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Madonna announces Celebration global tour: What to know

It's official: Madonna's hitting the road.

The Celebration Tour, kicking off July 15 in Vancouver, was announced Tuesday morning with a video featuring a star-studded guest list.

The NSFW video features Madonna playing Truth or Dare with an eclectic lineup of celebs, including Jack Black, Judd Apatow, Lil Wayne, Meg Stalter, Eric Andre, Bob The Drag Queen, Kate Berlant, Amy Schumer and more.

It ends with Schumer daring Madonna to go on a world tour and perform all her biggest hits.

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After singing a few bars of "La Isla Bonita" along with Schumer, Madonna says, "F--- yeah!" and announces, "80s, 90s, 2000s, four decades of music avec moi -- MLVC -- welcome to the party, b****es!"

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MORE: Madonna's daughter Lourdes Leon shines during Paris Fashion Week wearing catsuit, chain belts

The phrase in part translates to "with me, Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone," in case you're not familiar with French, or with the Queen of Pop's birth name.

The 35-city world tour starts in North America before hitting Europe, wrapping up in Amsterdam on Dec. 1.

"I am excited to explore as many songs as possible in hopes to give my fans the show they have been waiting for," Madonna said in a statement.

A one-of-a-kind experience with special guest Bob the Drag Queen will be featured on each date.

Tickets go on sale Jan. 20 and Jan. 27 at 10 a.m. local time, depending on the city. Presales for Citi cardmembers start Jan. 17 at 2 p.m. local time for the shows going on sale Jan. 20, and Jan. 24 for the shows going on sale Jan. 27.

MORE: Review: 50 best albums of 2022

A presale for members of Madonna's Official Fan Club starts Tuesday at noon ET for the North American shows, and 9 a.m. GMT on Jan. 18 for the U.K. and European shows. Visit Madonna.com for all the details and ticket information.

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Madonna announces Celebration tour with a raunchy, celeb-filled game of truth or dare

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Madonna will embark on another world tour, this time highlighting four decades of her hit music.

The “Vogue” and “La Isla Bonita” hitmaker announced her 12th tour — Madonna: The Celebration tour — on Tuesday in a bizarre, NSFW video featuring a dinner-party game of truth or dare with guests Amy Schumer, Jack Black and Lil Wayne, among others. After viewing it, you may not look at bread or Diplo the same way again. (Another dare involved director Judd Apatow having the “Madonna: Truth or Dare” star and her friends re-create a shot from her 1992 book, “Sex.” )

The 35-city tour kicks off in Vancouver, Canada, on July 15 before making stops across the U.S., U.K. and Europe. The tour hits Los Angeles this fall with a stop at Crypto.com Arena downtown on Sept. 27.

The North American leg wraps after that with two shows: one at the Chase Center in San Francisco on Oct. 4 and a final U.S. show at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Oct. 7.

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From there, the 64-year-old Material Girl heads across the pond for another dozen shows, kicking off with an Oct. 14 concert at London’s O2 Arena and concluding the tour with a Dec. 1 show at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam. Here’s the complete list of cities and dates .

“The Celebration Tour will take us on Madonna’s artistic journey through four decades and pays respect to the city of New York where her career in music began,” concert promoter Live Nation said Tuesday. The seven-time Grammy Award winner will play two shows at Madison Square Garden — Aug. 23 and 24 — making New York the only U.S. city that will get back-to-back concerts during the tour. (Paris also gets two shows in November.)

“I am excited to explore as many songs as possible in hopes to give my fans the show they have been waiting for,” Madonna added in a more formal statement, striking a very different tone than that of her video announcement.

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Bob the Drag Queen, a.k.a. Caldwell Tidicue, who was also featured in the video, will join Madonna across all dates on the global tour.

Tickets for some shows — including the L.A. gig — go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. local time; others go on sale Jan. 27. Legacy members of Madonna’s official fan club have access to presales ahead of both on-sale dates, as do Citi cardmembers .

