Madonna remains the ballsy legacy act that routinely—and generously—favors her most recent songs over the safe-and-easy greatest hits show. For this year’s trek, however, playing 10 songs from this year’s Rebel Heart was too much. The dominance of new material worked for 2001’s Drowned World tour, which almost exclusively spotlighted two of her best albums, Ray Of Light and Music, but given Rebel Heart’s inconsistent songwriting and mismatched stylistics—Madonna’s vocals sound like a square peg being hammered into the trap, dubstep and dancehall tracks—it pockmarked an otherwise compelling and well-executed October 24 show at MGM’s Grand Garden.
Four weaker Rebel Heart cuts especially plagued the first of the show’s four acts—the standard narrative structure of a Madonna tour—only memorable for the singer’s reliably fearless interpretation of religion and specifically her love/hate relationship with it. During the second act, visually represented by nostalgic motifs, her recent ballad HeartbreakCity got little attention and drew tepid applause, unlike the roars that greeted the first two lines of her 1984 cover of Love Don’t Live Here Anymore. Later, boring bonus cut Rebel Heart inspired more audience chatter, and the only satisfaction that came from Unapologetic Bitch awkwardly ending the main set was the arena airing of local duo Shelco Garcia and Teenwolf’s production work.
That said, Rebel Heart’s best (and best-received) song, HeartbreakCity, proved to be a new classic, partly due to Madonna’s full-throated performance. A few backing tracks aside, the singer generally displayed impressive vocal chops despite the show’s 135-minute duration and her 57-year age. She created genuinely intimate moments with her ukulele versions of True Blue and Edith Piaf’s La Vie En Rose, each preceded by hilarious banter with the audience. And she also defied her age with assured footwork throughout, by her lonesome during a spare, hip-hop-influenced version of Like A Virgin and with her sizable dance troupe during rousing versions of favorites Deeper And Deeper, La Isla Bonita and Dress You Up.
It’s a shame the energy in the seats rarely matched that onstage, and Madonna frequently, and rightly, made her frustration known. Just what we’d expect from both Vegas’ comp-heavy crowd—and pop’s Unapologetic Bitch.
Setlist
Iconic
Bitch I’m Madonna
Burning Up
Holy Water (mashed with Vogue)
Devil Pray
Body Shop
True Blue
Deeper And Deeper
HeartbreakCity (mashed with Love Don’t Live Here Anymore)
Like A Virgin (mashed with Justify My Love and Heartbeat samples)
Living For Love
La Isla Bonita
Dress You Up (mashed with Into The Groove and Lucky Star)
Secret
HeartbreakCity
Rebel Heart
Music (mashed with Give It 2 Me sample)
Candy Shop
Material Girl
La Vie En Rose
Unapologetic Bitch
Encore: Holiday
Source: Las Vegas Weekly
