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Every Madonna Tour, Ranked

Looking back on the Queen of Pop's groundbreaking concerts over the years.

By Sal Cinquemani

Sal Cinquemani

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In 1974, at the age of 15, Madonna snuck out of her father’s house in suburban Detroit to attend David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs Tour. She was summarily grounded for the summer, but the punishment was worth it. “I don’t think that I breathed for two hours. It was the most amazing show that I’d ever seen,” Madonna said during a speech inducting the Thin White Duke into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

Madonna’s first two tours, 1985’s Virgin Tour and 1987’s Who’s That Girl World Tour, served as experiment labs for the burgeoning superstar. In 1990, her Blond Ambition World Tour revolutionized the pop concert. Drawing inspiration from Bowie’s theatricality, Prince’s cheeky flamboyance and Michael Jackson’s stage command, she offered audiences an immersive experience that went beyond conventional live performance.

Each of Madonna’s subsequent tours have pushed the boundaries even further, embracing technology for multimedia (and multi-sensory) presentations of her music. On the heels of her own induction into the Rock Hall of Fame in 2008, the singer’s Sticky & Sweet Tour became the highest grossing tour for a female artist in history – a record she held until 2023, when it was finally eclipsed by Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour, according to Billboard Boxscore.

Madonna could have hung up her corset long ago and she would still be one of the most successful live acts of all time. But she continues to push herself – and us. Her latest trek, the career-spanning Celebration Tour, will wrap up with a historic free show at Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on May 4. The concert will be broadcast live on TV Globo and will likely see Madonna performing for her biggest audience to date – more than 40 years into her career.

To get in on the celebration, we’ve ranked all 12 of Madonna’s boundary-busting tours.

The Virgin Tour (1985)

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.

Who’s That Girl World Tour (1987)

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.

Re-Invention World Tour (2004)

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.

Madame X Tour (2019-2020)

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.”

Rebel Heart Tour (2015-2016)

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.”

Sticky & Sweet Tour (2008-2009)

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.

The Celebration Tour (2023-2024)

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.

Drowned World Tour (2001)

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.

The MDNA Tour (2012)

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. 

The Girlie Show (1993)

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.

Blond Ambition World Tour (1990)

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.

Confessions Tour (2006)

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.

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25 Reasons Madonna's Blond Ambition Tour Still Rules, 25 Years Later

A quarter of a century ago, cone bras ruled the world

Madonna kicked off her Blond Ambition World Tour on April 13, 1990, 25 years ago this week. Besides offering the world Madonna in her absolute prime – as a performer and as an all-around focus of attention – Blond Ambition changed the pop-culture landscape.

Fans might be surprised to learn that it’s not Madonna’s highest-grossing tour; Sticky & Sweet, MDNA and The Girlie Show each performed better. And it featured only 57 stops. But it’s still hugely important and might have done the most to define Madonna as a music icon – and here are 25 reasons for that.

(NSFW warning: The article features clips from Madonna in concert, and some of the language might not be work-appropriate. Hey, it’s Madonna.)

1. It reinvented the concert tour.

Today, most major pop tours are full-scale productions with costume changes, special effects, elaborate sets and a sense of drama that takes the experience beyond someone just singing into a microphone. It wasn’t always that way, however, and Madonna and choreographer Vincent Paterson specifically set out to elevate the concert.

As Paterson explained to PEOPLE in a 1990 interview, “The biggest thing we tried to do is change the shape of concerts. Instead of just presenting songs, we wanted to combine fashion, Broadway, rock and performance art.”

2. It has full-on acts

The fact that Madonna divided her performances into five thematic categories – Metropolis, Religious, Dick Tracy, Art Deco and Encore – suggests not only a level of creative planning unusual for concerts at the time but also the sheer volume of material Madonna had to work with – and at only 31 years old, no less.

3. It made a ton of money.

In the first two hours that tickets went on sale, a total of 482,832 were purchased, for a grand total of $14,237,000. By the end of the tour, Madonna had generated more than $62 million – that’s $113 million adjusted for inflation.

4. It helped cement the link between pop costumes and couture.

In addition to the vast majority of Blond Ambition’s many stage costumes, Madonna’s bullet bra was designed by haute couture legend Jean Paul Gaultier. In 2012, one of these very bras sold at a Christie’s auction for $52,000.

5. It gave us that iconic ponytail.

According to a 1990 edition of PEOPLE’s Style Watch, Madonna’s clip-on ponytail quickly became a look that fans copied when attending Blond Ambition stops. “Lots of women – and men – are showing up at her concerts with this hairdo,” remarked Warner Bros. Records publicity VP Liz Rosenberg. “It’s really catching on.”

You might think Madonna would do anything for a look, but that clip-on ponytail resulted from one specific need: she needed a style that wouldn’t get tangled in the headset she wears when she sings.