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Madonna announces Celebration global tour: What to know

The tour kicks off in July.

It's official: Madonna's hitting the road.

The Celebration Tour, kicking off July 15 in Vancouver, was announced Tuesday morning with a video featuring a star-studded guest list.

The NSFW video features Madonna playing Truth or Dare with an eclectic lineup of celebs, including Jack Black, Judd Apatow, Lil Wayne, Meg Stalter, Eric Andre, Bob The Drag Queen, Kate Berlant, Amy Schumer and more.

It ends with Schumer daring Madonna to go on a world tour and perform all her biggest hits.

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After singing a few bars of "La Isla Bonita" along with Schumer, Madonna says, "F--- yeah!" and announces, "80s, 90s, 2000s, four decades of music avec moi -- MLVC -- welcome to the party, b****es!"

MORE: Madonna's daughter Lourdes Leon shines during Paris Fashion Week wearing catsuit, chain belts

The phrase in part translates to "with me, Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone," in case you're not familiar with French, or with the Queen of Pop's birth name.

The 35-city world tour starts in North America before hitting Europe, wrapping up in Amsterdam on Dec. 1.

"I am excited to explore as many songs as possible in hopes to give my fans the show they have been waiting for," Madonna said in a statement.

A one-of-a-kind experience with special guest Bob the Drag Queen will be featured on each date.

Tickets go on sale Jan. 20 and Jan. 27 at 10 a.m. local time, depending on the city. Presales for Citi cardmembers start Jan. 17 at 2 p.m. local time for the shows going on sale Jan. 20, and Jan. 24 for the shows going on sale Jan. 27.

MORE: Review: 50 best albums of 2022

A presale for members of Madonna's Official Fan Club starts Tuesday at noon ET for the North American shows, and 9 a.m. GMT on Jan. 18 for the U.K. and European shows. Visit Madonna.com for all the details and ticket information.

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Madonna announces Celebration greatest hits world tour

Singer will celebrate four decades in music with a 35-date run beginning in Vancouver on 15 July, with one date at London’s O2 Arena on 14 October

Madonna has announced a tour celebrating her 40 years as a recording and touring artist. Dubbed the Celebration tour, the 35-date run will begin in Vancouver, Canada, on 15 July, and run through to winter, ending on 1 December at Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome.

First teased in a promotional video for last year’s dance chart No 1s album Finally Enough Love, the Celebration tour was officially announced in a clip parodying Madonna’s 1991 tour film Truth or Dare. In the video, celebrities including Diplo, Jack Black, Lil Wayne and Amy Schumer play a game of truth or dare with Madonna, which culminates with Schumer “daring” Madonna to embark on a greatest hits tour. “You think people would come to that show?” Madonna asks. “The answer is – fuck yeah.”

Per a press release, the Celebration tour will showcase “Madonna’s artistic journey through four decades and pays respect to the city of New York where her career in music began.”

Supporting Madonna on all dates is drag performer Bob the Drag Queen, AKA Caldwell Tidicue. Best known for winning season eight of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Tidicue has also released a handful of singles, starred in a production of Angels in America at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, and hosts a podcast, Sibling Rivalry, with Monét X Change.

The Celebration tour is Madonna’s 12th concert tour. The last time she went on the road was in 2019 and 2020, when she performed in intimate venues in support of her album Madame X. That run saw her play 12 shows at the 2,200-capacity London Palladium, with similarly lengthy stints in New York, Los Angeles and more.

The only UK date of the Celebration tour announced thus far is on 14 October at London’s 20,000-capacity O2 Arena. In a statement, Madonna said: “I am excited to explore as many songs as possible in hopes to give my fans the show they have been waiting for.”

