other great thing about being a Madonna fan is that she’s an artist who also happens to be a pop star. So when she has something to say, it’s in the details, yes - but wait long enough and it’ll also be bludgeoned over your head.

“Freedom is the theme of this show,” Madonna told an enthralled, intimate crowd at the Thursday (Sept. 19) night show of her Madame X Tour at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. “And the theme of my life, for that matter.”

She might have explicitly spelled out her mission statement during the show, but when it kicked off just before 11pm ET, she eased into the theme with a characteristically unabashed mixture of high art and high camp. As a silhouetted typist hammered out a James Baldwin quote at a desk, a lithe dancer mimed dodging bullets, eventually succumbing to the barrage. After that, Madonna hit the stage, staring out from beneath a Revolutionary War-style tricorn hat as a battered American flag fluttered via video projection. There probably isn’t a more deliciously kitschy way to introduce a show speaking to what personal freedom - and danger - means to the America-born pop artist.

The first song, Madame X’s lush disco standout “God Control,” turned the focus from national mythology to personal history, demonstrating exactly where Madonna found her freedom - on the sweaty floors of New York City discotheques in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s - and how she sees it, quite literally, under fire (the gunshot-punctuated musical odyssey explicitly nods to the 2016 Pulse massacre).

From there, the Madame X Tour moves on to other freedoms she sees under duress: The freedom to act and the freedom to speak. With regards to the former, “Dark Ballet” found her playing out the persecution of Joan of Arc surrounded by a visually compelling mixture of Christian iconography and pagan pageantry, while a cool jazz take on “Human Nature” fulfilled the latter, allowing her the opportunity to tell off critics projecting their hang-ups on a woman who dares speak of sex without a coquettish blush (while treating the crowd to a spread eagle that would put Veronica and Charlie to shame).

In the midst of an a cappella “Express Yourself,” Madonna brought out three of her children - Stella, Estere and Mercy James - to shimmy with the dancers and read a few quotes of empowerment she’d provided for them. Later in the show, eldest daughter Lourdes arrived for the highlight of the evening, dwarfing even her mother. Well, only literally speaking. While stark, three-story-high footage of Lourdes dancing played on a translucent screen in front of her, Madonna delivered a soul-scraping rendition of her 1998 classic “Frozen.” Seeing the Queen of Pop, illuminated by a pinprick of light, engulfed in her daughter’s dancing was a visually stunning moment in an evening full of them.

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Another unexpected setlist choice (well, at least for those who didn’t catch her incendiary Pride Island performance) arrived via “American Life,” the unjustly maligned title track from her 2003 album (which was more a victim of the politically paranoid era than any creative deficiency on her part). Her arms snaking above her head as she ran down the list of capitalist concessions that fail to satisfy, Madonna looked exceptionally invested during this glitchpop gem - probably because this is one throwback song she hasn’t delivered ad infinitum.

That fresh, loose (okay, loose for a notorious control freak like Madge) attitude permeated most of her Madame X songs -- which were the lion’s share of the setlist. Naturally, that was bad for anyone expecting a greatest-hits parade, but excellent for those open-minded enough to turn off their phones, their expectations and allow an artist they trust and adore the freedom to indulge in what’s getting her off at the moment.

After moving to Lisbon for her son’s soccer aspirations, she’s currently inspired by the music she heard there: Fado, morna, salsa and more. Aside from playing the Madame X tracks that dabble in those genres, her non-album original song “Welcome to My Fado Club” (mashed-up with “La Isla Bonita”) gave her a chance to moonlight as the beguiling hostess of a hole-in-the-wall Latin club, which - considering her affection for Golden Era Hollywood - is certainly within her wheelhouse. But unlike most ‘40s productions on a Beverly Hills lot, Madonna bothered to include the authentic talents she was paying homage to, bringing out Gaspar Varela, the grandson of fado singer Celeste Rodrigues (whom she sang with prior to the legend's 2018 passing), for several numbers, in addition to an all-female orchestra from Cape Verde for her rousing, thunderous Madame X highlight “Batuka.”

