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How Madonna’s Blond Ambition Tour Changed Pop Concerts Forever

1990's Blond Ambition took Madge's natural sense of showmanship to new heights.

By Jon O'Brien

Jon O'Brien

“I know that I’m not the best singer and I know that I’m not the best dancer. But, I can f—ing push people’s buttons and be as provocative as I want. This tour’s goal is to break useless taboos.” There was only one all-singing, all-dancing chart-topper who could get away with such a bold declaration at the turn of the ’90s, and it wasn’t Paula Abdul.

From the moment that she writhed around suggestively in a wedding dress at the 1984 MTV VMAs, Madonna became the live act that you couldn’t — and didn’t want to — take your eyes off. Singing in front of a traditional guitar-bass-drums trio was never going to cut it for the woman seemingly hellbent on shocking middle America.

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Then the undisputed Queen of Pop by quite a margin, Madonna had already toyed with the theatrical on 1987’s Who’s That Girl Tour, a whirlwind of glitzy costume changes, giant video screens and dramatic reenactments that she described as “Broadway in a stadium.” But 1990’s Blond Ambition — which kicked off 30 years ago — took Madge’s natural sense of showmanship to new heights.

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Madonna asked Jean-Paul Gaultier to create more than 60 costumes for the tour, an amount which the haute couture designer admits took  350 aspirins  to get through. Luckily, all this headache-inducing work paid off. The Frenchman’s conical bra creation, which was later sold at auction for $52,000 , became one of the defining fashion statements of the decade. And items such as the polka-dotted blouse, clip-on ponytail and mic headset all became a part of the chart-topper’s style legacy, too.

Unsurprisingly, Madonna was just as fastidious when it came to the tour’s choreography. “Wimps and wannabes need not apply” read the call out seeking “fierce male dancers” for the tour. Led by Vincent Paterson, the chosen army of six were put through boot camp-like rehearsals in preparation for a tour that spanned 57 dates, five months and three continents. And with its large hydraulic platform and multiple elaborate sets, Blond Ambition’s staging essentially cost the same as the GDP of a small country. Simply no one else could compete, not even the King to Madonna’s Queen of Pop. A few years prior, Michael Jackson’s Bad Tour had impressed many with its slick moves and dazzling lights – even the BBC’s cult hero John Peel hailed it as a “performance of matchless virtuosity.” But Madge’s elaborative high-concept, five-act production left it for dust.

Blond Ambition didn’t give fans a single opportunity to get bored or head for the bar. Every four minutes there was something new to digest. Take the opening ‘Metropolis’ section, inspired by the expressionist sci-fi of Fritz Lang, for example. Madonna simulates sex in that bra while performing “Express Yourself,” straddles a chair during “Open Your Heart” and belts out “Causing a Commotion” while playfully wrestling her two backing vocalists to the ground. And this was just the first quarter of an hour.

As you’d expect from an artist whose Pepsi commercial had been yanked amidst calls of blasphemy, the second ‘Religious’ section was even more attention-grabbing. Wildly rubbing her crotch in a red velvet bed, Madonna left little to the imagination on a sensual reworking of “Like a Virgin.” And on “Like a Prayer,” the track whose provocative video had caused the soft drink giants to bail, the star and her crew are kitted out as nuns and priests.

Of course, much of the predominantly Roman Catholic nation of Italy didn’t appreciate this type of cosplay. A second date at the Stadio Flaminio was called off after none other than Pope John Paul II implored citizens to boycott “one of the most satanic shows in the history of humanity.”

The controversial blend of religion and erotica also incurred the wrath of the Toronto police force, particularly the “lewd and obscene” display of “Like a Virgin.” But despite the threat of arrest, Madonna and her management team refused to bow down to authority. The star even referenced the furor during her second show at the city’s SkyDome, asking the crowd “Do you think that I’m a bad girl?… I hope so.”

Madonna famously described Toronto as a fascist state in Truth or Dare , the illuminating backstage documentary which further boosted Blond Ambition’s pop cultural cachet. Who can forget the scene where the star pretends to gag after Kevin Costner – then the biggest movie star in the world – summarizes 105 minutes of sense-assaulting, boundary-pushing entertainment as “neat”?

Thankfully, the sell-out crowds reacted to the tour with a little more enthusiasm, even the Dick Tracy section featuring several numbers that would have been unfamiliar at the time. The comic book adaptation, which co-starred Madonna as femme fatale Breathless Mahoney, hit the big screen half-way through Blond Ambition’s run. And the ever-astute star attempted to guide fans towards the cinema with a high-kicking third act dedicated to the trench coat-wearing detective.

