Pop Extravaganza Two

"I'm gonna tell you about love. Let's forget your life, forget your problems. Administration, bills and loans. Come with me."

That's how Madonna whispery starts her 2006 "world" tour [if you consider North America, Europe and Japan as the whole planet]. This woman spent more than twenty years of her life telling the world how she feels, what she thinks and not feeling regret about it. In her 1993 tour, The Girlie Show, she goes: "Sometimes you gotta tell world the way you feel, even when they don't wanna hear about it!" Now let me tell you something about Madonna and her fans: we've always had this sarcastic bitchy relationship, so whenever she bosses and badmouths us we get high! So you can imagine that when last year this woman asked gently for us to come with her, "no" was an absolutely impossible answer.

The Confessions Tour came with many rumors and controversy. Some fans bitched about her using equestrian references, until they saw the Steven Klein photoshoot for the W magazine; others shouted along with the narrow-minded and cursed the mock crucifixion even before seeing it. But aside all the exasperated bullshit from those fuckers, Madonna delivered once again the best pop live show.

After the impressive opening of the Golias-esque mirrorball you have right before your eyes dance and musical numbers that go beyond everything you ever thought that could be done in a live concert. From dancers turned into horses as you hear a dancefloor classic [I Feel Love] be once again reinvented, to kinky horse-rides and defying gravity jumps.

The beautiful cross comes up from underground showing a beautiful and focused Madonna; it's like she's in another dimension. If you are a shallow person you just look at the controversial cross; if you have a little bit of artistic sensibility and chooses to go deeper on what you're gazing at, you look a bit up and notice the important message about humanity and love being screened. If you get to this place, Madonna's voice and the song she's singing sound like a heaven sent murmur, then the cross makes perfectly sense.

She's everywhere here. A woman like Madonna surely has many tales to tell and confess, so you can't help but feel emotionally, politically, philosophically, intellectually and spiritually chalenged and moved. She gave statements about world peace, her faith and way of viewing life et al. But one of the things Madonna does majestically, that only a select group of performers can do and still none can do as she does, is making you think while you have the best of the times.

When she announced the tour she said her intention was to turn the world into a gigantic dancefloor. [Did you notice how everything about this is gigantic?] And she did it! The Confessions On Dance Floor album is above everything else a party album, and the tour could be no different. If for a moment you decide to shut your ears to the woman's mind you will still be treated by a selection of songs that will make you dance and have fun like never before.

The final and empowering set - the Music Inferno - starts off with her dancefloor-filler/crowd-pleaser Music mashed up with the 1970's classic Disco Inferno; and guess what! She's dressed up as the dancefloor icon Tony Manero! Then she reinvents her dark and hunting 1992 hit in a way no one ever expected: Erotica becomes happy and bright escorted by the romantic and [somewhat] heartbreaking You Thrill Me; man how that dance is cool and sexy! It's followed by such speeded up and infectious La Isla Bonita that I call it La Isla Gostosa ["hot" in Portuguese], and finally comes a deliciously modern Lucky Star, pursued by the already disco classic and marvelous sing-along/ass-shaker Hung Up.

One might think that The Confessions Tour is filled with distracting machinery, but that means one doesn't get Madonna. Her shows were always multimedia concerts where music is not exactly the main thing to follow. With the Confessions she outdid herself in that gigantic stage filled with light and magic. Suddenly you are transported to a world full of excitement and surprise, where every little thing said and done makes your jaw drops and your whole body is put in a trance. Madonna is the main attraction, but this time - like you already noticed in the first Future Lovers lines forementioned - she humbly gives you time and space to think about something else than her. She still tells you in her way what she feels [after all these are her confessions] but you never feel compelled to only proceed as her.

Pop Extravaganza One

[Song: Like It Or Not - Madonna]