“I’m not worried about being popular,” Madonna told the crowd (which, to be fair, was hanging on her every word) near the end of the show. For the Madame X Tour, she means it. At BAM Thursday night, the would-be soccer mom was free of setlist demands, time constraints (she took the stage late and skillfully bantered with the audience as long as she felt like it) and the impersonal glow of an arena-full of cell phones desperate to capture a 30-second snippet for a social account.

The Madame X persona might be a spy, a teacher, a saint, a whore, a cha cha instructor and a mother, but she’s also something not listed in the album lines notes - she’s a more authentic version of Madonna Veronica Louise Ciccone than we’ve seen on stage in some time.

From Billboard.com

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Your Eye is the Best Camera

Friday, 20 September 2019

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Madonna Is Still Taking Chances

Thursday, 19 September 2019
This article and review from Jon Pareles of the New York Times contains very big spoilers of the staging and setlist from the show, do not read any further if you don't want to know!

Her Madame X show reimagines pop spectacle for a theater stage, merging her newest music and calls for political awareness with striking intimacy.

“I’m not here to be popular. I’m here to be free,” Madonna declared to a packed, adoring audience on Tuesday night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House. It was the premiere of her Madame X tour, named after the album she released in June that she has said was influenced by the music in Lisbon, her adopted home. The show follows her decades of arena spectacles by scaling the same kind of razzle-dazzle - dancers! costumes! video! choir! - for a theater stage.

Unlike jukebox musicals or “Springsteen on Broadway,” Madame X is a concert focusing on new songs and the present moment. In other words, Madonna is still taking chances. She will reach arena-size attendance in only a handful of venues on the eight-city tour, but with much longer engagements; the Gilman Opera House holds 2,098, and she booked 17 shows there, through Oct. 12. Onstage, “selling” a selfie Polaroid to an audience member who happened to be Rosie O’Donnell, she claimed, “I’m not making a dime on this show.”

Concertgoers arrived to what was billed as a phone-free experience. Cellphones and smart watches were locked into bags at the door, though quickly unlocked afterward. It helped prevent online spoilers; it certainly removed the distractions of waving screens. (No photography was permitted, including press.)

As both album and show, “Madame X” is Madonna’s latest declaration of a defiant, self-assured, flexible identity that’s entirely comfortable with dualities: attentive parent and sexual adventurer, lapsed Catholic and spiritual seeker, party girl and political voice, self-described “icon” and self-described “soccer mom,” an American and - more than ever - a world traveler.

Yes, she is 61, but her music remains determinedly contemporary, with the drum-machine sounds of trap, collaborations with hip-hop vocalists (Quavo and Swae Lee, shown on video) and the bilingual, reggaeton-flavored Latin pop sometimes called urbano (with the Colombian singer Maluma, also shown on video). The concert, with most of its music drawn from the “Madame X” album, was packed with pronouncements, symbols and enigmatic vignettes to frame the songs. Madonna often wore an eye patch with an X on it, no doubt a challenge to her depth perception as a dancer.

By the time Madonna had completed just the first two songs, she had already presented an epigraph from James Baldwin - “Artists are here to disturb the peace” - that was knocked out onstage by one of the concert’s recurring figures, a woman (sometimes Madonna herself) at a typewriter.

Gunshots introduced “God Control,” which moves from bitter mourning about gun deaths to happy memories of string-laden 1970s disco, while Madonna and dancers appeared in glittery versions of Revolutionary War finery, complete with feathered tricorn hats, only to be confronted by police with riot shields. “Dark Ballet” had Joan of Arc references, a montage of gothic cathedrals and scary priests, a synthesizer excerpt from Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” and Madonna grappling with masked dancers, until cops pulled her off the piano she had been perched on. The signifiers were already piling up.

