Madonna’s Rebel Heart Tour (first night) – Photo: Kevin Mazur for WireImage/Getty
“I still believe in love — even if Barack Obama didn’t come to my show,” Madonna teased near the end of Saturday night’s concert at the Verizon Center. “Maybe I’m too provocative.” Like all her tours, Rebel Heart had its fair share of provocation, chiefly through repeated sacrilegious references to God and Catholic iconography.
But that’s always been Madonna’s cross to bear (and her bread and butter). This time out it was confined to the opening numbers. If you could look past it, as well as her overuse of war and violent imagery (Madonna is seemingly forever fighting someone, from God and Gaga to Guy and the media), you probably left charmed by the evening.
The Rebel Heart Tour finds Madonna at her happiest and most personable, and also in her best voice. In past tours she seemed to be performing on auto-pilot, but not on Saturday.
Edgy and sassy and unapologetic, Madonna once again proved her predominance in pop performance. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like her new album, even though it accounted for nearly half of the two-hour set. The truth is, few others working in pop today put on such a compelling and sensory-rich, top-notch theatrical production from beginning to end. Madonna makes her concerts feel like celebrations.
Near the concert’s end, Madonna settled, with a guitar, on a raised platform and sang the French classic, “La Vie En Rose” — which she dedicated to Obama — as if she were a bona fide chanteuse. “Everybody sing along!” she cooed playfully. She didn’t need the audience assist, as she perfectly conveyed the emotions of the song. It was just one example of how significantly Madonna’s musicality has improved over the years, even if her music has not.
9/12/15 Verizon Center Set List
Iconic
Bitch I’m Madonna
Burning Up
Holy Water, with an interpolation of Vogue
Devil Pray
Messiah
Body Shop
True Blue
Deeper And Deeper
Heartbreak City, with Love Don’t Live Here Anymore
Like a Virgin
S.E.X., with Justify My Love
Living For Love (Remix)
La Isla Bonita
Dress You Up, with a flamenco medley of Get Into the Groove / Everybody / Lucky Star
Who’s That Girl (acoustic)
Rebel Heart
Illuminati
Music / Candy Shop
Material Girl
La Vie En Rose
Unapologetic Bitch
Encore: Holiday
Madonna’s Rebel Heart Tour (first night) – Photo: Kevin Mazur for WireImage/Getty
Additional North American stops on The Rebel Heart Tour through 2015:
Little Monsters filled Capital One Arena to the rafters for D.C.'s second night of The Mayhem Ball, Lady Gaga's blockbuster world tour in support of her sixth solo studio album, Mayhem.
An ornate gothic dance party staged among the towering remains of some Romanesque opera house, the Mayhem Ball is as gorgeously grandiose as the superstar herself. Yet, also like Gaga, the show throughout reflects the sincere, down-to-earth sensibilities of an artist dedicated to her craft, her music, and to making a human connection.
Sounds earnest, but so is Stefani Germanotta, even when she's rolling onto stage fitted into a blood-red hoop skirt two stories tall to sing the first banger of the night, "Abracadabra."
Lady Gaga, Robyn, Patti Labelle, and Jill Scott will return to D.C. to perform in the coming months -- as will The Boss, Mumford & Sons, Sting.
Yet even more noteworthy is the sheer number of bold-name LGBTQ musical artists set to hit stages this season -- including trailblazers like Melissa Etheridge, Marc Almond, and Meshell Ndegeocello who helped inspire today's remarkably more open and accepting live music scene than what they experienced when they came to fame.
With virtually every venue around hosting at least one queer-identified artist as part of their seasonal lineup, the result is a veritable queer bounty ready to appreciate and enjoy: Mika, St. Vincent, Calum Scott, Allison Russell, Bright Light Bright Light, Be Steadwell, Kaki King -- the list keeps going and going. But don't sleep on the many new and up-and-coming queer acts worth getting to know: Arlo Parks, Earth To Eve, Grant Knoche, Boy Golden, Gatlin, and VIAL among them.
A GoFundMe has been launched to purchase surveillance cameras to monitor the flagpole at the Stonewall National Monument in New York.
The effort, launched by longtime LGBTQ activist Michael Petrelis, seeks to monitor the flagpole that has, at various points, flown the Pride and Progress Pride flags.
National Park Service employees recently removed a Pride flag bearing the agency's logo and the year the Stonewall National Monument was designated a national monument.
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