Madonna to Embark on Career-Spanning 40th Anniversary Tour
Written by djfrosty on January 13, 2023
Madonna is planning a massive 40th anniversary tour later this year with her longtime concert promotion partner and producer Live Nation and music manager Guy Oseary, sources tell Billboard.
The 64-year-old pop icon will perform music from her entire catalogue, dating back to her 1983 self-titled debut album through her most recent studio album, 2019’s Madame X. The world tour will be Madonna’s first ever career retrospective, featuring a compilation of her biggest hits across four decades of music and will reportedly include a multi-night run at the O2 in London.
“It’s going to be the biggest tour she’s ever done,” one executive familiar with her plans tells Billboard. The tour will include both stadium and arena dates, the source says, and include over-the-top production that delivers both “Material Girl” kitsch and occasionally outrageous sex appeal with plenty of show-stopping moments made for social media.
Billboard has also learned that Oseary will continue to serve on Madonna’s management team, despite stepping down from his role at mega-management collective Maverick in 2020 and splitting with longtime clients U2 in 2022.
The tour buzz comes just months after the “Hey You” singer released her career-spanning compilation album Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones, spanning her entire dance club career, featuring remixes by top producers including 20 rare recordings officially released for the first time. In 2021, Madonna signed a deal with Warner Music Group for an “extensive, multi-year series of catalog releases that will revisit the groundbreaking music that made her an international icon.”
Madonna last toured in 2019 and early 2020 on her Madame X tour, a theater run that was struggled through production delays and Madonna’s recurring hip and knee injuries. While the Madame X tour earned strong critical reviews in the press, its habitually late start time often angered ticket holders and prompted two class actions lawsuits from fans.
When it comes to choosing her nightly set list for this new tour, Madonna will have no shortage of songs to choose from with 57 titles charting on the Billboard Hot 100, 38 top 10 hits and 12 No. 1s, including 1990’s “Vogue,” and 2000’s “Music,” released a decade apart and each spending 24 weeks on the Hot 100. Madonna’s “Borderline” from 1984 spent 30 weeks on the Hot 100. She followed that impressive feat a decade later with the ballad “Take a Bow,” which held the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100 for seven weeks.
Madonna’s 2008-2009 Sticky and Sweet Tour is the highest grossing tour by a female artist ever, according to Billboard Boxscore, netting $407 million. Her most recent Madame X theater run grossed $36.4 million with 124,655 ticket sold.
Reps for Madonna could not be reached for comment at time of publishing.