And there were more. Film-noir detectives pursued and interrogated Madonna in another disco-tinged song, “I Don’t Search I Find”; “Crave,” which warns, “My cravings get dangerous,” flaunted a full-sized disco ball. A pair of robotic but sinuous dancers, with red lights for eyes, flanked Madonna as she sat at a piano for the ominous “Future,” while the video screen filled with images of urban and environmental destruction. She surrounded herself with a choir of brightly robed women and geometric Arabic designs in “Come Alive,” which used the metal castanets and triplet rhythm of Moroccan gnawa music to back her as, once again, Madonna’s lyrics rejected unwanted opinions and restrictions.

The songs Madonna chose from her past were mostly exhortations and pushbacks, sometimes coupled with direct political statements. She sang part of “Papa Don’t Preach,” reversing its decision to “keep my baby,” then spoke directly about supporting abortion rights. Dancing while surrounded by video imagery of pointing fingers, she revived “Human Nature,” which already testified - a full 25 years ago - to Madonna’s tenacity and determination to express herself uncensored. When it ended, her daughters Mercy James, Estere and Stella were onstage, and the singers and a full-throated audience shared an a cappella “Express Yourself.”

The concert’s unquestioned showstopper was “Frozen,” a somber ballad from the 1998 album “Ray of Light” that offers healing: “If I could melt your heart, we’d never be apart.” Madonna appeared as a tiny figure onstage, surrounded by giant video projections of a dancer moving from a self-protective clutch to a tentative, then joyful unfurling and back. It was her oldest daughter, Lourdes, affirming the family connection in movement.

Since 2017 Madonna has lived in Lisbon, where her son David plays soccer, and she spoke about savoring the city’s music: the Portuguese tradition of fado and music from Portugal’s former empire, particularly from the Cape Verde Islands near Senegal. One of the show’s most elaborate backdrops simulated a club in Lisbon.

But appreciation doesn’t equal mastery. Madonna was backed by the Portuguese guitarra player Gaspar Varela, the grandson of the fado singer Celeste Rodrigues, in an earnest, awkward fado-rooted song, “Killers Who Are Partying” from the “Madame X” album; she also performed a Cape Verdean classic, “Sodade,” made famous by Cesária Évora.

Reminding the audience that she had sung in Cape Verdean Creole and other languages, Madonna boasted, “This is a girl who gets around. This is a girl who does her homework.” But in the songs themselves, she only sounded like a well-meaning tourist.

Madonna was more suited to the harder beat of “Batuka” a song based on the matriarchal, call-and-response Cape Verdean tradition of batuque. Backed by more than a dozen batuque drummers and singers - Orquestra Batukadeiras - and doing some hip-shimmying batuque moves, Madonna conveyed the delight of her discovery, even as the hand-played beat gave way to electronic percussion.

Forty-one musicians, dancers and singers appeared throughout the two-hour-plus show, which came with the same wardrobe changes as any of Madonna’s large-scale extravaganzas (one, before “Vogue,” was executed before the audience, shielded by a dressing table). The singer wasn’t onstage for one of the most powerful dance moments, a break between acts when a row of performers convulsed gracefully at the lip of the stage to irregular breaths, set to a recording of Madonna intoning lyrics from “Rescue Me.”

Madonna spoke to and with the audience repeatedly, taking advantage of the intimacy of the room to tell bawdy jokes, apologize for starting the show late and sip a fan’s beer. But in songs and stage patter, she sometimes conflated self-realization and self-absorption with social progress. Contrasting freedom and slavery after “Come Alive,” she announced that slavery “begins with ourselves,” forgetting that the slave trade was not the same as being “slaves to our phones.”

Yet with Madonna, the spirit is more about sounds and images than literalism. “I Rise,” which ends both the album and the concert, samples a speech by Emma Gonzalez, a survivor of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. then goes on to some clumsy lyrics. But in a small theater, with a gospelly beat, raised fists, images of protests worldwide, a rainbow flag, and Madonna and her troupe parading up the aisle - close enough for fans to touch - there was no denying the conviction.