But for sheer entertainment value, the ‘Art Deco’ segment is tough to beat. Sporting a pink bathrobe and curlers while seated under a beauty parlor hair dryer, Madonna performed the whole of “Material Girl” in a comical Noo-Yawk accent before throwing fake dollar bills into the crowd. “Cherish” saw the star take up the harp accompanied by (what else?) a troupe of dancing mermen. And following a West Side Story -inspired routine for arguably her finest pure pop moment, “Into the Groove,” she wrapped things up with a faithful recreation of the iconic “Vogue” video.

By the time each and every crew member bids an on-stage farewell during the Bob Fosse-meets- A Clockwork Orange encore of “Keep it Together,” it’s clear that you’ve just witnessed a spectacle of ground-breaking proportions. As dancer Luis Camacho said, Madonna “wanted to give the audience an experience, rather than them just going to a concert. She set the stage for concert shows and experiences that followed.” The tour even impressed Grammy voters, who were notoriously slow to recognize Madonna’s greatness. The video of the tour won the 1991 award for best music video, long form — Madonna’s very first Grammy Award.

Sure enough, no longer were audiences content to watch their pop idol simply play the hits. Elaborate production values and strong narrative arcs soon became just as integral to the superstar tour as the music itself. You only have to look at Michael Jackson’s Dangerous shows, complete with catapult stunts and ghoulish illusions, two years later to recognize the immediate impact Blond Ambition had. And it has continued to inspire pop’s A-listers ever since. Without Blond Ambition, it’s unlikely we’d have the gravity-defying acrobatics of P!nk, the candy-colored razzmatazz of Katy Perry or the formidable conceptual journeys of Beyoncé. And it goes without saying that its footprints were all over the various balls staged by Lady Gaga.

Madonna herself has refused to rest on her laurels, going even bigger and bolder on the likes of 1993’s The Girlie Show, 2004’s Re-Invention and 2008’s Sticky and Sweet. But nothing has ever changed the game quite like her extremely blond and incredibly ambitious 1990 world tour.

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• July 21, 1990 Setlist

Madonna Setlist at Wembley Stadium, London, England

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Tour: Blond Ambition World Tour Tour statistics Add setlist

• Express Yourself ( with "Everybody" intro" ) Play Video
• Open Your Heart Play Video
• Causing a Commotion Play Video
• Where's the Party ( contains excerpts from Shep Pettibone Remix ) Play Video
• Like a Virgin Play Video
• Like a Prayer ( contains excerpts from "Act of Contrition" along with elements of 12" Club Mix and the 12" Dance Mix ) Play Video
• Live to Tell Play Video
• Oh Father Play Video
• Papa Don't Preach Play Video
• Sooner or Later Play Video
• Hanky Panky Play Video
• Now I'm Following You ( contains elements of "Cry Baby" ) Play Video
• Material Girl Play Video
• Cherish Play Video
• Into the Groove ( contains elements of "Ain't Nobody Better" ) Play Video
• Vogue Play Video
• Holiday ( contains elements of "Do the Bus Stop" ) Play Video
• Keep It Together ( with "Family Affair" by Sly & The Family Stone intro ) Play Video

Edits and Comments

4 activities (last edit by [deleted user] , 17 Jun 2013, 14:26 Etc/UTC )

Songs on Albums

• Express Yourself
• Keep It Together
• Like a Prayer
• Hanky Panky
• Now I'm Following You
• Sooner or Later
• Live to Tell
• Open Your Heart
• Papa Don't Preach
• Where's the Party
• Into the Groove
• Like a Virgin
• Material Girl
• Causing a Commotion

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25 Reasons Madonna's Blond Ambition Tour Still Rules, 25 Years Later

A quarter of a century ago, cone bras ruled the world

Madonna kicked off her Blond Ambition World Tour on April 13, 1990, 25 years ago this week. Besides offering the world Madonna in her absolute prime – as a performer and as an all-around focus of attention – Blond Ambition changed the pop-culture landscape.

Fans might be surprised to learn that it’s not Madonna’s highest-grossing tour; Sticky & Sweet, MDNA and The Girlie Show each performed better. And it featured only 57 stops. But it’s still hugely important and might have done the most to define Madonna as a music icon – and here are 25 reasons for that.

(NSFW warning: The article features clips from Madonna in concert, and some of the language might not be work-appropriate. Hey, it’s Madonna.)

1. It reinvented the concert tour.

Today, most major pop tours are full-scale productions with costume changes, special effects, elaborate sets and a sense of drama that takes the experience beyond someone just singing into a microphone. It wasn’t always that way, however, and Madonna and choreographer Vincent Paterson specifically set out to elevate the concert.

As Paterson explained to PEOPLE in a 1990 interview, “The biggest thing we tried to do is change the shape of concerts. Instead of just presenting songs, we wanted to combine fashion, Broadway, rock and performance art.”