6. The title itself was a stand for independence.

Initially, it was to be the Like a Prayer World Tour, sponsored by Pepsi. Of course, the “Like a Prayer” video was met with a great deal of controversy, and Pepsi eventually backed out of a licensing deal with “The Donner.” Thus, Blond Ambition was born.

7. It overcame a rough start.

Blond Ambition kicked off on Friday the 13th – Friday, April 13, 1990, near Tokyo, Japan. Suitably, the weather was miserably wet and cold, and at one point Madonna slid across the wet stage and proclaimed, “You didn’t know you were here for an ice-skating show. Well, I’m Dorothy Hamill.”

8. It featured Madonna at her most perfectionist, for better or worse.

And according to the New York Times review of the concert , that meant the concert was more “live” than live. “Madonna has become so perfectionistic, and so athletic in her dancing, that she would clearly rather lip-sync than risk a wrong note,” the review notes. “With tickets priced at $30, concertgoers might expect a more live concert.”

9. It made Madonna confront "the fascist state of Toronto."

As documented in the 1991 behind-the-scenes movie Madonna: Truth or Dare , Toronto police threatened to arrest Madonna should her performance of “Like a Virgin” feature her miming masturbation. When the faux-Middle Eastern arrangement of the hit song played, however, Madonna did her usual dance, hand motions and all.

Ultimately the police opted not to arrest her on obscenity charges, but she still famously called the Canadian city a "fascist state."

10. It was condemned by the Vatican.

Not that it’s a good thing to earn the wrath of the Roman Catholic Church, but it speaks to what a big deal the Blond Ambition tour was that the Vatican’s official newspaper, Osservatore Romano , declared the show sinful – a more or less unprecedented decision.

11. "Don’t talk. If you talk, I will stop speaking, all right?"

Madonna’s response to the condemnation, however, was 100 percent Madonna. After commanding the Italian press to cease talking, she defends her performance. “Like theater, [Blond Ambition] asks questions, provokes thought and takes you on an emotional journey, portraying good and bad, light and dark, joy and sorrow, redemption and salvation.”

12. Every Blond Ambition performance began with a prayer.

Regardless of what the Pope may have thought of Madonna’s work, she felt she was on good terms with God, and Truth or Dare notes that she began every show with a group prayer.

13. She sang "Happy Birthday" to her dad at the tour’s Detroit show …

There’s been no shortage of kerfuffle about Madonna’s relationship with the rest of the Ciccone clan, but the tour featured a touching moment onstage with her dad, Silvio Ciccone, at her hometown show in Detroit.

14. Which means she performed all those naughty bits with her dad in the audience.

There’s a moment in Truth or Dare when she mentions that her dad watching the racier parts of the Blond Ambition tour is scarier than confronting the Toronto police.

15. It was a decidedly pro-gay show.

It’s notable that Madonna was up-front about the fact that six of her seven male backup dancers were gay men. Madonna, after all, had been outspoken about gay rights and gay people in general long before it became the norm among celebrities. In fact

16. Its final U.S. performance was dedicated to Keith Haring.

Madonna was good friends with the pop artist Keith Haring, who died of AIDS-related complications on Feb. 16, 1990. The Blond Ambition World Tour’s last American stop, in East Rutherford, New Jersey, was dedicated to Haring’s memory, and the more than $300,000 the show made was donated to the Foundation for AIDS Research. (Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet Tour used a Haring-inspired backdrop, seen in the above clip.)

17. It featured a gay Dick Tracy chorus line.

Skip forward to the 5:45 mark in this clip of the Blond Ambition performance of “Now I’m Following You” to see six dancing Dick Tracys pair off into three male-male pairs. It’s quite the spectacle, and it’s even more notable when you realize that most of the tour began before the 1990 Dick Tracy remake (in which Madonna starred) hit theaters, meaning this chorus line was the first glimpse fans saw of the reinvented Dick Tracy.

And no, none of those Dick Tracys were Warren Beatty , who played the title character and who was dating Madonna throughout the tour.

18. It was also pro-safe sex.

You have to hand it to Madonna: Encouraging the use of condoms was on-point in 1990, and every show had her introducing “Into the Groove” by saying, “You really never get to know a guy until you ask him to wear a rubber.”

19. It mocked the perception of Madonna as a dumb blond sexpot.

For the Blond Ambition take on “Material Girl,” Madonna sang the entire song in an accent that falls somewhere between dumb blonde, “Noo Yawk” housewife and gangster’s moll. Say what you will about Madonna taking herself very seriously, but most singers wouldn’t ever perform in curlers and a bathrobe.

20. It had grand cinematic aspirations beyond Dick Tracy .

The first act of the show is themed “Metropolis.” That’s not Superman’s city. That’s the 1927 German expressionist epic Metropolis , and you can see it in the retro-science-fiction aesthetic of the stage. Hey, if you were Madonna, you’d aim for high art.

