Madonna has officially returned to the stage for the first time since her health scare – but not without complications.
After a three-month delay following the 65-year-old Hung Up singer’s hospitalisation in June, Madonna officially kicked off her 78-show, 15-country Celebration tour in London over the weekend.
The more than two-hour-long O2 Arena concert was, by all accounts, a worthy homage to Madonna’s five-decade career, even when the songstress was forced to stop the show mid-performance.
Watch the video above.
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It was after Madonna performed Burning Up that she halted the show due to technical issues, explaining to the audience her crew had to “press the reset button” due to a sound malfunction.
“This is exactly what you don’t want to happen on your opening night, so this wasn’t planned, I’m sorry,” she told the crowd, as seen in footage shared to YouTube by an attendee.
Nevertheless, the Like a Virgin still found a way to fill the time, regaling her fans with stories from when she was in her first band, a time, she said, when she was “broke and hungry and making zero cash” but was propelled forward by the fact that she could “see the future”.
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The multi-Grammy-winning artist admitted she would, at the time, purposely “date men who had showers and bathtubs”, noting she would ask men she thought were “cute” if they had a shower and lived alone before asking them for dinner, as she had no way to wash at the time.
Eventually, her crew resolved the technical issues, and Madonna continued her show by launching into hits Open Your Heart and Holiday.
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Elsewhere during the show, Madonna – who previously thanked fans for their support in a statement after she was rushed to the hospital with a serious bacterial infection – once again addressed her health, which caused the tour to be delayed from its original July opening night.
“Am I imagining this? Oh my God, it is so good to be back London,” she told the crowd.
”I’m pretty damned surprised that I made it this far and I mean that on so many levels… How did I make it this far? Because of you. I’m going to take a bit of credit too,” she added.
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The Like a Prayer hitmaker was reportedly “found unresponsive” and rushed to the hospital, with her 27-year-old daughter Lourdes Leon by her side in the ICU.
After receiving medical treatment, Madonna’s manager said in a statement: “Her health is improving, however she is still under medical care. A full recovery is expected.”
During her London show over the weekend, Madonna addressed her ordeal, telling the audience: ”I want to say it was a crazy year for me as well. And I didn’t think I was gonna make it. Neither did my doctors. That’s why I woke up with all of my children sitting around me.”
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“I forgot five days of my life… or my death, I don’t really know where I was. But the angels were protecting me and my children were there. And my children always save me, every time,” she continued.
She ultimately credited her children with her survival, saying: “If you want to know my secret, and you want to know how I pulled through and how I survived, I thought, ‘I’ve got to be there for my children. I have to survive for them’.”
Her tour continues with an October 17 (local time) show at London’s O2 Arena.