On February 7 2007, Madonna’s live CD/DVD set The Confessions Tour bowed in the Billboard 200 album chart at #15 in the U.S. with sales of 40,000 copies. Its first week sales were nearly double the opening numbers of her previous live release, 2006’s I’m Going To Tell You A Secret, which had peaked at #33. It was Madonna’s 18th Top 20 album in the U.S.
Meanwhile, on the Canadian album charts The Confessions Tour entered at #2, also besting Secret which had peaked at #4.
On February 6 2014, Like A Virgin producer Nile Rodgers mentioned his collaboration with Madonna during a Google+ Hangout with Billboard:
“I don’t have any unreleased Madonna material because Madonna knew exactly what she wanted her album to be when we did Like a Virgin. The only song that I had any input of bringing into the mix was a cover of Rose Royce’s ballad Love Don’t Live Here Anymore. That was a final last-minute decision.”
On February 4 2003, filming for Madonna’s music video for American Life took place in Los Angeles with director Jonas Åkerlund.
The casting call issued for the video sought the following:
Eastern European Man (30 – 60 yrs. old, Real people, THIN, interesting looking, great face, worn out looking, craggy). 4 Beautiful Models (drop dead gorgeous w. amazing legs and bodies). 10 soldiers (must have long hair and be willing to shave it for the video… good-looking, really good body). Hair stylist (male or female, any ethnicity, must be real hair stylists, think editorial type. Stylist (male or female, any ethnicity, 20’s, cool and interesting looking, think N.Y. 2 Babes (very voluptuous and buxom, bimbo types, b pin-up girls). Makeup artists (m or f, any ethnicity, a REAL makeup artist). 2 IRAQI kids (boys and girls, 4 – 7 yrs. old). African-American Male (35 – 50, THIN).
Åkerlund commented on the upcoming video to Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet:
“It’s great that Madonna gives me the trust to do this video. The song is super cool and aimed for the dance floors. I especially love that she gives me the trust to do the first single from the new album. There is a special feeling and ambition around the first single and a hell of lot of secrets. I had to sign a paper even before I got to listen to the song! The shooting will take 3 days.”
On February 3 2015, Billboard announced The 50 Greatest Grammy Moments. Madonna’s 2006 performance of Hung Up made the list at #13:
Holograms Get Down (2006) – Gorillaz are joined onstage first by De La Soul and then by Madonna, as the holograms segue into her song Hung Up.
On February 2 2000, Madonna’s cover of American Pie debuted on radio in North America.
Jay’s Note: Is this a song you would like to see Madonna perform on a future tour?
On January 31 2020, Madonna shared this announcement with her fans through social media channels:
A note to all my fans:
As you all know I have multiple injuries and have had to cancel shows to give me time to recover.
So as not to surprise you, I want to let you know ahead of time that I will be cancelling 2 shows – on Feb 4 and Feb 11th at the Palladium in London. Because doing 3 shows in a row is too much on my body and in fact my doctors insist I take a day off after every show but I believe can manage if I do 2 shows then I rest!
It’s a miracle I have gotten this far but a-lot has to do with the fact that I do 6 hours of rehab every day. 3 hours before each show and 3 after with multiple therapies. I have also switched to flat shoes and modified difficult parts of the show. This has helped enormously but I still need to be careful and of course rest is the best medicine.
Of course I never want to cancel any show and I’m determined that I will make it to the end if I pace myself.
God Willing 🙏🏼
Refunds will be automatically issued to the credit card on which tickets were ordered.
I appreciate your understanding and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience.
Thank you!! Madame X
On January 30 2020, glowing reviews of Madonna’s first Madame X show in London were published:
Music critic Neil McCormick (The Telegraph) had this to say: Anarchic and experimental – her best show ever? 5 STARS (out of 5)
I’m not sure who was having more fun at the opening of Madonna’s London residency, the audience or the star. She sang, she danced, she joked and she beamed with almost childlike glee at the crowd’s adoring response.
“How happy I am to have made it this far,” she declared, calling London “my second home”.
Madonna first played the city in 1983 to 1,500 early adopters at the Camden Palace. Her next London gig was Wembley Stadium. She was clearly delighted to be back in a venue where she could not just reach out and touch the audience, she could descend from the stage and sit in their laps. “It’s so intimate. It’s gorgeous and a thrill for me to be able to see all your faces.”
David Smyth of the Evening Standard gave the show 4 STARS (out of 5): Madame X is tireless, imaginative and powerfully intimate.
Such drama before Madonna could even take to the stage for her first theatre tour since 1985! Would she arrive drastically late? Would she cancel at the last minute? Tenterhooks all round.
Monday was supposed to be the first of a planned 15 nights at the Palladium, cancelled on doctor’s orders. It was the 10th dropped concert of the Madame X Tour, which began in New York in September and gathered complaints for its late start times.
But tonight at 8.45pm, there she was, dressed as a bloodstained, eyepatch-wearing revolutionary soldier. She was also a spy, a protest marcher and a Portuguese fado singer in the course of a tireless, imaginative show that was far from shrunken arena pop. Thanks especially to an extraordinary troupe of dancers, it was a spectacle that felt more powerful up close.
Like Bruce Springsteen, who showed a different side of himself in his recent Broadway run, and Kate Bush, whose live comeback was more theatre than concert, the 61-year-old has unearthed something new late in her career. The Madame X album may have plummeted out of the charts in an instant, but here its songs dominated and found their purpose.
Batuka, tuneless on record, was euphoric when performed with a mass of smiling, rump-shaking Batuque drummers from Cape Verde. I Rise was far more powerful when backed by footage of anti-gun protests and gay pride marches.
Alexis Petridis of The Guardian, also gave the show 4 STARS (out of 5) and noted: London residency short on hits but big on British banter.
She sings the bare minimum of big hits – Vogue, Like a Prayer, Human Nature – with Express Yourself and La Isla Bonita reduced to interstitial roles (the former performed as a sweet, but brief a cappella duet with her daughter Mercy), and American Life performed in full.
Still, it occasionally serves to remind you that some of Madame X is better than its relatively muted commercial response might suggest – Medellín sounds like the hit single it wasn’t, as does the gorgeous album track Crazy. This is presumably part of the point – the other part being a certain screw-you intransigence designed to underline that we are in the presence of an artiste, not a pop star.
And the BBC had a few fun notes to add in their review:
The audience were required to store mobile phones in sealed pouches as “an intervention for us all”. However, Madonna admitted that even she was getting anxious without a phone nearby.
“I’m having little panic attacks,” she joked. “I’m like, ‘Why is no-one taking my picture?'”
But the gambit worked: Freed from distractions, the audience gave the concert their undiluted attention; while Madonna seemed to relax and have fun without a phalanx of tiny cameras recording her every move.
At one point, she slipped into a British accent and recalled how she’d been ridiculed for developing similarly plummy vowels during her marriage to Guy Ritchie.
“I didn’t know what anyone was talking about until I heard old interviews of myself,” she said. “And then I was horrified and flabbergasted. Why did you let me do that to myself? I’m from Michigan!”
“It’s all Guy Ritchie’s fault,” she decided. “He made me to it.”
Today In Madonna History 