There was something simultaneously strange and familiar about the girl in the green top. She was standing in the aisle, head tilted back, searching the balconies above for someone she had arranged to meet. She waved her arms about, turning round and round. I recognised that look on her face – part embarrassed that she was standing in front of a thousand people, trying to attract the attention of one person who wasn’t seeing her; part annoyed because they’d made a plan and where is this fool?; part desperate because what if they can’t find each other before the lights go down and the show starts?
I’ve been that girl in the green top, but not for years now, and then I realised what was so strange about it: ordinarily nowadays she and her friend would be on cellphones, saying, “Where are you?” She couldn’t do that on Sunday night though, because Madonna had taken her back to the 80s.
Madonna started the European leg of her Madame X tour on Sunday night with an eight-night residency at the Lisbon Coliseu, an intimate Elizabethan-style theatre in the centre of town, a venue so snug it feels like you’re watching her perform in your school hall. I was probably ten years old when I first heard a Madonna song, but now that I’ve seen her up close, I can tell you a few things about her:
1. Madonna is astonishingly small. She had a troupe of dancers and was the smallest person on stage, even when her six-year-old twins came on to join her.
2. Madonna is astonishingly big: no matter who’s breakdancing or backflipping around her, no matter what fireworks are going off, all you can see is Madonna.
3. Madonna banned cameras from the show. Security staff sealed all phones in foam lockbags that could only be unlocked with special keys at the exit afterwards. You have a choice of how to interpret this. One is to figure that she’s trying to control her image, that she only wants photographs of herself in the public space that she has approved. The other is to believe her when she told us, “Thank you for letting go of your phones tonight. I want us to be present and share this time together.” All I can say is that it felt different, being in a space with people without cellphones and cameras. It felt as though we were all experiencing the same thing, that our attention was directed in the same way, that we were there together. Whatever their reasons, I wish more people banned cellphones from their events.
4. Halfway through, a scrim descended in front of the stage and gorgeous black and white footage played of what seemed to be the young Madonna, in an empty dance studio, in extraordinary size and close-up, dancing to her song “Frozen”. Her body was lithe and strong and young and alive. For the first time, I understood dance as an art form. It took some minutes, and a glimpse of the tattooed word “mom” on her knuckles, to realise that this ten-metre high person wasn’t Madonna 30 years ago but her daughter Lourdes, 20 years old, now. And as we watched, a single bright spot behind the scrim picked out Madonna, looking even tinier in perspective, singing at the piano. As Lourdes moved, young and alive, her mother glowed and hovered and showed through her youthful body like a heartlight.
5. Madonna lives in Lisbon now, and when she appeared on stage, once the gasping and crying from the audience ebbed, people started shouting, “Welcome home!”
The grand finale of the show was a rousing version of “Like a Prayer”, and when she reached the final lines:
I hear you call my name
And it feels like home
Madonna paused before the final word, paused and paused, and there was silence before the entire audience crooned, with a kind of longing sob: “hooooome”. It was the perfect ending. Someone like you or me, or another artist, would have let that be the final note.
6. Madonna always has the final word. She waited for the audience to stop, then held the pause, then sang the word herself. Madonna is not like you or me, or another artist. She’s Madonna.
7. Madonna’s show was inflected with Brazilian rhythms and a keening, poignant fado sensibility. You can go to any number of tiny, dark fado clubs in the old district of Alfama tonight and hear men and women singing the Lisbon music of sorrow and strength, of loss and longing and keeping on going. Madonna discovered it shortly after moving to Lisbon. She has reinvented herself as a fado singer. On Sunday she sang on stage with the great-grandson of Amalia Rodriguez. Then she sang Cesaria Evora’s Sodade. She performed music from her new album, only some of which succeeds. I thought what it must be like to be 61 years old, as rich as you like and with everything to lose, yet still keep trying new things, making new discoveries, taking risks, failing and succeeding. Somewhere in the world the Rolling Stones are on stage playing Jumping Jack Flash for the 10 millionth time. I am not Madonna’s biggest fan – the four weeping, whooping gentlemen behind me have a much stronger claim to that title – but by god she’s an inspiration.
Times, 15 January 2020