2. It has full-on acts

The fact that Madonna divided her performances into five thematic categories – Metropolis, Religious, Dick Tracy, Art Deco and Encore – suggests not only a level of creative planning unusual for concerts at the time but also the sheer volume of material Madonna had to work with – and at only 31 years old, no less.

3. It made a ton of money.

In the first two hours that tickets went on sale, a total of 482,832 were purchased, for a grand total of $14,237,000. By the end of the tour, Madonna had generated more than $62 million – that’s $113 million adjusted for inflation.

4. It helped cement the link between pop costumes and couture.

In addition to the vast majority of Blond Ambition’s many stage costumes, Madonna’s bullet bra was designed by haute couture legend Jean Paul Gaultier. In 2012, one of these very bras sold at a Christie’s auction for $52,000.

5. It gave us that iconic ponytail.

According to a 1990 edition of PEOPLE’s Style Watch, Madonna’s clip-on ponytail quickly became a look that fans copied when attending Blond Ambition stops. “Lots of women – and men – are showing up at her concerts with this hairdo,” remarked Warner Bros. Records publicity VP Liz Rosenberg. “It’s really catching on.”

You might think Madonna would do anything for a look, but that clip-on ponytail resulted from one specific need: she needed a style that wouldn’t get tangled in the headset she wears when she sings.

6. The title itself was a stand for independence.

Initially, it was to be the Like a Prayer World Tour, sponsored by Pepsi. Of course, the “Like a Prayer” video was met with a great deal of controversy, and Pepsi eventually backed out of a licensing deal with “The Donner.” Thus, Blond Ambition was born.

7. It overcame a rough start.

Blond Ambition kicked off on Friday the 13th – Friday, April 13, 1990, near Tokyo, Japan. Suitably, the weather was miserably wet and cold, and at one point Madonna slid across the wet stage and proclaimed, “You didn’t know you were here for an ice-skating show. Well, I’m Dorothy Hamill.”

8. It featured Madonna at her most perfectionist, for better or worse.

And according to the New York Times review of the concert , that meant the concert was more “live” than live. “Madonna has become so perfectionistic, and so athletic in her dancing, that she would clearly rather lip-sync than risk a wrong note,” the review notes. “With tickets priced at $30, concertgoers might expect a more live concert.”

9. It made Madonna confront "the fascist state of Toronto."

As documented in the 1991 behind-the-scenes movie Madonna: Truth or Dare , Toronto police threatened to arrest Madonna should her performance of “Like a Virgin” feature her miming masturbation. When the faux-Middle Eastern arrangement of the hit song played, however, Madonna did her usual dance, hand motions and all.

Ultimately the police opted not to arrest her on obscenity charges, but she still famously called the Canadian city a "fascist state."

10. It was condemned by the Vatican.

Not that it’s a good thing to earn the wrath of the Roman Catholic Church, but it speaks to what a big deal the Blond Ambition tour was that the Vatican’s official newspaper, Osservatore Romano , declared the show sinful – a more or less unprecedented decision.

11. "Don’t talk. If you talk, I will stop speaking, all right?"

Madonna’s response to the condemnation, however, was 100 percent Madonna. After commanding the Italian press to cease talking, she defends her performance. “Like theater, [Blond Ambition] asks questions, provokes thought and takes you on an emotional journey, portraying good and bad, light and dark, joy and sorrow, redemption and salvation.”

12. Every Blond Ambition performance began with a prayer.

Regardless of what the Pope may have thought of Madonna’s work, she felt she was on good terms with God, and Truth or Dare notes that she began every show with a group prayer.

13. She sang "Happy Birthday" to her dad at the tour’s Detroit show …

There’s been no shortage of kerfuffle about Madonna’s relationship with the rest of the Ciccone clan, but the tour featured a touching moment onstage with her dad, Silvio Ciccone, at her hometown show in Detroit.

14. Which means she performed all those naughty bits with her dad in the audience.

There’s a moment in Truth or Dare when she mentions that her dad watching the racier parts of the Blond Ambition tour is scarier than confronting the Toronto police.

15. It was a decidedly pro-gay show.

It’s notable that Madonna was up-front about the fact that six of her seven male backup dancers were gay men. Madonna, after all, had been outspoken about gay rights and gay people in general long before it became the norm among celebrities. In fact

16. Its final U.S. performance was dedicated to Keith Haring.

Madonna was good friends with the pop artist Keith Haring, who died of AIDS-related complications on Feb. 16, 1990. The Blond Ambition World Tour’s last American stop, in East Rutherford, New Jersey, was dedicated to Haring’s memory, and the more than $300,000 the show made was donated to the Foundation for AIDS Research. (Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet Tour used a Haring-inspired backdrop, seen in the above clip.)

