Every Madonna Tour, Ranked

Madonna’s very first tour was propelled, like most things related to the queen, almost entirely on the strength of her sheer force of will — and, of course, her raw talent. A magnetic and skilled performer (that toss and catch of the tambourine!), Madonna sprinted through a relatively short setlist culled largely from her first two albums, dancing and belting out hits like “Into the Groove” and “Burning Up” like her rent was due yesterday. But she didn’t need to worry about paying the bills for long: When the tour kicked off in April 1985, she was playing modest theaters; two months later, she was performing to a sold-out crowd of Madonna wannabes at Madison Square Garden.

Compared to the Virgin Tour just two years earlier, Madonna stepped up the production values, choreography and theatricality for her first world (and stadium) tour. Dramatic performances of “Papa Don’t Preach,” “Live to Tell” and her then-most recent No. 1 on the Hot 100, “Who’s That Girl,” hinted at what was to come on future tours in terms of spectacle and ambition. Though it was only her second tour, Who’s That Girl would become the last of Madonna’s shows to resemble a conventional pop-rock concert.

Coming off of the commercial disappointment of her 2003 album American Life, Madonna returned to the place she’s always thrived: the stage. The Re-Invention Tour was nothing she hadn’t done before or wouldn’t do better in the future, but — for the first time in years — she was embracing her past, performing rocked-out renditions of early hits “Burning Up” and “Material Girl” with electric guitar in hand, and even reinventing a few fan favorites like “Hanky Panky” and “Deeper and Deeper.” As for the queen herself, she was in top form both vocally and physically.

Part jukebox musical, part avant-garde performance art and part standup special, the Madame X Tour revolved around a James Baldwin quote… and a typewriter. Yes, Madame X is a stenographer. The tour took place in theaters and opera houses instead of the usual arenas, offering a more intimate and interactive experience. Highlights included a jazzy version of “Human Nature,” a neo-noir restaging of “Vogue” and a crowd sing-along to the resistance anthem “I Rise.”

A blend of Cirque du Soleil, Broadway and burlesque, the Rebel Heart Tour saw dancers swinging on 10-foot stilts, dressed as nuns on stripper poles and sliding down giant LED screens. As for Madonna, she seemed more at ease on stage than ever, playing the coy chanteuse a la Blond Ambition and strumming the ukulele to “True Blue” – the first time she’d performed the song in nearly three decades. In fact, Rebel Heart was heavier on the hits than any tour since Re-Invention, including a Latin-infused medley of classics “Dress You Up,” “Into the Groove” and “Lucky Star,” as well as a modern twist on “Material Girl.”

After a first act that didn’t quite live up to the lofty standards Madonna had previously set, the Sticky & Sweet Tour eventually hit its stride. The ‘Gypsy’ and ‘Rave’ segments in particular – including an electrifying rendition of “La Isla Bonita” featuring Ukrainian group Kolpakov Trio and a heavy metal version of “Hung Up,” which ended with Madonna shredding her guitar to Pantera’s “A New Level” – were as exhilarating as any of her previous tours’ best moments.

Madonna’s latest tour is the sight and sound of a legend fully embracing her legacy. With no new album to promote, the setlist is packed with so many iconic songs – including a handful she’s never performed on tour before, such as “Bedtime Story” and “Bad Girl” – that more than a dozen of her 28 top 5 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 had to be omitted. A musical recounting of the Queen of Pop’s life and career, the Celebration Tour touches on her rise to fame in New York, the AIDS crisis (via a stirring rendition of “Live to Tell”), the media backlash she suffered in the early ‘90s and her spiritual rebirth, in which she rises like an AI phoenix on a glowing cube and — quicker than a ray of light — soars above the crowd. Masterful.

Pioneered by bands like U2, live concerts had moved closer to multimedia presentations in the years since The Girlie Show in 1993, and Madonna fully embraced the artistic potential that new technology allowed. For her first tour in eight years, Madonna pulled out all of the stops: smoke machines, acrobatic stunts, line-dancing, even Japanese anime. And with only a handful of older songs making the cut – including tour staples “Holiday” and “Human Nature” – she proved she was still laser-focused on the present… and the future.

Coming on the heels of Madonna’s iconic halftime performance at Super Bowl XLVI, the maximalist MDNA Tour was one of her most ambitious, employing elaborate stage combat, slacklining, Tetris-style cubes that rose 16 feet above the stage and a backdrop of eight rotating video screens. It was also one of her most intense shows. At 54, Madonna was in peak form, performing intricate choreography in spiked stilettos nonstop for two hours straight. The only chance she had to take a breath was during a surprisingly poignant piano version of “Like a Virgin” … after which the air was literally squeezed from her lungs by a corset being tightened around her. 

Inspired by cabaret and classic Hollywood musicals, The Girlie Show was a visual tour-de-force. The second act, dubbed ‘Studio 54,’ rivaled the ‘Religious’ segment from Blond Ambition for sheer catharsis, with the freedom of the orgiastic disco era (“Deeper and Deeper”) juxtaposed with the subsequent AIDS crisis (“In This Life”), as well as a captivating fever dream of choreography set to a remix of “Justify My Love.” Madonna was in fine voice throughout, growling her way through “Express Yourself” and harmonizing beautifully on “Rain.” She’s never had a better live band, either — and even mused about collaborating with them on an album, though it sadly never materialized.

With its elaborate costumes (courtesy of French designer Jean-Paul Gaultier), Broadway-style sets (designed by Madonna’s brother Christopher Ciccone) and quasi-narrative arc, the Blond Ambition Tour is the blueprint – the mother of the modern pop concert. The show infamously found Madonna exorcising herself of the guilt of her Catholic upbringing. The ‘Religious’ segment, which began with the singer simulating masturbation and ended with her facing the judgment of the male authority figures in her life (her father, the Pope, God), is among the most audaciously conceived and impeccably executed moments of stagecraft in touring history.

The Confessions Tour snags the top spot on our list for two reasons. First, it served as a culmination of everything Madonna had learned from Blond Ambition through Re-Invention, combining spectacle, drama and good ol’ fashioned performance mojo. Like its namesake, 2005’s Grammy-winning Confessions on a Dance Floor, the show struck a deft balance between dance-party hedonism and intimate introspection. Madonna’s 2000 Hot 100 chart-topper “Music” was transformed into a roller-disco fantasia, while a haunting rendition of “Live to Tell” saw the veteran provocateur suspended from a giant disco-fied cross in order to shine a light on the plight of AIDS in Africa.

Most importantly, Confessions was Madonna’s most cohesive and consistently thrilling show to date. Musical director Stuart Price skillfully arranged and remixed early hits like “Erotica” and “Like a Virgin” to fit the Eurodisco aesthetic of Confessions. Plus, each act of the show was a visual and aural smorgasbord, from the opening equestrian segment, which found Madonna emerging from a giant glitter ball and commanding a stripper-poll-cum-carousel-horse, to the extended finale, which mashed up “Lucky Star” and “Hung Up” into a nearly 15-minute explosion of ear and eye candy.