From Jon Pareles / New York Times

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Madonna Enlists Her Kids and Rosie O’Donnell! for Madame X Tour Kickoff in Brooklyn

Thursday, 19 September 2019
Madonna made the kickoff to her intimate Madame X theater tour a family affair.

For the first of her 17 shows Brooklyn’s BAM Howard Gilman Opera House in Brooklyn, the singer, 61, had three of her children - Mercy James, 13, and twin daughters Estere and Stelle, 6 - appear onstage to lead the sold-out crowd into a sing-a-long of Madonna’s 1989 anthem “Express Yourself.”

And during her performance of her 1997 classic “Frozen,” the Material Girl was joined by her eldest child, 22-year-old daughter Lourdes, who appeared digitally via a video projection, dancing to the song.

Also in the room were Madonna’s good friends Rosie O’Donnell, Anderson Cooper, Spike Lee and Debi Mazar. O’Donnell even factored into the show: When Madonna took a selfie with a Polaroid camera and offered it to the highest bidder in the room, the actress and comedian walked onstage to offer her cash.

For her Madame X tour debut, Madonna enforced a strict no-cellphone policy that had attendees seal away their devices in pouches that were unlocked at the end of the performance.

The only two photos from the tour that have been released were posted by the singer herself on her Instagram page. “Madame X thanks you for coming,” she captioned the shots showing her in a dark wig. “So Happy to finally have an audience!”

Madonna’s longtime manager Guy Oseary posted a backstage photo after the show, showing Madonna alongside filmmaker JR, O’Donnell, Mazar, Lee and Cooper. “The show was so good!! Congrats to the incredible Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone,” he captioned the pic. “You were amazing!!!”

The setlist leaned heavily on tracks from her latest album, but also included classics like “Human Nature,” “Vogue” and “Like a Prayer.”

The tour includes multiple shows at the BAM throughout September and October, plus a short residency at the Chicago Theatre in Chicago in October, then another at Los Angeles’ Wiltern Theater in November.

From People.com

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Backstage at the opening night of the Madame X Tour

Wednesday, 18 September 2019

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Madonna Surprises With the Launch of Ambitious, Intimate Madame X Show

Wednesday, 18 September 2019
It turns out Madonna - the queen of re-invention - is human. She admitted last night during the first performance of her Madame X show at Brooklyn’s Howard Gilman Opera house: “The one thing I need is sleep. I’m tired.” She added that she could use a nap.

But the 61 year old pop icon didn’t show any signs of weariness last night as she launched this ambitious, complex production. The good news about Madonna’s Madame X show is that there is no bad news. Not really. So everyone can relax. There’s no incentive to throw tomatoes.

Quite the opposite: I was impressed, and I think anyone who stops into the Gilman will be surprised to find Madonna, in a stripped down setting, is actually real and just a celebrity hologram. She’s very endearing in an intimate venue. Also considering that this performance of “Madame X” was the very first, you have to give her credit. She’s producing a Broadway show in progress.

Indeed, if we come back to “Madame X” in a month, it’s going to be even more together, which isn’t to say it’s not a compelling two hour and fifteen minute entertainment now. But right now “Madame X” is like several Broadway shows happening at once. Most of it works, some of it doesn’t. It needs time to gel. The pieces are good, but they don’t all fit together yet. (The sets are Broadway-level, even better, with terrific lighting. The staging runs from elaborately ornamental to elegantly minimalist. There are excellent video projections, too.)

What we get theme wise are more than a few things: Madonna’s lifelong grappling with Catholicism; her adventures in Lisbon as a “soccer mom,” as she says; her discovery in Portugal of that country’s music and that of Cape Verde, off the coast of Africa; political Madonna, who is advocating for LGBTQ, women’s rights, abortion rights, and gun control. Plus modern dance, jazz and ballet, and even a dance video from Madonna’s daughter, Lourdes. That’s a lot of themes.