17. It featured a gay Dick Tracy chorus line.

Skip forward to the 5:45 mark in this clip of the Blond Ambition performance of “Now I’m Following You” to see six dancing Dick Tracys pair off into three male-male pairs. It’s quite the spectacle, and it’s even more notable when you realize that most of the tour began before the 1990 Dick Tracy remake (in which Madonna starred) hit theaters, meaning this chorus line was the first glimpse fans saw of the reinvented Dick Tracy.

And no, none of those Dick Tracys were Warren Beatty , who played the title character and who was dating Madonna throughout the tour.

18. It was also pro-safe sex.

You have to hand it to Madonna: Encouraging the use of condoms was on-point in 1990, and every show had her introducing “Into the Groove” by saying, “You really never get to know a guy until you ask him to wear a rubber.”

19. It mocked the perception of Madonna as a dumb blond sexpot.

For the Blond Ambition take on “Material Girl,” Madonna sang the entire song in an accent that falls somewhere between dumb blonde, “Noo Yawk” housewife and gangster’s moll. Say what you will about Madonna taking herself very seriously, but most singers wouldn’t ever perform in curlers and a bathrobe.

20. It had grand cinematic aspirations beyond Dick Tracy .

The first act of the show is themed “Metropolis.” That’s not Superman’s city. That’s the 1927 German expressionist epic Metropolis , and you can see it in the retro-science-fiction aesthetic of the stage. Hey, if you were Madonna, you’d aim for high art.

21. There’s some Stanley Kubrick in there, too.

In a 1991 New York Times interview , Madonna described the Blond Ambition performance of “Keep It Together” as “Bob Fosse-meets- Clockwork Orange .”

“It’s the show’s ultimate statement about the family, because we’re absolutely brutalizing with each other, while there’s also no mistaking that we love each other deeply,” she said.

22. Kevin Costner thought the show was "neat."

There’s a famous scene in Truth or Dare in which Madonna parties with other celebs after a Los Angeles show. Among them is Kevin Costner, who tells Madonna he found the show “neat.” It’s an amazing moment, and Madonna is predictably incensed that Costner would use that adjective to describe her. “No one’s ever described me quite that way,” she tells him. Later, she decrees “Anybody who says my show was ‘neat’ has to go.”

Costner would forgive the diss in 2007.

23. Truth or Dare was a success, too.

The documentary about Blond Ambition was released in 1991. It cost $4.5 million to make. It earned $29 million. Sure, Madonna was nominated for a Razzie for Worst Actress – for playing herself, no less – but she had piles of money with which to console herself.

24. It was parodied twice.

Truth or Dare – and by extension, Blond Ambition – were skewered two times, by Julie Brown in Medusa: Dare to Be Truthful and by English comedians Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders in In Bed with French and Saunders . We’d like to think Madge took it all in stride.

25. It essentially made The Immaculate Collection happen.

The tour concluded in August 1990. Everyone was all “Wow, Madonna has an amazing library of hits.” In November 1990, her first greatest hits collection, The Immaculate Collection , was released. You do the math.

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'A Freudian nightmare': Madonna's Blond Ambition tour turns 30

Three decades on, the controversy-courting concert tour is still shaping the ways female artists express their sexuality

• Modern Toss on Blond Ambition tour ...

I n Toronto, Madonna simulated masturbation on a velvet bed under the watchful eye of the Canadian police, who threatened her with arrest if her show went ahead. In Italy, unions called for a general strike if Madonna performed, and Pope John Paul II declared her concert “one of the most satanic shows in the history of humanity”. The Blond Ambition tour , which turned 30 years old last month, remains among the most controversial tours of all time.

It seems bizarre now that so much fuss was made over a little fake frotting and a few gyrating nuns. But this was 1990, when Kylie Minogue was still performing in straw hats, Bananarama were deemed dangerous and the gossip pages raged over Annie Lennox singing Would I Lie to You in a bra. Into this age of relative wholesomeness landed Blond Ambition Madonna , on a mission to combine fashion, rock, Broadway theatricality and performance art, to “be provocative” and “break useless taboos”. Mission accomplished. Jean Paul Gaultier’s famous conical corset has been described as a “Freudian nightmare”, a generation of teenagers asked their parents what S&M stood for, and the coy suggestiveness of the live pop spectacle was blown wide open.

The themed set-pieces – religion, German expressionism, art deco, Madge’s rubbish new movie Dick Tracy – set a new bar for confrontational theatricality that only greater shock tactics could ever challenge. Marilyn Manson ’s onstage Bible shredding is straight out of the “Madonna 90” guidebook, and with her firework bras, stage blood and copious dry-humping, Lady Gaga looks as if she was conceived at a Blond Ambition gig. But the key taboo Madonna broke that summer was that of feminine sexuality as strength rather than titillation, as something owned by the artist not cashed in by the svengalis. That’s what gave us SexKylie , “ zig-a-zig-AH! ”, Wrecking Ball -era Miley and Nicki Minaj’s bottom-obsessed Anaconda . It’s one of the reasons female artists feel comfortable singing about sex and desire today.