Live Nation, the producer of the Celebration tour, has faced criticism in recent months, with the US government currently in the midst of an antitrust investigation into the touring giant and Ticketmaster parent company over whether it has abused its power in the entertainment industry. Scrutiny intensified in November, when Taylor Swift slammed Ticketmaster over the bungled pre-sale for her own greatest hits shows, dubbed the Eras tour.

In a letter to the company, the US Senate’s antitrust committee chair Amy Klobuchar expressed “serious concern about the state of competition in the ticketing industry and its harmful impact on consumers”.

Tickets for the Celebration tour go on sale on 20 January and are available from Madonna’s website .

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Madonna shares behind the scenes video from ‘Celebration’ tour rehearsals

The 40th anniversary tour kicks off in July

Madonna has shared a behind the scenes video from the first week of rehearsals for her 2023 ‘Celebration’ world tour .

• READ MORE:  The Big Read – Madonna: ”People pick on me. That’s just the way it is”

The pop icon is due to hit the road this summer for a 35+ date stint to mark her 40 years in music. “I am excited to explore as many songs as possible in hopes to give my fans the show they have been waiting for,” Madonna said of the upcoming trek in a statement.

The tour begins in Vancouver, Canada on July 15, and Madonna has entered rehearsals for the tour this week, as she revealed in a new Instagram video.

“SLAYING…………Rehearsal-Week One!!” she wrote in the caption of the video, which sees her playing guitar, shooting a bullseye on a dart board and more.

Check it out below.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Madonna (@madonna)

The tour will begin in North America, with gigs planned for New York, Chicago, Miami, Washington, Houston, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and other cities up until early October.

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Madonna is set to touch down in the UK for  six dates at London’s The O2 . That concert will kick start the European leg of the singer’s ‘Celebration Tour’ ahead of further stop-offs in Antwerp, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam and beyond.

See the full list of dates below.

Sat Jul 15 – Vancouver, BC – Rogers Arena Tue Jul 18 – Seattle, WA – Climate Pledge Arena Sat Jul 22 – Phoenix, AZ – Footprint Center Tue Jul 25 – Denver, CO – Ball Arena Thu Jul 27 – Tulsa, OK – BOK Center Sun Jul 30 – St. Paul, MN – Xcel Energy Center Wed Aug 02 – Cleveland, OH – Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse Sat Aug 05 – Detroit, MI – Little Caesars Arena Mon. Aug 07 – Pittsburgh, PA – PPG Paints Arena Wed Aug 09 – Chicago, IL – United Center Sun Aug 13 – Toronto, ON – Scotiabank Arena Sat Aug 19 – Montreal, QC – Centre Bell Wed Aug 23 – New York, NY – Madison Square Garden Thu Aug 24 – New York, NY – Madison Square Garden Wed Aug 30 – Boston, MA – TD Garden Sat Sep 02 – Washington, DC – Capital One Arena Tue Sep 05 – Atlanta, GA – State Farm Arena Thu Sep 07 – Tampa, FL – Amalie Arena Sat Sep 09 – Miami, FL – Miami-Dade Arena Wed Sep 13 – Houston, TX – Toyota Center Mon Sep 18 – Dallas, TX – American Airlines Center Thu Sep 21 – Austin, TX – Moody Center ATX Wed Sep 27 – Los Angeles, CA – Crypto.com Arena Wed Oct 04 – San Francisco, CA – Chase Center Sat Oct 07 – Las Vegas, NV – T-Mobile Arena Sat Oct 14 – London, UK – The O2 Sun Oct 15 – London, UK – The O2 Tues Oct 17 – London, UK – The O2 Weds Oct 18 – London, UK – The O2 Sat Oct 21 – Antwerp, BE – Sportpaleis Wed. Oct. 25 – Copenhagen, DK – Royal Arena Sat Oct 28 – Stockholm, SE – Tele2 Wed Nov 01 – Barcelona, ES – Palau Sant Jordi Mon Nov 06 – Lisbon, PT – Altice Arena Sun Nov 12 – Paris, FR – Accor Arena Mon Nov 13 – Paris, FR – Accor Arena Wed Nov 15 – Cologne, DE – Lanxess Arena Thu Nov 23 – Milan, IT – Mediolanum Forum Tue Nov 28 – Berlin, DE – Mercedes-Benz Arena Fri Dec 1 – Amsterdam, NL – Ziggo Dome Tues Dec 5 – London, UK – The O2 Weds Dec 6 – London, UK – The O2

