Madonna's Close Up

In 26 years, I’ve seen Madonna do quite a variety of things live in concert. I’ve seen her suspended on a catwalk not far above my head, leaning over and giving the crowd the peace sign. I’ve seen her make a grand entrance by emerging from a giant disco ball. I’ve seen her wearing a Phillies jersey, regaling a screaming crowd while the team played in the World Series just across the street.

But I’ve never seen Madonna quite like I did for two shows at the Met this week. I’m used to seeing her in huge venues and only being able to get so close, mostly only seeing her on the video screens. But this time, Steve, Jeanine and I—partners in Madonna concertgoing for 26 years—were fifth row of the pit, about 20 feet from our longtime idol as she tore through “Like a Prayer” and many others. We were close enough to see the blue of her eyes.

It’s overwhelming to be that close to her and every time Madonna walked to the edge of the stage, I couldn’t stop smiling giddily. She walked right past us down the aisle, the closest we’ll ever get to her. At one point, she pointed to our raucous section and said something about how much she appreciated having her fan club there. (No, we don’t have photos. Everyone had to put their phones in little pouches before the show. I didn’t mind. I can’t blame her for insisting on no phones. In a theater that small, she would have only seen phones in front of her and she wanted to see our faces.)

Madonna was chatty all through the two-and-a-half-hour show. She told stories and raunchy jokes. She teased the Philly crowd about putting Cheese Whiz on cheese steaks, saying, “Can’t you afford real cheese?” She auctioned off a Polaroid of her for charity. She sat with a guy in the crowd and bantered with him. And she walked right by us. Madonna sounded great and was relaxed, happy and warm all night.

The opener, “God Control,” from new album Madame X, is the best thing she’s done in years, one of those songs that shows—and I mean this as a compliment—that Madonna is batshit insane. It’s a lamentation of mass shootings set to a relentless disco beat, with lush strings endlessly ascending and descending in the background but never quite resolving, like unanswerable questions. Madonna and her dancers, dressed in glammed-up Revolutionary War costumes for a night at some demented club, dance and protest and get beaten up by riot police. At first I thought it was weird to be singing along and dancing to the powerful grooves of a song with the backdrop of gun massacres. But then I realized that’s Madonna’s point: that people are dying in mass shootings and most of us are just continuing to dance mindlessly. “We need to wake up,” she sings repeatedly. It’s a call to action and an infernally danceable song.

In the show intro and throughout, there was a motif of Madonna typing out quotes such as “Artists are here to disturb the peace” by James Baldwin, quotes displayed on the giant screen. The sound of the manual typewriter boomed out like gunshots, taking the place of the percussion in some songs.

“Vogue” found Madonna dressed in a trenchcoat as identically dressed dancers skulked around her, like decoys in a film noir spy movie. This segued into Madame X’s sublime slice of ‘90s house music, “I Don’t Search I Find,” as detectives interrogated her under harsh lighting, finally gaining her confession as the detectives typed it up, the sound of the typewriter taking the place of the song’s finger snaps. This is another album highlight, with the cool spoken word section contrasting her joyous exclamations of “Finally, enough love.”

This was no greatest hits show, with only a handful of older songs. Most of the show was new material from Madame X, and it helped that it’s her strongest album in almost 15 years. The album sprung from her move to Lisbon to become a soccer mom for her son. Without a lot of friends in her new country, she started going to fado clubs, and the album has an influence of that Portuguese style. Before the show, some of the musicians played instrumental versions of her hits in a fado style, which was fun.

I liked the new songs even more than I expected. “Medellin” was a ton of fun, featuring the aforementioned parade down the aisle past us. “Come Alive” had a Moroccan flair, with her and her dancers in brightly colored dresses with Moroccan tiles projected onto the walls of the set. A fun remix of “Crave” (Madonna’s 49^th number 1 on Billboard’s dance chart) saw everyone dancing around and dressed for a night at a disco. This included Madonna’s adorable young daughters, who were strutting around in feather boas like they owned the place. “Batuka,” with a rousing call-and-response vocal, mournful yet joyful, featured a group of women, the Batukadeiras, from Cape Verde. For a spectacular, intense performance of “Future,” Madonna played piano (!). That song has one of my favorites of her lyrics: “Not everybody’s coming to the future/ Not everyone is learning from the past.” The closer, “I Rise,” was stirring, with Madonna closing by walking down the aisles of the Met and singing a cappella.

There were some nice notes of women’s empowerment throughout the show. After a pleasantly jazzy “Human Nature,” Madonna roused the crowd by repeating the song’s chorus, “I’m not your bitch/ Don’t hang your shit on me,” flanked by the women of color in the cast. She then sang a truncated “Express Yourself” a cappella, which brought roars from the crowd (although I would have preferred hearing the entire song). Madonna pointedly changed the lyrics of “Papa Don’t Preach” to “I’m not keeping my baby” and decried the endangerment of reproductive freedom. I liked “American Life” more than I thought I would. “Rescue Me” was a dance interlude, with dancers doing this rhythmic breathing while the spoken word lyrics of the song played, which I really liked.

Then, near the end of the show, the big guns came out: “Frozen” and “Like a Prayer.” A video during “Frozen” showed Madonna’s daughter Lourdes doing a sinuous dance while Madonna sang the song behind the partially transparent screen, making her seem both behind and within the video, mother and daughter seeming to interact with each other. This transformed the song from one of romantic love to one of maternal love and guidance and pain, and the emotion was powerful. I was stunned into silence by it and it almost made me cry. It just got to me.

Madonna dropped the big atom bomb in her back catalogue, “Like a Prayer.” Everyone sang and danced and pumped their fists as she wailed “Let the choir sing!” Everyone gave into the cathartic undertow of the song. She sang this 20 feet from us before ascending onto steps with her choir. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Like I said, this was no greatest hits show. Madonna doesn’t really do those. While I wouldn’t turn down hearing nothing but the hits, I’m glad her tours have never become rote recitations of the past. I’m glad she can turn out a great new album and take a left turn like this tour, doing something she’s never done before.

And I’m very glad I have the best of friends with me to see Madonna perform for the last 26 years and counting.