Sex sells, though, and more sex sells more. Over the decades, overt sexuality became the expected – nay, contractual – pop norm. Attention-grabbing boundaries were pushed to their limits, and artists were pressured to play this new, ever raunchier game. Enter Billie Eilish, defiantly covered, mocking the uber-sexualised expectations of modern pop with a film of her stripping off beneath blackened water: “If I wear more, if I wear less, who decides what that makes me?” she intones, shaming the bodyshamers and staring out the monetisable male gaze. By asserting ownership of her body she is not re-establishing any old taboos, she’s breaking the oldest one of all – subservience. Her image, her body, her art, her rules. Which was Madonna’s point all along.

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How Madonna’s Blond Ambition Tour Changed Pop Concerts Forever

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• How Madonna’s Blond Ambition Tour…

Madonna performs on stage at the Feyenoord stadium on July 24, 1990.

“I know that I’m not the best singer and I know that I’m not the best dancer. But, I can f—ing push people’s buttons and be as provocative as I want. This tour’s goal is to break useless taboos.” There was only one all-singing, all-dancing chart-topper who could get away with  such a bold declaration  at the turn of the ’90s, and it wasn’t Paula Abdul.

From the moment that she writhed around suggestively in a wedding dress at the 1984 MTV VMAs, Madonna became the live act that you couldn’t — and didn’t want to — take your eyes off. Singing in front of a traditional guitar-bass-drums trio was never going to cut it for the woman seemingly hellbent on shocking middle America.

Then the undisputed Queen of Pop by quite a margin, Madonna had already toyed with the theatrical on 1987’s Who’s That Girl Tour, a whirlwind of glitzy costume changes, giant video screens and dramatic reenactments that  she described as  “Broadway in a stadium.” But 1990’s Blond Ambition — which kicked off 30 years ago — took Madge’s natural sense of showmanship to new heights.

Madonna asked Jean-Paul Gaultier to create more than 60 costumes for the tour, an amount which the haute couture designer admits took  350 aspirins  to get through. Luckily, all this headache-inducing work paid off. The Frenchman’s conical bra creation, which was later sold  at auction for $52,000 , became one of the defining fashion statements of the decade. And items such as the polka-dotted blouse, clip-on ponytail and mic headset all became a part of the chart-topper’s style legacy, too.

Unsurprisingly, Madonna was just as fastidious when it came to the tour’s choreography. “Wimps and wannabes need not apply”  read the call out  seeking “fierce male dancers” for the tour. Led by Vincent Paterson, the chosen army of six were put through boot camp-like rehearsals in preparation for a tour that spanned 57 dates, five months and three continents. And with its large hydraulic platform and multiple elaborate sets, Blond Ambition’s staging essentially cost the same as the GDP of a small country. Simply no one else could compete, not even the King to Madonna’s Queen of Pop. A few years prior, Michael Jackson’s Bad Tour had impressed many with its slick moves and dazzling lights – even the BBC’s cult hero John Peel  hailed it  as a “performance of matchless virtuosity.” But Madge’s elaborative high-concept, five-act production left it for dust.

Blond Ambition didn’t give fans a single opportunity to get bored or head for the bar. Every four minutes there was something new to digest. Take the opening ‘Metropolis’ section, inspired by the expressionist sci-fi of Fritz Lang, for example. Madonna simulates sex in that bra while performing “Express Yourself,” straddles a chair during “Open Your Heart” and belts out “Causing a Commotion” while playfully wrestling her two backing vocalists to the ground. And this was just the first quarter of an hour.

As you’d expect from an artist whose Pepsi commercial had been yanked amidst calls of blasphemy, the second ‘Religious’ section was even more attention-grabbing. Wildly rubbing her crotch in a red velvet bed, Madonna left little to the imagination on a sensual reworking of “Like a Virgin.” And on “Like a Prayer,” the track whose provocative video had caused the soft drink giants to bail, the star and her crew are kitted out as nuns and priests.

Of course, much of the predominantly Roman Catholic nation of Italy didn’t appreciate this type of cosplay. A second date at the Stadio Flaminio was called off after none other than Pope John Paul II implored citizens to  boycott  “one of the most satanic shows in the history of humanity.”

The controversial blend of religion and erotica also incurred the wrath of the  Toronto police  force, particularly the “lewd and obscene” display of “Like a Virgin.” But despite the threat of arrest, Madonna and her management team refused to bow down to authority. The star even referenced the furor during her second show at the city’s SkyDome, asking the crowd “Do you think that I’m a bad girl?… I hope so.”