Last month, Madonna teased that new dates will be announced soon for the tour . The singer to Instagram to tease that new tour dates are coming, in a video soundtracked by The Queens’ remix of Beyoncé ’s ‘Break My Soul’.

Per a press release, ‘The Celebration Tour’ will take fans on Madonna’s artistic journey through four decades and pay homage to the city of New York where her career in music began.

Fans can buy and sell tickets for Madonna at global marketplace, viagogo here .

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Madonna Finally Kicks Off Celebration World Tour In London  

By Eve Batey

It was a stressful summer for Madonna fans. Just weeks before her 78-stop career-retrospective Celebration World Tour was set to kick off in North America, the singer was rushed to a New York City hospital for a severe bacterial infection that prompted her to cancel that continent’s dates . But the 65-year-old icon and mother of six isn’t known as the hardest-working woman in show business for nothing, and on Saturday, she reclaimed the stage to rave reviews.

Madonna’s stop at London’s 20,000-seat O2 arena had been on the books since tour plans began, but when her health scare paused her Celebration schedule, Oct. 14 became its de facto kickoff date. This is her 13th tour, and her first since 2020; as the name promises, it’s intended as a celebration of her four decades of hits. An opening-night set list captured by Billboard suggests that the show lived up to its name: early songs like “Holiday” and “Burning Up,” career highs such as “Like a Prayer” and Vogue,” and 2000s-era entries like “Music” and “Bitch I’m Madonna” all made an appearance.

Of course, fans had to wait a bit to hear those hits. Technical difficulties meant the show was delayed by 30 minutes, the New York Times reports . Four songs in, yet another delay, prompting Madonna to say, “This is exactly what you don’t want to happen on your opening night, so this wasn’t planned. I’m sorry,” AFP reports . 

While her crew worked to restore order, she regaled the crowd with some early-career anecdotes, including her days of housing struggles. “I had no way to take a bath,” she said of her younger days in New York. “So I would actually date men who had showers and bathrooms. Those were the days, and that is the truth.”

“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 also addressed her June health crisis, saying, “It was a crazy year for me and I didn’t think I was going to make it. I forgot five days of my life.”

“But the angels were protecting me and my children were there and my children always save me every time. And if you want to know a secret as to how I survived, I thought, ‘I have to survive for them. I have to survive for my children.’”

The hotly-anticipated show was met by critical praise—not a given for the star, who noted Saturday that “To age is to sin. I think the most controversial thing I’ve done is to stick around.” According to The Independent’s critic, Helen Brown , “I’ve sat through a couple of Madonna’s more robotic stadium shows in the past, feeling as though I was bearing witness to a seven-figure PowerPoint presentation from Brand Madonna. But at 65, the woman who once sang of wanting to “conquer and deliver and despise” the world has a renewed appetite for human connection.”

Writing for the BBC , Mark Savage says that Madonna “looked and sounded incredible throughout, moving from one elaborate set-piece to the next with conviction and power.” Variety’s Mark Sutherland agrees, writing, “Madonna still doesn’t know how to quit, boy, has she learned how to come back.”

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Madonna Unveils Ultimate Greatest Hits Show ‘The Celebration Tour’

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Truth or dare? ? Madonna has rarely ever been one to shy away from the latter. In an announcement video that nods to her documentary of the same title, a slate of special guests prompts her with a challenge: “I dare you to do a world tour and play your greatest motherfucking hits.”