To read the rest of the article visit: www.showbiz411.com

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Reactions from the opening night of the Madame X Tour

Wednesday, 18 September 2019

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Review: Madonna kicks off tour with intimate BAM concert

Wednesday, 18 September 2019
Madonna was like a virgin - shiny and new all over again.

In the first full concert of her sixth decade, the 61-year-old Queen of Pop ventured into unknown terrain, launching her “Madame X” theater tour at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House on Tuesday night. In a 37-year career playing arenas and stadiums, after rising up from the downtown New York club scene, she was still reinventing herself.

This - the first of her 17-night stand at BAM ending Oct. 12 - was indeed uncharted territory for a woman who has done it all. Playing in such an intimate space after all these years, though, the pop diva of all pop divas was adamant about you not sharing videos and pics of her so up close and personal.

Her no-cellphone policy required you to put your device in a pouch that wouldn’t allow you access to it until after the show or at designated phone stations outside of the theater.

The Material Mom of six has gone from “Papa Don’t Preach” to “Mama Don’t Play.” She can still out-diva any opera diva on the planet.

But as fans lined up around Fort Greene’s Ashland Place to get to the opera house entrance on Lafayette Street - no doubt slowed by having to put their phones in those YONDR pouches - it was the kind of New York scene befitting a New York icon. When it was announced that she wouldn’t even go on until 10:30 p.m. - despite the 8:30 start time on the ticket - fans didn’t even blink an eye.

They knew the drill: You wait until Madonna is ready.

When she finally took the stage around 10:45 p.m. to sing “God Control,” her anti-gun anthem from her “Madame X” album, some of her old fans who had been napping on their partners’ shoulders needed to heed the song’s call to “wake up” in a very literal sense.

But just as Madonna wanted to keep it old-school with her no-cellphone policy - which was refreshing and relatively painless - the night was also a concession to the fact that she is, well, older now.

That could be felt in her most throwback moment, when she took a Polaroid selfie of herself and sold it to old pal Rosie O’Donnell - her costar in 1992’s “A League of Their Own” - for a thousand dollars.

But it could also be measured in the fact that this theater tour is not just a creative curve in a career where every move has been calculated, but it’s a reimagining of herself as an artist at a time when she can no longer do the choreography-heavy work that arenas and stadiums would demand of her.

Let’s be real: There’s only so far Madonna had to walk from one side of the stage to the other at BAM.

As shrewd of an agent as Madame X - the spy alter ego she adopted for her latest album - is, she had her dancers do the heavy lifting for her. Instead, she emphasized the performance art that has always been a part of her concerts at the expense of the moves that she honed when dance teacher Martha Graham first coined her “Madame X.”

The setting and the sensibility turned up the theatrics of “Madame X” songs such as “Dark Ballet,” which, with its nod to Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker,” came to life in a way that made it dig into your soul more than the recording could. And make no mistake, this is a “Madame X” show. A good 80-85 percent of the two-hour-plus show is dedicated to her new album.

That won’t make this tour the go-to show for the casual Madonna fan, but diehards hardly seemed to mind that she only gave you bits of faves such as “Express Yourself” and “La Isla Bonita” while concentrating on “Madame X” tracks such as “Medellín,” “Crazy” and “Come Alive” - the latter of which did just that with a gospel flourish that set the stage for “Like a Prayer” later.

“Like a Prayer” and “Vogue” were the only two straight-up Madonna classics that she really performed in full. But the highlight was another Madge hit, 1997’s “Frozen,” that she did as her oldest child, 22-year-old daughter Lourdes, did the dancing on video projections to keep it in the family groove.

From New York Post / Chuck Arnold

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Madame X Tour: Opening Night Tonight!