Madonna famously described Toronto as a fascist state in  Truth or Dare , the illuminating backstage documentary which further boosted Blond Ambition’s pop cultural cachet. Who can forget the scene where the star pretends to gag after Kevin Costner – then the biggest movie star in the world – summarizes 105 minutes of sense-assaulting, boundary-pushing entertainment as “neat”?

Thankfully, the sell-out crowds reacted to the tour with a little more enthusiasm, even the  Dick Tracy  section featuring several numbers that would have been unfamiliar at the time. The comic book adaptation, which co-starred Madonna as femme fatale Breathless Mahoney, hit the big screen half-way through Blond Ambition’s run. And the ever-astute star attempted to guide fans towards the cinema with a high-kicking third act dedicated to the trench coat-wearing detective.

But for sheer entertainment value, the ‘Art Deco’ segment is tough to beat. Sporting a pink bathrobe and curlers while seated under a beauty parlor hair dryer, Madonna performed the whole of “Material Girl” in a comical Noo-Yawk accent before throwing fake dollar bills into the crowd. “Cherish” saw the star take up the harp accompanied by (what else?) a troupe of dancing mermen. And following a  West Side Story -inspired routine for arguably her finest pure pop moment, “Into the Groove,” she wrapped things up with a faithful recreation of the iconic “Vogue” video.

By the time each and every crew member bids an on-stage farewell during the Bob Fosse-meets- A Clockwork Orange  encore of “Keep it Together,” it’s clear that you’ve just witnessed a spectacle of ground-breaking proportions. As dancer  Luis Camacho said,  Madonna “wanted to give the audience an experience, rather than them just going to a concert. She set the stage for concert shows and experiences that followed.” The tour even impressed Grammy voters, who were notoriously slow to recognize Madonna’s greatness. The video of the tour won the 1991 award for best music video, long form — Madonna’s very first Grammy Award.

Sure enough, no longer were audiences content to watch their pop idol simply play the hits. Elaborate production values and strong narrative arcs soon became just as integral to the superstar tour as the music itself. You only have to look at Michael Jackson’s Dangerous shows, complete with catapult stunts and ghoulish illusions, two years later to recognize the immediate impact Blond Ambition had. And it has continued to inspire pop’s A-listers ever since. Without Blond Ambition, it’s unlikely we’d have the gravity-defying acrobatics of P!nk, the candy-colored razzmatazz of Katy Perry or the formidable conceptual journeys of Beyoncé. And it goes without saying that its footprints were all over the various balls staged by Lady Gaga.

Madonna herself has refused to rest on her laurels, going even bigger and bolder on the likes of 1993’s The Girlie Show, 2004’s Re-Invention and 2008’s Sticky and Sweet. But nothing has ever changed the game quite like her extremely blond and incredibly ambitious 1990 world tour.

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Sex. Religion. Death. Conical bras. Madonna’s ‘Like A Prayer’ and Blond Ambition Tour at 30

Provocative and – at the time – shocking, Madonna's fourth album 'Like A Prayer' rocked the establishment, and set a new template for self-empowered women in pop. The Blond Ambition world tour that followed, meanwhile, changed the face of live music forever. On the 30th anniversary of the album's release, El Hunt tells the story

Some albums are worth judging by their cover. With two thumbs poked defiantly into a denim waistband – like a bedazzled answer to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ – the artwork for ‘Like A Prayer’ is the perfect visual for Madonna ’s audacious, unflinching fourth record. Released on March 21, 1989, this daring exploration of catholicism, desire, bereavement, superstardom and pleasure is an unparalleled totem of pop music 30 years on.

Arriving three years after ‘True Blue‘, a record of bright, loved-up bubblegum pop gold, ‘Like A Prayer’ is abrasive and raw. Moving the focus away from presenting a collection of immediate wall-to-wall bangers, Madonna’s 1989 release feels more concerned with exploration instead. Hulking great ballad ‘Oh Father’ cleverly alludes to her fractured relationship with her father and god at the same time; not your typical album fodder. ‘’Till Death Do Us Part’ also nods toward her split from her then-husband. “I’m not your friend, I’m just your little wife,” Madonna sings, atop jaunty, fidgeting melodies.

While ‘True Blue’ talked vaguely about lust – the “ desire burning inside of me” on ‘Open Your Heart’ – here the door is flung overtly off its hinges. Madonna was brought up a Catholic, and ‘Like A Prayer’ unpacks how self-pleasure and sex can stack up next to devout faith. In Madonna’s world, desire is holy.

“ In Catholicism you are a born sinner and you’re a sinner all your life,” Madonna told Interview Magazine in 1989. “No matter how you try to get away from it, the sin is within you all the time. It was this fear that haunted me; it taunted and pained me every moment. My music was probably the only distraction I had.”

