Madonna will embark on her first-ever greatest hits tour to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Holiday, her breakout single.
The pop icon will perform music from her entire career, from her self-titled debut album in 1983 to her 2019 album Madame X. After her experimental, theater-based Madame X shows in 2019 and 2020, she will return to arenas and stadiums on the 35-date tour.
As the star battled injuries to her hip and knee, those shows were postponed.
The Covid-19 pandemic caused the cancellation of the final ten Paris dates.
In an interview with V Magazine at the time, the star stated that, despite her failing health, she was determined to complete the tour.
She told playwright Jeremy O. Harris, the interviewer, “I had no cartilage left in my right hip, and everyone kept saying, ‘You gotta stop, you gotta stop.'”
“I said, ‘I will not stop. I will go until the wheels fall off’.”
Madonna added in the same interview, ” I have no intention of stopping. I could have made a billion dollars with a stadium tour of my greatest hits.
The star’s Sticky and Sweet Tour from 2008 to 2009 brought in $411 million (£335 million), making it the highest-grossing female artist tour ever.
She hasn’t done a formal greatest hits tour before, but her 2004 Reinvention concerts are the closest she’s ever been.
The setlist mostly skipped her then-current album, American Life, in favor of classics like Holiday, Into The Groove, and Papa Don’t Preach.
The singer-songwriter will have plenty of songs to choose from when selecting the setlist.
From Into The Groove (1985) and Like A Prayer (1989) to Vogue (1990) and Hung Up (2005), she has had 63 UK top 10 hits, 13 of which were number one singles.
Over the course of the past year, Madonna’s music has also experienced a resurgence on TikTok, with hits like “Frozen” and “Material Girl” gaining new fans.
Back That Up To The Beat, a ten-year-old demo that had been leaked, also resurfaced in September on the video-sharing app, resulting in thousands of videos.
Madonna decided to officially release the demo in December due to its success. On Madame X, the song was finished, but a very different version of it was included as a bonus track.
Finally Enough Love, a compilation that spans her entire career and features dance remixes of her biggest hits, was also released last year. Twenty of the tracks were previously unreleased rare recordings.
The album, which debuted at number three in the UK charts, was Madonna’s first project under her 2021 contract with Warner Music, which called for an “extensive, multi-year series of catalogue releases that will revisit the groundbreaking music that made her an international icon.”
In 2017, the star told the BBC that she frequently removed songs from her live performances when she felt they were being played too much.
She stated, “Some songs I’m sick of doing and I don’t want to do them,”
“So if I did Material Girl on the tour before, or Express Yourself on the tour before, then I’ll say, ‘OK, I did that for 88 shows. I can’t do it again.'”
