Went to see Madonna at Murrayfield tonight.
The support was awful - some DJ called Alesso doing his DJ thang to terrible electronic music, the sort of thing I hate with a fiery passion.
Madonna was half an hour late starting. One of the people I went with had downloaded a set list from the internet, and we were somewhat apprehensive because the vast majority of it was stuff from the new album. The set list said the oldies would be Papa Don't Preach, Hung Up, Open Your Heart, Express Yourself, Vogue, Like a Virgin and Like a Prayer, and I love all of those except Open Your Heart, so I thought it would be ok.
The first 20 minutes was stuff off the new album and it was really bad. It's all very dancey, in the sense it's that pounding electronic stuff with a thumping bass and horrible high frequency stuff on top that makes me feel sick. The songs were crap and her voice was vocodered to fuck. The dancing was excellent, which is probably why she was using the vocoder. The stage production was all monks and mediaeval religious imagery and incense censures and crosses, then there were a lot of guns, and a lot of shooting and blood and splattery brains and things. I hated that, absolutely hated it. Call me old-fashioned, but on a Saturday night, I don't want to hear vocodered Madonna singing "I shot my lover in the head and now my lover is dead" over and over and over while the big screen shows splattery blood. It was like being in somebody else's nightmare.
Things picked up for a few minutes when she did about a quarter of Papa Don't Preach (but not all of it) and then Hung Up, which is only really any good because of the stolen Abba riff. More unpleasant electronic stuff, a lovely slowed down version of Open Your Heart, way better than the original. Express Yourself all mixed up with Born This Way was great, cheerleader outfits, bright, fun, cheery dancing tin soldier costumes, everything cheerful and fun for the first time all night. More dirgey electronic stuff, then Vogue was good. They were way behind time by then so they cut three songs from the set, unfortunately cutting Like a Virgin and leaving in a load more dirgey stuff, then a stonking version of Like a Prayer (that's always been my favourite Madonna song) and then some crap to finish with.
It was really really disappointing, especially because the good bits were so good that you could see how good it all could have been. If they'd cut some of the new album and kept in Like a Virgin people might have thought they'd got their money's worth, but really, £77 for four and a half good songs is a bit much. People in the seats didn't even get out of their seats to dance for the first four songs. Folk were leaving in droves all the way through, most people were just sitting with their arms folded through most of it, and the whole place only came alive for the old songs. Oh, and she mooned us. I paid £77 to be mooned by Madonna.
And what really pisses me off is if I hadn't gone to see Madonna, I could have afforded to get a ticket for George Michael's rescheduled Symphonica tour that I want to see more than anything. Bah.