In the tabloids, Madonna was treated like music’s most sinful villain. A copy of The Sun , from November 1989, derides the singer for having a “whore’s foul mouth” (charming!) and takes great pleasure in tearing apart her revealing outfits. The gossip papers rabidly followed her every move; reporting joyously on the breakdown of her marriage to Sean Penn, and gleefully branding her movie project Who’s That Girl a ‘flop’.

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‘Like A Prayer’ seizes back the narrative, and yet, it’s not bound to being firmly autobiographical. Sure, it’s confessional, but in a sexier, more abstract way that plays with conventional ideas of sin. “Catholicism’s such a dramatic religion,” Madonna told NME in 1995. “There’s a lot of pomp and circumstance and ritual and punishment and when you’ve sinned you go to a dark curtained booth and tell the priest all the bad things you’ve done and it’s all so… kinky!”

Which brings us onto ‘Like A Prayer’s sardonic closer. ‘Act of Contrition’ starts out earnestly, reciting solemn prayer atop yowls of guitar; listing various sins and asking for forgiveness in husky tones. Hamming it up for the tabloids, Madonna’s repentance is short-lived. “I have a reservation!” she growls fiercely, parodying the entitlement and pettiness of superstardom. “What do you mean it’s not in the computer?!?!”

On its release, ‘Like A Prayer’ caused almost immediate controversy. Its title track infamously debuted during a Pepsi commercial, with a visual helmed by Space Jam director Joe Pytka. The fizzy drink super-corp paid Madonna $5 million for her appearance, eager for one of the world’s biggest superstars to endorse their brown beverages. To sweeten the deal even further,  they also slapped a sponsorship stamp on her forthcoming world tour.

The next day, Madonna’s iconic and controversial  ‘Like A Prayer’ music video was released. Against a barren landscape of flaming crucifixes, Madonna wanders into an empty Catholic church. There, she’s immediately drawn to a weeping statue of a black saint, and kneeling before him, she anoints the statue’s feet and finds stigmata on her hands; playing a Mary Magdalene type figure and drawing on blatant religious iconography, Madonna’s interested in how the Bible’s “sinful woman” actually represents something sacred and worthy of celebration.

Later, the video depicts the saint statue coming *ahem* to life, and things get very raunchy. The song itself draws parallels between intense sexual pleasure and transcending to a higher spiritual plane. Basically, no prizes for guessing what variety of moaning Madge is on about when she’s down on her knees, telling the Messianic figure that he’s “like an angel sighing”.

Predictably, conservative Pepsi-gluggers everywhere were outraged by Madonna’s audacity: how dare this wanton woman taint innocent viewers with her alternative explorations of sin, sex, and religion. In response, they began to boycott Pepsi’s products. The global corporation swiftly cut ties, pulling the original ad, along with their brand-stamping of her tour.

As for Madonna? Well, she didn’t give a shit, first of all, because Pepsi let her keep the fee anyway. Cracking on with her artistic vision for the record’s roll-out, she renamed the live run. The ‘Like A Prayer’ tour became Blond Ambition tour. It’s no exaggeration to state that every pop production you’ve ever seen since is indebted to the show’s immense vision. And far from being knocked by the headlines around her, Madonna thrived in the face of controversy.

Divided into five distinct segments – Metropolis, Religious, Dick Tracy, Art Deco and Encore – Blond Ambition was far more like theatre production than conventional concert; with elaborate costumes and intricate sets that referenced everything from A Clockwork Orange and Fritz Lang to high fashion and performance art.

And at the same time as she opened up a dialogue around sex, Madonna also chose to use her huge platform to bring the AIDS epidemic to the forefront. Each copy of ‘Like A Prayer’ came with a ‘The Facts About Aids’ information card. At live shows, she spread clear  messages about practicing safer sex, and chose to dedicate her final American date to her friend, the late Keith Haring. Her New Jersey show alone raised $300,000 for The Foundation for AIDS Research, at a time when the disease was widely feared and misunderstood by the public, and LGBT+ people were disproportionately discriminated against. “Put a condom on your willy,” Madonna would tell the audience.

“ What Madonna said to me was this’” recounts Luis Camacho Xtravaganza, who toured the world as a backing dancer on the Blond Ambition tour. “‘There’s no such thing as bad press, honey, there’s no such thing as bad press,” he remembers with a cackle. “‘Worry when they’re not talking about you’”

A member of New York City’s legendary ballroom leaders House of Xtravaganza, Luis choreographed the ‘Vogue’ music video with fellow voguer Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza, and he quickly become drawn to Madonna’s total lack of artistic compromise. Born and raised a  “kid from the projects” on the Lower East Side – “ I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth,” Luis says – the whole experience of touring the world was dizzying enough. And as rehearsals went on, he realised he was a part of something truly historic.

