M-Tribe Team member Magnus attended the first night of the Sticky & Sweet Tour in Gothenburg over the weekend.Here is his extensive review of his concert experience and some of the great pictures he took at the show:

“The entire event at Ullevi was very well organised! The staff did a great job avoiding unnecessary panic and chaos. Before the gates opened, they had us standing in line for the Golden Circle. We were told to walk our way in, nice and slowly. People who tried to run or push themselves forward were escorted out of the stadium and had to redo the entire procedure as punishment.

Paul Oakenfold came on stage at about 20:00 and finished his set approximately 45 minutes later. Madonna came on stage at about 21:50.

I was more or less at the front row, with just one or two people in front of me, at the very end of the catwalk. Candy Shop and Beat Goes On were not as exciting live as I thought they’d be. However, she sounded great for the most part. Actually, I was very impressed with Human Nature. After having heard alot of bootleg recordings with dodgy vocals, I wasn’t expecting much, but she was actually hitting the right notes, most of the time. Vogue was also very stellar in terms of her vocal delivery. The first segment ended with the amazing Die Another Day Remix video interlude and to my surprise, the crowd knew the lyrics by heart and sang along.

Moving on to the second segment; she came on stage with a jumping rope and sang Into The Groove. It seemed to go down very well with the audience, but I personally thought the arrangement of the song was rather dull. The high energy performance of Holiday was also very well received (as was the tribute to the late Michael Jackson) although I think alot of people were expecting it to be her most recent single, Celebration, at first. The next song she performed was Dress You Up, which didn’t quite work as well live as I’d hoped, despite the kick ass rock arrangement. I think the main problem with this performance was that she distanced herself from the Golden Circle and didn’t make any effort to connect with the audience.

She dedicated She’s Not Me to the Swedish ladies. After the line “… and make up for the things you lack”, she looked at the dancer posing in the Like A Virgin outfit and said “which is a butt”, which I thought was pretty funny. Music was also a total crowd pleaser, but it was followed by the not so exciting Rain Remix interlude, which felt sort of like an anti-climax.

The third segment of the show started with a cookie cutter performance of Devil Wouldn’t Recognise You. It wasn’t too exciting, as we hardly got to see her sing it.Spanish Lesson was another performance that did not live up to my expectations either. This particular performance seemed to be all about choreography, as she hardly looked at the audience during this performance. However, the show took a turn for the better again with Miles Away, which turned out to be yet another crowd pleaser.

Whereas the mash-up of La Isla Bonita and Lela Pala Tute worked, Doli Doli just didn’t. There’s nothing wrong with gypsy music, but it felt kind of pointless and awkward to watch an old man trying to pull it off while Madonna was just sitting there on the side, watching him play. Fortunately for me, she sat close to where I was standing, so me and the people around me simply ignored Doli Doli and looked at her the whole time, and she looked back at us and smiled alot.

For me,the highlight of the night was definitely the show’s one ballad performance, You Must Love Me from Evita. Before she kicked it off, she made a speech about being happy to be back in Sweden after all these years and how for some reason she always ended up working with Swedes. She then went on to say that she thought we were very creative and very sexual people, who liked to party. The audience went wild at this point and she was laughing. She seemed very happy during this performance, as she couldn’t stop smiling at us. She messed up with her guitar playing at one point and at the end of the following chorus she sang “you must love me… even when I play the wrong chords!“. From then on, she seemed to be a bit insecure with her guitar playing and made several funny faces towards the end of the song. The audience seemed to be impressed with her singing though. She exited the stage with a big smile on her face and the political Get Stupid video interlude came on.

The last segment of the show began with 4 Minutes, which was quite well received. Personally, I think it should have swapped places with Music. The audience were in ecstacy when she started to sing Like A Prayer, which was definitely the biggest crowd pleaser that night. Her vocals were really good and the audience was singing along. She went on to perform an upbeat version of Frozen. I loved the first half of it, since it stayed true to the original version, but I wasn’t too keen on the other half. However, the audience seemed to love it all.

During Ray Of Light, she had us jumping non-stop throughout the entire song. It was fun, but not as memorable as the performance of the same song during her previous tour. She closed the show with an amazing performance of Give It 2 Me, where she at one point jumped off the stage and made physical contact with her fans. The show was officially over just before midnight and the concert goers seemed to be very pleased with their concert experience as far as I could tell. Let’s just hope it won’t take another 19 years until she returns!

More pictures are available at the MadonnaTribe Forum – click HERE to get there now.
Thanks to our friend Magnus.Share your 2009 Tour pictures by sending an email to share@madonnatribe.com. Thank you!