Concert review: Madonna at the Bell Centre
Who would have the chutzpah to argue that Madonna’s sold-out Bell Centre performance Thursday night was anything but the show of the year?
Mind you, that is not to say the frenetic, overheated aerobic eye-popper was the concert of the year. The Madonna oeuvre has very little to do with musicianship, songcraft or art at least not in the conventional sense. Nor is she a great singer.
For almost 30 years, our Madge has been making serviceable pop records, some of the best-loved of which were mixed into a set heavy on songs from her latest disc, MDNA, during Thursday’s two-hour extravaganza.
When you strip away the hoopla surrounding her various guises, her once-daring sexual envelope-pushing, her celebration of her celebrity and her bad-Catholic girl pose, what’s left? An entertainer who, admittedly, outdoes all her imitators and progeny when it comes to dancefloor pop a point made clear when she slyly incorporated Lady Gaga’s Born This Way into Express Yourself.
And such hits as Like a Prayer, sung near the end of the set, might even have been a religious experience for some 16,000 adoring fans who had stood up, sang and shouted their approval almost non-stop all evening.
Click here to continue reading this review and to check Tijana Martin’s photo gallery of the show on the online website of The Gazette.