“Madonna wanted to take things further,” Luis says. “Her vision was elevating the concert formula to a level of theatre. Inserting art into that, too, she really wanted to give the audience an experience, rather than them just going to a concert and seeing somebody sing into a mic. I really think she was a pioneer in that. She set the stage for concert shows and experiences, for any show that followed.” he says.

“She is good at pushing boundaries and buttons and making people feel something from what she’s doing, whether that feeling is good or bad,” Luis observes. “She’s fearless – I love that she knows what she wants, and will bring it to the forefront, regardless of what people might think. An artist should be true to her platform, and she was true to hers. And very unapologetic about it. I love that about her.”

The Pope, Vatican State, and several other Catholic groups begged to differ, taking issue with Madonna’s ‘blasphemous’ use of religious iconography. Meanwhile the Toronto police force threatened the star with arrest, claiming that her notorious performance of ‘Like A Virgin’ – which featured Madonna joyously simulating masturbation atop a luxurious velvet bed placed centre stage, flanked by two men with enormous stuffed breasts – was in breach of obscenity laws. “Do you think that I’m a bad girl?” Madonna asked the endless crowds at her final show in the Canadian city, as police looked on. “Do you think that I deserve to be arrested?” she goaded them.

“I hope so,” she decided, before promptly launching into the full, uncensored routine. Ultimately, the threatened arrest never happened, but Madonna was fully prepared to take the risk.

Ian Cottrell – who now runs the long-running Dirty Pop club night at Cardiff’s Clwb Ifor Bach – went to see Madonna’s show at Wembley Stadium show when he was 17, and halfway through sixth form. “I just remember t he pure excitement of her coming on stage and opening with ‘Express Yourself”” he says. “The dancers, the industrial set, Shep Pettibone’s beats, and then Madonna, appearing at the top of the stairs in the iconic suit from the [song’s] video, with the bra poking through. She asked “DO YOU BELIEVE IN LOVE?!” And we we all went crazy.”

Marching down the stairs in a business suit, Madonna soon rips off the jacket to reveal a golden corset with those infamously cartoonish, pointed breasts; designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier. Straddling helpless male dancers on the floor, grabbing her crotch, and thrusting – to ear-piercing screams – this was a strong, athletic woman taking full ownership of her sexuality, and her own pleasures and desire.

“Bloomin’ heck, we were new Christians at the time, and I didn’t know what to do with myself!” says Janet, now 56, who was at the Wembley Stadium Blond Ambition show with her husband in 1990. The pair had recently found faith. “There was this whole thing about sex on the altar: that was very out there, and at that time, shocking. I don’t say the f-word, and so this one woman getting everyone to chant it was shocking for me [Madonna asked Wembley to chant the word in order to reclaim it]. All these male dancers were utterly in bondage, submitting to Madonna. And the outfits! Nobody dressed like that.”

“It was hilarious in some respects because we’d gone from seeing [Evangelist preacher] Billy Graham there, to seeing Madonna,” Janet laughs. “She’s had a Catholic upbringing, and she didn’t seem to be denouncing it, but I remember I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to like it, in some respects,” Janet admits. “I will always remember those very hard, stiff conical bosoms,” she exclaims. “They were fascinating for me, as somebody who sews! The whole conical bosoms business, incredible…“

Think of the whips and chains of Rihanna’s ‘S&M’, Ariana Grande’s ‘Side to Side’ (according to Ariana, it’s a song about feeling a bit, um, sore after a vigorous night of pash) Christine and The Queens’ macho-femme articulations of desire, and countless other pop greats who emerged post-Madonna, and traces of ‘Like A Prayer’ and Blond Ambition linger in their every move.

Watch a pop show now, and you may well take the sheer scale of production for granted. From Troye Sivan rising onto the stage of Hammersmith Apollo while reclined on the sofa of a full living room set, to Lorde performing ‘Melodrama’ inside a floating box with a rotating cast of characters within, pop’s motto has become go big, or go home. When Olly Alexander gyrated steamily behind a floodlit curtain on Years & Years recent ‘Sanctify’ tour (the group were supported, no less, by London vogue house Kiki House of Tea) the nods to Madonna were clear and deliberate.  ‘Like A Prayer’ – and the genius of the Blond Ambition tour – led the way to all of this bold, visual expression, making room in the pop landscape for artists with ambitious, conceptual ideas that provoke discussion and nimbly tread the line between euphoria and danger.

“As with everything that involves something that is a hot button – the [masturbation] simulation on stage, stuff like that – you’re always gonna have people who root for it, and others who aren’t enthused,” Luis says. “If it fits, then do it regardless – it’s expression.”

“I think it was a great forerunner for what we have now,” Ian concludes. “Blond Ambition definitely raised the bar, and where Madonna led at that time, people had to follow.“

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