Tuesday, 17 September 2019
The opening night of the Madame X Tour takes place tonight in New York City. To all our readers who are going to the show, have an amazing time and don't forget to tell madonnalicious all about it! Set-list, costumes, merchandise and your reviews and thoughts about the show.

Email us at: [email protected]

Message/tag us on Instagram: @madonnalicious_com

Message/tag us on Twitter: @_madonnalicious

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Two more Miami Shows added to the Madame X Tour

Tuesday, 17 September 2019
With the Madame X tour set to launch this evening, Live Nation is pleased to announce that due to demand, 2 additional Miami shows at the Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theater have been confirmed on December 21st & December 22nd. These will be the only area dates to be added and tickets for both shows will go on general sale this Monday, September 23rd (10am local time).

ICON is Madonna's official fan club and Lifetime Legacy members of ICON will be eligible for a special presale for the newly announced dates starting Wednesday, September 18th (10am) through Friday, September 20th (5pm).

Citi® is the official credit card of the Madame X tour. As such, Citi cardmembers will have special access to tickets for the additional shows beginning Wednesday, September 18th (noon) through Friday, September 20th (5pm), all times local. For complete cardmember details visit www.citientertainment.com

From Madonna.com

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Madame X Tour: Two more Paris shows added

Monday, 16 September 2019
With the Madame X tour set to launch September 17th, Live Nation is pleased to announce due to demand 2 new dates in Paris to the series of rare and intimate performances of Madonna that will be held only in the most prestigious theaters of the whole world. In the historic hall of the Grand Rex: March 7 and 8, 2020 are added to the first twelve dates 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25 and 26, 27, 29 February, 1, 3 and 4 March 2020.

The Madame X Tour will kick off September 17th at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House in New York and will feature multiple nights of shows in each city including performances at the Chicago Theatre, the newly announced performances at the Golden Gate Theatre, The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, The Wiltern in Los Angeles, the Boch Center Wang Theatre in Boston, The Met Philadelphia and at the Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theatre in 2019. Madame X Tour continues in 2020 with multipe dates at the Lisbon Coliseum, The London Palladium and Le Grand Rex in Paris.

ICON is Madonna's official fan club. Legacy members will be eligible for a special presale for the newly announced dates starting Tuesday, September 17th (10am) through Thursday, September 19th (5pm).

Citi® is the official credit card of the Madame X tour. As such, Citi cardmembers will have special access to tickets for the additional shows beginning Tuesday, Wednesday Septembre 18th (10AM) through Thursday, September 19th (5pm), all times local. For complete cardmember details visit www.citientertainment.com

General onsale on all outlets on Friday September 20th at 10 AM.

From Madonna.com

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Madonna And Too Faced Are Teaming Up On A Make-Up Collection

Friday, 13 September 2019
Brace yourselves people, Madonna, who’s been dictating make-up trends since the 80s when she graced our screens in the ‘Like A Virgin’ music video, is finally getting her very own make-up collection.

The music icon already has her own skincare line MDNA SKIN, which would set you back £302 for a face cream, but thankfully these products are slightly more affordable.

Teaming up with Too Faced, the brand famous for their Better Than Sex Mascara, the collection includes two make-up box sets, both inspired by Madonna’s stage looks from her hotly anticipated Madame X Tour.

The idea? To give fans their own piece of Madonna to take home and achieve the exact make-up looks Madge wears on stage. Anything that gets us a little bit closer to being Madonna is all good in our books.

Kit number 1, named ‘Medellin Set’, consists of a ruby red shade of Too Faced’s Melted Matte Liquified Long Wear Lipstick, a five part palette with four eyeshadows ranging from matte peaches to red shimmers and a baby pink blush. The set also includes the brand's Damn Girl! Mascara and Better Than Sex Liquid Liner.

Kit 2, named 'I Rise’ repeats the format but in soft dusty pink and rose gold shades.

