Scotland

Madonna draws thousands of fans to first concert in Scotland

Playing Murrayfield: Madonna performing in EdinburghSteven Castle

Thousands of fans swamped the capital for Madonna’s first ever concert in Scotland.

The gig, at Murrayfield stadium on Saturday evening, catered for 60,000 but it was unclear how many tickets were sold.

The event had been plagued by blunders after a computer glitch gave away hundreds of free tickets by mistake while cut-price tickets failed to sell on auction site eBay.

However, fans still showed up to see the Material Girl, who had never performed in Scotland before but was married at Skibo Castle near Dornoch in the Highlands.

She married movie director Guy Ritchie in a ceremony at the estate in 2000. However, they divorced in 2008.

The European leg of Madonna’s tour began in Tel Aviv and has taken in cities including Rome, Amsterdam and London.

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The support was awful - some DJ called Alesso doing his DJ thang to terrible electronic music, no atmosphere at all.

Madonna was half an hour late starting. The first 20 minutes was stuff off the new album and it was really bad. It's all very dancey, in the sense it's that pounding electronic stuff with a thumping bass and horrible high frequency stuff. It's dull and repetitive and irritating. The songs were crap and her voice was vocodered to hell. The dancing was excellent, which is probably why she was using the vocoder. The stage production was all monks and mediaeval religious imagery and incense censures and crosses, then there were a lot of guns, and a lot of shooting and blood and splattery brains and things. I hated that, absolutely hated it. Call me old-fashioned, but on a Saturday night, I don't want to hear vocodered Madonna singing "I shot my lover in the head and now my lover is dead" over and over and over while the big screen shows splattery blood. It was like being in somebody else's nightmare.

Things picked up for a few minutes when she did about a quarter of Papa Don't Preach (but not all of it) and then Hung Up, which is only really any good because of the stolen Abba riff. More unpleasant electronic stuff, a lovely slowed down version of Open Your Heart, way better than the original. Express Yourself all mixed up with Born This Way was great, cheerleader outfits, bright, fun, cheery dancing tin soldier costumes, everything cheerful and fun for the first time all night. More dirgey electronic stuff, then Vogue was good. They were way behind time by then so they cut three songs from the set, unfortunately cutting Like a Virgin and leaving in a load more dirgey stuff, then a stonking version of Like a Prayer (that's always been my favourite Madonna song) and then some crap to finish with.

It was really really disappointing, especially because the good bits were so good that you could see how good it all could have been. If they'd cut some of the new album and kept in Like a Virgin people might have thought they'd got their money's worth, but really, £77 for four and a half good songs is a bit much. People in the seats didn't even get out of their seats to dance for the first four songs. Folk were leaving in droves all the way through, most people were just sitting with their arms folded through most of it, and the whole place only came alive for the old songs. Oh, and she mooned us. I paid £77 to be mooned by Madonna.

And what really pisses me off is if I hadn't gone to see Madonna, I could have afforded to get a ticket for George Michael's rescheduled Symphonica tour that I want to see more than anything. Bah.

Flossiesdoll 22/07/2012 Report this place

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Scotland

Madonna draws thousands of fans to first concert in Scotland

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Scotland

Madonna draws thousands of fans to first concert in Scotland

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