Has Madonna still got it?

As a kid in the 80’s I loved Madonna, I had the albums, the bracelets, lots of crosses on necklaces and fishnet gloves. Me and my friends would mimic her dance moves and put on our own shows for our poor mums. But I never got to see her in any of her earlier concerts, maybe because I was a bit young and she is renowned for her saucy shows.

Madonna was a mega icon and at 57 years old she still is today.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to see Madonna on Wednesday evening on the 2nd night of her Rebel Heart tour at the O2 Arena at North Greenwich. Our travel associates Travel2 had organised for an executive suite at the Arena and myself along with 20 agents (including 3 of my colleagues) got to experience a night with Madge.

I have been to concerts before at the O2 and the shows I have seen have been amazing, but have to say the queues and security can be a bit of a pain. Not so much when you are VIP.. we went through a tightened security, which is great and then entered the VIP American Express Lounge for a pre show drink. Then on up to Suite 234 where we was greeted by our own personal bar man and enjoyed a few beverages and dinner courtesy of  Travel2. I also bumped into an old work colleague of mine whom I worked with in Spain for several years and it was great to have a catch up with her too.

Cruise.co at the O2
Robin, Philippa, myself and Alison

Catching up with my old colleague Vicki from Spain

I went with a great excitement, especially after speaking to friends whom had seen her live previously and reading that the night before she had guests on stage such as the fabulous Graham Norton and Idris Elba. Apart from a hiccup with the food order (we was actually eating when she came on stage), the evening was OK.

I say OK and not amazing for several reasons, for some reason Madonna has a DJ as her opening act. Most big artists will showcase up and coming groups and singers for their warm up but Madge has a DJ and to be honest it really wasn’t all that. The music he played was OK, but I think it would have gone down better if we was at a club and not a concert. It certainly didn’t get you hyped up for seeing one of the biggest artists in the world.

Madonna finally made an appearance at around 9.15pm with much excitement to the waiting crowd. Now I have to be honest, I am not up on Madonna’s latest album and if truth be told, I really only prefer her older stuff up to the late 90’s and only some of the stuff from the last decade.

As you would expect she made a grand entrance and had a large dance entourage. But it seemed to me that probably the 1st 20-30 minutes seemed flat and there seemed to not be much of a buzz of atmosphere in the arena.

That was until she sung her 1st classic hit of the night ‘True Blue’ and then the audience seemed to come alive.

As usual, it was full of sexual innuendos with the style of dancing, the backdrop videos and with certain songs lyrics. So Madonna didn’t disappoint her hard core fans there!

I take my hat off to Madonna though, because at 57 years old she still looks, moves and sounds amazing and I am so glad I got the chance to experience her live.

Madge doing a bit of pole dancing

Would I see her again? I really am not sure, unless it was a concert of just her old music then I would be there in a shot.

So for the time being I shall be thinking about my forthcoming ‘Holiday’, getting ‘Into the Groove’ for my works Christmas conference and hoping my ‘Papa don’t preach’ when we carve the Turkey this year…

Dawn

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