Madonna began Madame X tour at BAM (setlist)

Madonna kicked off her Madame X tour, which has her doing extended runs at intimate venues, on Tuesday night at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House. The run was originally supposed to have started last week, but Madonna delayed it to work out the kinks. It may have still felt delayed, as doors were 8:30 but The New York Post reports she didn’t take the stage till 10:45 PM which may have felt even longer as cellphones were required to be put in YONDR pouches. “Look at yourselves,” Madonna said to the intensely adoring crowd. “But not right now because your phone is taken.” She did, however, take a selfie — using a Polaroid — and then sold it for a $1000 to a fan in the front — Rosie O’Donnell. And despite the YONDERing of phones, someone managed to make a (very muffled) audio recording of the whole show, which you can listen to below (UPDATE: deleted from YouTube, sorry).

More than half of the show was devoted to new album Madame X. From the Post:

The setting and the sensibility turned up the theatrics of “Madame X” songs such as “Dark Ballet,” which, with its nod to Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker,” came to life in a way that made it dig into your soul more than the recording could. And make no mistake, this is a “Madame X” show. A good 80-85 percent of the two-hour-plus show is dedicated to her new album.

That won’t make this tour the go-to show for the casual Madonna fan, but diehards hardly seemed to mind that she only gave you bits of faves such as “Express Yourself” and “La Isla Bonita” while concentrating on “Madame X” tracks such as “Medellín,” “Crazy” and “Come Alive” — the latter of which did just that with a gospel flourish that set the stage for “Like a Prayer” later.

Madonna told the BAM crowd, “I’ve never had this before in my career,” in regard to the level of intimacy, and she was interacting with people in the front (other than Rosie) and cracking jokes throughout the show. At one point, classical music swelled as she was talking and she said, “that’s right, this is what it’s like to have Mozart coming out of your pussy” and soon followed with “that reminds me of a joke. what do you call a man with a small penis?…I wouldn’t know because I never called a man with a small penis!,” before leading into “Express Yourself.”

Madonna also played “Papa Don’t Preach,” “Like a Prayer,” “Vogue,” “La Isla Bonita,” and closed with an encore of “I Rise.” You can check out the setlist below.

The 17-show BAM run continues tonight and goes through October 12. Some tickets are still available.

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SETLIST: Madonna @ BAM 9/17/2019 (via)
Act I
God Control
Dark Ballet
Human Nature
Express Yourself (Acapella)
Papa Don’t Preach (String version)

Act II
Vogue
I Don’t Search I Find
Papa Don’t Preach / American Life

Act III
Batuka (Live debut)
Fado Pechincha (Isabel De Oliveira cover)
Killers Who Are Partying
Crazy
Welcome to My Fado Club / La Isla Bonita Sodade (Cesária Évora cover)
Medellín
Extreme Occident

Act IV
Frozen
Come Alive
Future
Crave
Like a Prayer

Encore:
I Rise