Don't even get us started on the packaging. Needless to say, it's also pretty major, featuring the Madame X Tour logo with promo images of the queen herself. Make-up with Madonna on the front? We’re sold.

Whilst the exact prices haven’t been released yet we don’t expect it to come close to her skincare line. With average Too Faced prices ranging from £30-£40 for a decent-sized eyeshadow palette, we hope the Madonna collaboration will be along the same lines.

The collab officially drops tomorrow at the Madame X pop up shop in New York but lucky fans can also get their hands on it at the concert dates. Can all gigs have make-up merchandise from now on? Thanks.

From Elle.com / Via Yahoo! News

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Live Nation Sued Over Madonna’s Performance at Eurovision Song Contest

Friday, 13 September 2019
Madonna’s Eurovision performance earlier this year was panned by many critics. Now she’s being sued over it as well.

The KAN Israeli public broadcaster, which produced the Eurovision Song Contest in May, filed a lawsuit in a Tel Aviv court on Thursday against Live Nation and Live Nation Israel. The suit, first reported by Israel’s Yediot Aharonot daily, alleges that Madonna’s representatives violated the terms of their agreement and reneged on financial promises.

A spokeswoman for KAN confirmed that the suit was filed, but declined to comment further. According to online court records, KAN is suing Live Nation for 1.375 million shekels ($390,000). A date for an initial hearing in the case has not been set yet. Live Nation Israel did not respond to a request for comment.

According to the court filing, KAN provided Madonna with technical and logistical support that went beyond the Eurovision production, costs that were supposed to be covered by the singer’s team. The additional support included projectors, headphones, additional stage assistants, tents, security and other extra staff. KAN alleges that Live Nation agreed to cover those costs but never paid up, and attempts to recoup the money since the show have been unsuccessful.

Madonna’s appearance fee for the 2019 Eurovision was covered by Canadian-Israeli billionaire Sylvan Adams. KAN publicly battled with the Israeli government over funding for the show, and was forced to take out a 70 million shekel loan (about $20 million) to cover the costs.

The Material Girl’s Eurovision performance was controversial from the start. After drawn-out negotiations, Madonna signed a contract only two days before she took the stage during the show’s grand finale. And KAN producers and the Eurovision organizers were not pleased that the singer displayed Israeli and Palestinian flags on the backs of two dancers during the show, something that had not appeared during rehearsals.

From Variety Via Yahoo! News

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Madame X Pop-Up Store back in NYC

Thursday, 12 September 2019
Fans in NYC can pop into the pop-up store to celebrate the opening of the Madame X Tour. Send [email protected] any of your pictures from the store so we can all enjoy the merchandise!

Posted at 04:00 AM in Merchandise | | Comments (0)

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New Madame X shows announced in Chicago and San Francisco

Monday, 09 September 2019
With the Madame X tour set to launch September 17th, Live Nation is pleased to announce that due to demand, a 7th and final Chicago show at the Chicago Theatre October 27th has been confirmed.

Additionally, to ensure fans in northern California don’t miss out, 3 San Francisco concerts - October 31, November 2 and November 4 have also been confirmed for the Golden Gate Theatre. These will be the only area dates to be added and tickets for shows in both Chicago and San Francisco will go on general sale this Friday, September 13th (10am local times).

ICON is Madonna's official fan club and Lifetime Legacy members of ICON will be eligible for a special presale for the newly announced dates starting Tuesday, September 10th (10am) through Thursday, September 12th (5pm). Legacy members, please read our detailed FAQ page.

Citi® is the official credit card of the Madame X tour. As such, Citi cardmembers will have special access to tickets for the additional shows beginning Tuesday, September 10th (noon) through Thursday, September 12th (5pm), all times local. For complete cardmember details visit www.citientertainment.com.