Madonna: the Celebration tour will span 40 years of the singer’s career, bringing her greatest hits to 35 cities across North America and Europe. “I am excited to explore as many songs as possible in hopes to give my fans the show they have been waiting for,” Madonna shared in a statement.

On Thursday, she added an additional 13 dates due to “overwhelming demanded.”

General sale for the Celebration tour begins Friday, Jan. 20, at 10 a.m. local time. More information is available via the official Madonna website .

Bob the Drag Queen – who appears in the announcement video alongside Diplo, Judd Apatow, Jack Black, Lil Wayne, Bob The Drag Queen, Kate Berlant, Larry Owens, Meg Stalter, and Eric Andre – will join as support across the entire tour.

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This story was updated on Jan. 19 at 5:15 pm ET to include Madonna’s additional tour dates in bold .

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Madonna draws 1.6 million fans to Brazilian beach

Anastasia Tsioulcas

Pop star Madonna, performing Saturday night at a massive free concert at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Pablo Porciuncula/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Pop star Madonna, performing Saturday night at a massive free concert at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Madonna capped off her "Celebration" tour with a trip to the beach: Rio de Janeiro's famed Copacabana Beach, to be exact, where on Saturday night she put on a massive free show for some 1.6 million fans. It was the last performance during her globe-trotting retrospective tour as well as her only "Celebration" date in South America — and it garnered the biggest live crowd of her career.

Madonna postpones tour while recovering from 'serious bacterial infection'

The 1.6 million estimate came from Riotur , the city's official tourism agency. Madonna, who had not performed in Brazil since 2012, enthused about the evening on Instagram : "Words cannot express my gratitude!" she wrote in a caption to a drone video showing the beachfront crammed with fans. As with other "Celebration" shows, she invited local stars onstage with her: In Rio, her guests were Brazilian performers Anitta and Pabllo Vittar , the latter helping Madonna shift her track "Music" into a samba .

Copacabana Beach has something of a history when it comes to huge pop spectacles: In 2006, The Rolling Stones played for an estimated 1.5 million fans there, while a 1994 New Year's Eve show with Rod Stewart reportedly drew some 4.2 million attendees.

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Opinion Guest Essay

The Nerve of Madonna to Pull It Off, Again

Credit... Pablo Porciuncula/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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By Mary Gabriel and Kristin J. Lieb

Ms. Gabriel is the author of “Madonna: A Rebel Life.” Dr. Lieb is a professor at Emerson College and the author of “Gender, Branding, and the Modern Music Industry: The Social Construction of Female Popular Music Stars.”

• May 16, 2024

Eighteen years ago, Madonna observed : “Once you pass 35, your age becomes part of the first sentence of anything written. It’s a form of limiting your options and almost putting you in your place. For women, naturally.” She was 47 when she said that and intent on challenging the cultural script that suggested women, especially female performers, had a use-by date.

“Why is that acceptable?” she asked the music writer Brian Hiatt nearly 10 years later, still battling critics who told her to dress her age, act her age — in short, pack it in and retreat from the spotlight because she was past her prime. “Women, generally, when they reach a certain age, have accepted that they’re not allowed to behave a certain way. But I don’t follow the rules.”

To the question “Is she still relevant?” her Celebration Tour, which concluded this month, is proof that she is. Madonna performed before the largest audience ever gathered to watch a female artist and mounted the single biggest free stand-alone concert in history: 1.6 million people turned Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach into a dance floor on May 4. According to Billboard , her six-month, 80-show tour grossed $225.4 million, making her the only woman in history to gross more than $100 million during six concert tours. (The only solo male in that category is Bruce Springsteen.)

But there’s so much more to her triumph than numbers. That a 65-year-old female pop star pulled off this tour and, despite our increasingly intolerant times, the performance was her most relentlessly and delightfully queer since 1990’s groundbreaking Blond Ambition Tour would be unimaginable, except that it was Madonna. The Celebration Tour proved that Madonna wasn’t afraid of drawing attention to her long career; she owned it proudly.