21. There’s some Stanley Kubrick in there, too.

In a 1991 New York Times interview , Madonna described the Blond Ambition performance of “Keep It Together” as “Bob Fosse-meets- Clockwork Orange .”

“It’s the show’s ultimate statement about the family, because we’re absolutely brutalizing with each other, while there’s also no mistaking that we love each other deeply,” she said.

22. Kevin Costner thought the show was "neat."

There’s a famous scene in Truth or Dare in which Madonna parties with other celebs after a Los Angeles show. Among them is Kevin Costner, who tells Madonna he found the show “neat.” It’s an amazing moment, and Madonna is predictably incensed that Costner would use that adjective to describe her. “No one’s ever described me quite that way,” she tells him. Later, she decrees “Anybody who says my show was ‘neat’ has to go.”

Costner would forgive the diss in 2007.

23. Truth or Dare was a success, too.

The documentary about Blond Ambition was released in 1991. It cost $4.5 million to make. It earned $29 million. Sure, Madonna was nominated for a Razzie for Worst Actress – for playing herself, no less – but she had piles of money with which to console herself.

24. It was parodied twice.

Truth or Dare – and by extension, Blond Ambition – were skewered two times, by Julie Brown in Medusa: Dare to Be Truthful and by English comedians Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders in In Bed with French and Saunders . We’d like to think Madge took it all in stride.

25. It essentially made The Immaculate Collection happen.

The tour concluded in August 1990. Everyone was all “Wow, Madonna has an amazing library of hits.” In November 1990, her first greatest hits collection, The Immaculate Collection , was released. You do the math.

Madonna Felt Like She’d Lost Part of Herself When Lourdes Left for College

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Madonna: Blond Ambition World Tour Live

Madonna and her crew perform in Nice, France on the last day of the legendary Blond Ambition Tour in 1990 for the most watched HBO Special in its history and for an exclusive LaserDisc relea... Read all Madonna and her crew perform in Nice, France on the last day of the legendary Blond Ambition Tour in 1990 for the most watched HBO Special in its history and for an exclusive LaserDisc release. Madonna and her crew perform in Nice, France on the last day of the legendary Blond Ambition Tour in 1990 for the most watched HBO Special in its history and for an exclusive LaserDisc release.

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• Trivia The 1991 rock documentary "Truth or Dare (In Bed with Madonna") was filmed during this tour.
• Alternate versions When HBO reran the special on July 28, 1991, it was an entirely different edit of the exact same concert featuring alternate camera angles galore. Additionally, the end credits were changed to scrolling credits which roll over a black screen, as opposed to the original 1990 broadcast, which featured static credits imposed over a fireworks show.
• Connections Featured in The '90s Greatest: A New Generation (2018)
• Soundtracks Express Yourself Written by Madonna and Stephen Bray Performed by Madonna Contains a sample of "Everybody" Written by Madonna

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'A Freudian nightmare': Madonna's Blond Ambition tour turns 30

Three decades on, the controversy-courting concert tour is still shaping the ways female artists express their sexuality

• Modern Toss on Blond Ambition tour ...

I n Toronto, Madonna simulated masturbation on a velvet bed under the watchful eye of the Canadian police, who threatened her with arrest if her show went ahead. In Italy, unions called for a general strike if Madonna performed, and Pope John Paul II declared her concert “one of the most satanic shows in the history of humanity”. The Blond Ambition tour , which turned 30 years old last month, remains among the most controversial tours of all time.

It seems bizarre now that so much fuss was made over a little fake frotting and a few gyrating nuns. But this was 1990, when Kylie Minogue was still performing in straw hats, Bananarama were deemed dangerous and the gossip pages raged over Annie Lennox singing Would I Lie to You in a bra. Into this age of relative wholesomeness landed Blond Ambition Madonna , on a mission to combine fashion, rock, Broadway theatricality and performance art, to “be provocative” and “break useless taboos”. Mission accomplished. Jean Paul Gaultier’s famous conical corset has been described as a “Freudian nightmare”, a generation of teenagers asked their parents what S&M stood for, and the coy suggestiveness of the live pop spectacle was blown wide open.

The themed set-pieces – religion, German expressionism, art deco, Madge’s rubbish new movie Dick Tracy – set a new bar for confrontational theatricality that only greater shock tactics could ever challenge. Marilyn Manson ’s onstage Bible shredding is straight out of the “Madonna 90” guidebook, and with her firework bras, stage blood and copious dry-humping, Lady Gaga looks as if she was conceived at a Blond Ambition gig. But the key taboo Madonna broke that summer was that of feminine sexuality as strength rather than titillation, as something owned by the artist not cashed in by the svengalis. That’s what gave us SexKylie , “ zig-a-zig-AH! ”, Wrecking Ball -era Miley and Nicki Minaj’s bottom-obsessed Anaconda . It’s one of the reasons female artists feel comfortable singing about sex and desire today.