Fans may also access Madame X Tour VIP Packages which may include great ticket locations, exclusive backstage tour, photo opportunity on stage, VIP pre-show reception, limited edition Madonna gift item, fast pass access to designated VIP merch and concessions lanes, and more! . Additionally, fans can access Travel packages which include great ticket locations, exclusive merchandise, plus hotel accommodations and more! Complete VIP, Travel and ticketing information at www.ticketmaster.com

From Madonna.com

Posted at 04:00 AM in Madame X Tour | | Comments (0)

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Madonna Is Secretly an Art World Influencer

Friday, 06 September 2019
Madonna has made her impact on earth known in countless ways in the 60 years that she’s been here. But not all of her impacts are so obvious. And this includes her influence on the art world: Beyond pioneering the crossover between pop and art by hanging with the likes of Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and her former flame Jean-Michel Basquiat in New York in the ’80s, Madonna’s art world impact has been made almost entirely behind the scenes.

Take for example, Basquiat, whom Madonna dated in the early ’80s, when they were both on the brink of fame. Now one of the most popular artists on the market, Basquiat died in 1988, at just 28 years old, meaning that there’s only so much of his work out there to be bought and put on display (which is partly why his work continues to break records at auction). And, as Madonna revealed to Howard Stern in 2015, there’s even less of it because of his reaction to their breakup in 1984.

Since it wasn’t out of the ordinary for Madonna to wake up in the middle of the night and find that Basquiat wasn’t lying in bed but was on his feet painting, it’s only natural that over the course of a couple of years Madonna came to own quite a few pieces of Basquiat’s art. Those, however, will never be seen. 'When I broke up with him, he made me give [the paintings he gave me] back to him, and then he painted over them black,' she told Stern.

It’s unclear just how many Basquiats we lost to spite - Madonna was hardly the only notable woman he dated, although certainly the most notable - but we do know there’s only a single Frida Kahlo that Madonna has been keeping from the public eye, thankfully. Unfortunately, it happens to be arguably one of the most amazing works Kahlo ever produced. Painted in 1932, My Birth is true to its title: It’s a self-portrait, but Kahlo’s head isn’t in its usual place, atop her shoulders - instead, it is in the process of emerging from the womb. It’s quite a sight to see, and quite a privilege to see it, given that Madonna turned down the Detroit Institute of Arts’ many pleas to feature it in a 2015 exhibition of the works that Kahlo made while she and Diego Rivera lived in Detroit. ('You have no idea what we went through,' the institute’s adjunct curator said at the time.)

Madonna had, in fact, loaned the painting to the Tate back in 2005, and wouldn’t have exactly been artless without it; as Vanity Fair reported in 1990, back then, at least, she also owned works by Diego Rivera, Man Ray, Weegee, Tina Modotti, Herb Ritts, and even Fernand Léger. To be fair, her appreciation for the work seems to be the reason behind her unwillingness to share it: 'If somebody doesn’t like this painting,' Madonna told the magazine, 'then I know they can’t be my friend.'

For all the great art Madonna has effectively kept from us, she’s also gone out of her way to bring art to the mainstream - not exactly surprising, given that she’s a fan of artists like Banksy and JR, who remind her of Basquiat and Haring. 'You can see Banksy’s work driving by it on the street, and JR’s work - the way he takes photographs of people and turns them into heroes in their communities and makes people proud of who they are,' she told David Blaine in 2014, adding that her son was even interning for JR.

Madonna has brought art to the streets herself in a way too, like when she used the video Green Pink Caviar by the provocative New York–based artist Marilyn Minter, with whom she’s friends, as the backdrop for a portion of her Sticky and Sweet tour, preceding its stint as part of a public art project in Los Angeles. More recently, Madonna also fundraised for her nonprofit Raising Malawi by launching a contest that would give two 'art world virgins' the chance to accompany her to Art Basel Miami Beach for an ultra-exclusive, up-close look at a plethora of blue chip art (and, as it turned out, at her twerking with Ariana Grande, which has likely only appreciated in market value since).

From W Magazine

Posted at 04:00 PM in General News | | Comments (0)

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