All of her past selves showed up, in role and in costume, to help celebrate the many ways she has evolved and the many ways she and her collaborators have explored and expressed gender throughout the years. It was a beautifully inclusive, encouraging spectacle. If history is a guide, the social and artistic ramifications of her performance will extend well beyond the numbers and long after her tour.

Madonna’s 1985 Virgin Tour, her debut, included only 40 shows in North America and grossed about $5 million. But its impact on young lives is immeasurable. The young women and girls in her audience were on the cusp of unleashing their sexual selves and embracing their independence, which is what made them so terrifying to a broader society intent on keeping them polite, passive and manageable.

Madonna’s message to her young audience was: Embrace your power, dream big and dare to be your own damned self. That message would resonate through a generation and across the globe, as aspiring Madonnas grew up to be politicians, lawyers, doctors, teachers, members of the armed forces, Third Wave feminists, Riot Grrrls and pop stars themselves.

Madonna was, in fact, the lead author of the female pop star playbook, and she continues to write the unexplored and perilous back end of it while artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish adapt the front end and more established stars like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift refine what’s possible in the middle. Madonna’s continuous career represents a universe of possibility for their own, despite the entertainment industry’s willingness to jettison midcareer women in favor of artists with younger faces and bodies.

But for women not named Madonna (or Beyoncé or Taylor Swift), growing older and maturing in public is much more fraught. Older men are considered wise, but older women are often ignored or discounted. Thanks to the intervention of the pharmaceutical industry, men are encouraged to have an active sex life into their 80s. The idea of older women having sex remains, for many, repellent.

Madonna has challenged our notions of what a woman should do and be on all those counts: She chooses to age as she sees fit, she says what she believes loudly and forcefully, and she is as proudly sexual as she was in 1985.

With her Celebration Tour, Madonna demonstrated night after night for six months that an older woman can exhibit power and strength — joyfully, generously and defiantly. Her glorious performance was perhaps even sweeter when we recall that hip and knee injuries disrupted her Madame X tour four years ago and a bacterial infection threatened not only the Celebration Tour but also Madonna’s life.

Forty years ago, Madonna showed audiences, particularly girls and women, that they could mute the killjoy chorus keeping them from self-realization. On the Celebration Tour, Madonna doubled down on this idea, encouraging fans to follow their hearts, minds and inner freaks by both being herself onstage and employing diverse and talented dancers to carry that message in their own convincing and resonant ways.

If this were the last tour of Madonna’s career — and we sincerely hope it is not — she would retire as the most influential female pop star of all time, a legitimate legend who wowed audiences, defied expectations and broke records. Having served more than 40 years in the public eye, she could take a holiday, take some time to celebrate. It would be, it would be so nice.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Kristin J. Lieb is a professor at Emerson College and the author of “Gender, Branding, and the Modern Music Industry.”

Mary Gabriel is the author of “Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler, Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art” and ”Madonna: A Rebel Life.”

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Madonna unveils 2023 world tour dates with wild celeb-filled 'Truth or Dare' video

NEW YORK — Madonna will "Take a Bow" with a new tour through North America and Europe starting this summer that will be a "Celebration" of the pop icon’s hits, which include 38 songs in the Billboard Hot 100.

The artist, 64, announced the tour Tuesday with a  star-studded video that nodded to her 1991 film "Truth or Dare" with a roundtable featuring Diplo, Judd Apatow, Jack Black, Lil Wayne, Bob The Drag Queen, Kate Berlant, Larry Owens, Meg Stalter, Eric Andre and Amy Schumer as the group plays a NSFW version of truth or dare.

"Madonna, I dare you to do a world tour and play your greatest (expletive) hits," Schumer challenges. 

"Four decades? As in 40 years? As in all those songs?" Madonna replies. "That's a lot of songs. You think people would come to that show?" 

