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If you had tickets to Madonna’s Celebration Tour and were disappointed when it was postponed due to her health scare, the show is reportedly even better. The first leg of the tour kicks off this Saturday, October 14, at the 02 Arena in London, and the singer is making sure her fans get the show of their life.
The 65-year-old singer was working hard leading up to the tour before her hospitalization and was reportedly even ignoring symptoms of her bacterial infection because she didn’t want to take time away from rehearsals. Thankfully, her tour’s musical director, Stuart Price, told BBC News she has fully recovered and is back to full strength.
Described as her first-ever greatest hit tour, Price said it will be “a documentary through her vast career” that includes more than 40 songs. But songs aside, fans will also see some of her most iconic moments, “It can be a wardrobe, it can be a video or a statement,” he told the outlet.
Madonna used the three-month delay as an opportunity to “further enhance the show.” Price said the “Vogue” singer has “very high expectations of how much hard work people will put into something” and is equally as hard on herself.
As for the setlist, with incredible songs like “Like a Virgin,” “Material Girl,” “Like a Prayer,” “Vogue,” “Into the Groove,” “Holiday,” “La Isla Bonita,” “Hung Up,” “4 Minutes,” and “Frozen” fans want to know how she can fit her incredible discography full of hits into a two-hour show. Price admitted that was the “big challenge” but assured, “every great moment she’s had, we took a bit of it.”
Fans can expect around 25 songs to be played in their entirety with elements of 20 others, with some being interpolated and others used as “bridges.” It seems like her setlist will stay the same every night, as Price noted Madonna is “highly precise and highly rehearsed across all departments.” “When you look at a tour of this scale, it has so many moving parts, so many elements, that everything has to be highly fixed,” he said. But he noted that her interaction with the audience is so “strong” that it creates opportunities for variation from night to night.
While many shows are sold out, there are still tickets for sale. She will be in the UK and Europe from October 14 until December 6, making her way to North America on December 13 in Brooklyn, NY, until April 24, where her last show is in Mexico City, MX.