The room's consensus is yes. 

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"OK, so the answer is: (expletive) yeah," Madonna says as the rest of the celebrities erupt into cheers, shouting "Madonna world tour!"

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When is the Madonna: The Celebration Tour?

The 35-city Live Nation-backed Madonna: The Celebration Tour will kick off July 15 at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, British Columbia, with stops in Detroit, Chicago, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Denver, Atlanta and Boston, among others. That leg ends on Oct. 7 in Las Vegas.

Then the Material Girl hits Europe, where she has 11 dates throughout the fall, including London, Barcelona, Paris, Berlin, Milan and Stockholm, among others. The tour will wrap in Amsterdam on Dec. 1.

Tickets go on sale starting Friday, Jan. 20.

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What music is Madonna performing during her tour?

The singer will "be highlighting her unmatched catalog of music from the past 40-plus years," according to the announcement. It will also "pay respect to the city of New York, where her career in music began."

"I am excited to explore as many songs as possible in hopes to give my fans the show they have been waiting for," Madonna says in the announcement.

Some of Madonna’s Hot 100 hits include "Vogue," "Music," "Crazy For You," "Like a Virgin," "Like a Prayer," "Justify My Love," "Live to Tell" and "Papa Don’t Preach."

Madonna covers Vanity Fair 'Icons Issue'

Vanity Fair Italy, France and Spain teamed up for a joint " Icons Issue " featuring Madonna on the cover in honor of her Celebration Tour. When asked about how much her provocative and highly criticized career has cost her, the pop star said she "could answer several billion" dollars , but "the thing it’s cost me the most is loss of sleep and maybe less time spent with people I love – also peace of mind. But I feel that it is a necessary part of the journey I am on and it’s a price I have accepted."

Madonna has pushed boundaries throughout her career, but it's simply reflective of her environment. Vanity Fair Italy called her a pioneer of inclusivity and she seemed resistant to accepting the label. "I am not really sure what it means to say I was one of the first," she said. "The people who supported me were largely members of the LGBTQ+ community and of different ethnicities. That was my support system, so why wouldn’t I in turn support and champion them?"

Madonna discusses her relationship with religion

Madonna's persona and stage name is based on Catholic figure The Madonna or The Virgin Mary, a choice that has been met with backlash since the start of her career. Although she was raised Catholic, she told Vanity Fair that she's never taken criticism to heart. "I thought if the Catholic Church did not perceive my work as an artist as doing something good, then that was their problem and an extension of their narrow mindedness and inability to see that anything that brings people together," Madonna said.

Today, Madonna is "not subscribing to religious groups that are exclusive of others or extremist in any shape," but she does "think it’s important to have ritualistic behavior and a spiritual life."

"My relationship with religion is that I remain very involved in my own spiritual practice and I think it’s imperative for everyone to have a spiritual practice – but I am not defining that for other people," the singer added.

Contributing: Naledi Ushe, Hannah Yasharoff, USA TODAY; The Associated Press

More: Madonna’s ‘Erotica’ showed that sex doesn’t always sell. But it can move the needle.

And: Watch Madonna 'disturb the peace,' share her 'Matrix' regret in wild Jimmy Fallon interview

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Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday 2 World Tour Is Already the Highest Grossing Rap Tour for a Woman — and It Isn’t Over Yet

The trek earned $67 million in the U.S. and Canada, with more than a dozen headline shows left to play in Europe.

By Eric Frankenberg

Eric Frankenberg

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Nicki Minaj wrapped the North American leg of the Pink Friday 2 World Tour earlier this week. Not only did it deliver the biggest grosses of her career, it sets a new high mark among women in hip-hop. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the Pink Friday 2 World Tour grossed $67 million and sold 439,000 tickets, making it the highest grossing and bestselling rap tour by a woman in Boxscore history.

These 25 Rappers Are the Top-Grossing Hip-Hop Touring Acts of All Time

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In addition to her two Brooklyn plays, Minaj also performed at Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden and the Prudential Center in New Jersey. Combined, those four NYC-area shows brought in $9.3 million and sold more than 54,000 tickets, with the MSG show claiming honors as the single highest grossing show of the tour so far.

The Pink Friday 2 World Tour was tracking to become Minaj’s biggest from opening night. Throughout the 34-date North American leg, the trek averaged just under $2 million and 13,000 per night. That’s nearly triple the pace of 2012’s Pink Friday: Reoloaded Tour ($776,000) and 2015-16’s The Pinkprint Tour ($657,000).

In November, Billboard published a list of the highest grossing rap artists of all time , with Minaj as the only woman at No. 20. With updated grosses from the Pink Friday 2 World Tour, she climbs to No. 11.

The Pink Friday 2 World Tour isn’t done bringing in business yet. Minaj will kickstart the tour’s European leg next week, with a show at Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam on May 23. In addition to a bevy of festival shows, she’ll play 15 headline dates that could add another $10 million to $20 million to the tour’s record-setting total. At $93.9 million and 911,000 in reported career grosses and attendance, it’ll all but certainly put Minaj over $100 million and 1 million tickets.

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Madonna says nobody told her as a child that her mom was dying: 'she disappeared and there was no explanation'

• Madonna honored her mother, who died from breast cancer at 30, in a Mother's Day Instagram post.
• "Nobody told me my mother was dying," the singer, 65, wrote in the caption, recounting her childhood.
• Experts say parents should take into account their kids' ages and emotional maturity when discussing death.

Madonna paid tribute to her mother, who died aged 30 after a battle with breast cancer, in an emotional Mother's Day post.

On Sunday, the pop star uploaded an Instagram post and recalled what it felt like as a child.

"I stood on stage for 81 shows staring up at the beautiful face of my mother and wondering what she must've been thinking as she waved goodbye to me from her hospital window," Madonna wrote in her caption, referring to a segment in her "Celebration" concert tour that honored her mother.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Madonna (@madonna)

"I stepped into the station wagon and shut the door not knowing it was the last time I'd see her," the pop star, 65, continued.

Madonna added that she wasn't aware of the extent of her mother's illness as a child.

"Nobody told me my mother was dying — I just watched her disintegrate mysteriously and then she disappeared and there was no explanation except that she had gone to sleep which explains my tumultuous relationship with sleep," she wrote.

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The "Like A Virgin" singer's mother — who shares the same name as her famous daughter — died in 1963 , when the pop icon was 5 years old.

In an interview with Time in 1985, Madonna shared that she remembers her mother "being a very forgiving, angelic person" who "never complained" and tried to shield her kids from the harsh reality of her illness.

"I remember also I knew she was sick for a long time with breast cancer, so she was very weak, but she would continue to go on and do the things she had to do," Madonna told Time.

Her mother's death left a huge impact on her, resulting in a "mother complex" that made her yearn for attention, she told Carrie Fisher in a 1991 Rolling Stone interview.

"She's gone, so I've turned my need on to the world and said, 'OK, I don't have a mother to love me, I'm going to make the world love me,'" the singer said.

Although it might be uncomfortable for parents to speak to their children about death , such discussions can help kids better understand the topic in a safe space.

Parents should take their kids' ages and emotional maturity into account when approaching the subject , Elizabeth Hicks, Parenting Nerd cofounder, told Business Insider. It's also better for parents to avoid using euphemisms to describe death. By using terms like "went to sleep," children may develop anxiety at bedtime, Hannah Ly, a child therapist, added.

Madonna is a mother herself. She has six children , including Lourdes Leon, whom she shares with ex-boyfriend Carlos Leon, and Rocco Ritchie, whom she shares with ex-husband Guy Ritchie. She also adopted her kids David and Mercy, and twins Stella and Estere — who were all born in Malawi.

A representative for Madonna did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.

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