Sex sells, though, and more sex sells more. Over the decades, overt sexuality became the expected – nay, contractual – pop norm. Attention-grabbing boundaries were pushed to their limits, and artists were pressured to play this new, ever raunchier game. Enter Billie Eilish, defiantly covered, mocking the uber-sexualised expectations of modern pop with a film of her stripping off beneath blackened water: “If I wear more, if I wear less, who decides what that makes me?” she intones, shaming the bodyshamers and staring out the monetisable male gaze. By asserting ownership of her body she is not re-establishing any old taboos, she’s breaking the oldest one of all – subservience. Her image, her body, her art, her rules. Which was Madonna’s point all along.

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Pose Reaches Peak Madonna: a Visual History of the 1990 Blond Ambition Tour

Pose has finally done it: the series has reached peak Madonna, and there is no turning back. After heavily referencing the superstar on each episode of season two, the obsession finally reached an apex with episode five . In “What Would Candy Do?” Ricky and Damon (played by Ryan Jamaal Swain ) are on the rocks relation-ship wise, and are both auditioning to be backup dancers for the Blond Ambition tour. Going head to head in a dance-off is certainly not helping them in the love department, but we, as viewers, do get some insight into the importance of the backup dancers on the iconic tour. Over the past decade, critics have accused other pop stars—like Lady Gaga—of copying Madonna, but the show makes clear that the Material Girl also did her fair share of “borrowing.” It’s no secret now—especially not in the ballroom world of Pose — that Madonna brought voguing to the mainstream when she co-opted the moves. But the question of appreciation versus appropriation comes up here, with Blanca on one side of the argument (she sees the popularization of voguing as useful and empowering) and Pray Tell on the other (he’s fearful of the subculture being siphoned). Looking back at the real Blond Ambition tour, which was immortalized in the documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare (and later in the 2016 doc Strike a Pose ), we can see that as much as that tour is known for Madonna’s famous Jean-Paul Gaultier cone bra , it was her dancers who made the whole spectacle culturally relevant. Pose aims to unpack that in this episode. If it weren’t for the queer men of color who danced on the tour, Blond Ambition would not have been as effective or as subversive. And neither would her music video for “Vogue”—a black-and-white David Fincher project that was as inspired by the ballroom scene as it was by Isaac Julien’s film Looking for Langston and the work of Bob Fosse . Here, a glimpse of what the tour looked like nearly 30 years ago—including scenes of backup dancers Luis Camacho, Oliver Crumes, Salim “Slam” Gauwloos, Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza, Kevin Stea, Gabriel Trupin and Carlton Wilborn.

Madonna poses with her backup dancers for Madonna: Truth or Dare . Photo courtesy Everett Collection.

Madonna performs with backup dancers in a Bob Fosse inspired bowler hat routine. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

Madonna with backup dancers during the Blond Ambition World Tour in 1990. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

Backup dancers rehearse in a scene from Strike a Pose , Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan’s 2016 documentary about the backup dancers of the Blond Ambition World Tour. Photo courtesy of Everett Collection.

Luis Camacho prepares for the stage in a still from Strike a Pose . Photo courtesy of Everett Collection.

Madonna performs with her dancers in the Blonde Ambition Japan Tour at Chiba Marine Stadium, April 13th, 1990, Chiba, Japan. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

Madonna and her dancers performing in 1990. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

Madonna performs another routine that pays homage to Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon in the Blond Ambition World Tour. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

Madonna’s Blond Ambition World Tour 1990. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

Madonna and her backup dancers, wearing mermaid tails, during the Blond Ambition World Tour in 1990. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

Madonna plays the harp while her mermaid backup dancers surround her during the Blond Ambition World Tour in 1990. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

Not all of Madonna’s backup dancers were men. Two women support the singer on stage during the Blond Ambition World Tour in 1990. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

Madonna wears the iconic Jean-Paul Gaultier cone bra during the Los Angeles leg of the Blond Ambition World Tour in 1990. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

Madonna and Salim Gauwloos have a Dick Tracy moment during the Blond Ambition World Tour in 1990. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

Madonna shares the cone bra spotlight with a backup dancer during the Blond Ambition World Tour on June 30, 1990. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

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Madonna's iconic blond ambition dancers are reuniting to tell their story.

Read more: The Cinematic History of Madonna and David Fincher

Camacho, Gutierez, Crumes, and Stea. Photo courtesy of Logo Documentary Films

I thought, I'm going to die anyway, so why would I apply for a work visa?

Photo by Robin de Puy courtesy of Logo Documentary Films

Blond Ambition tour rehearsals. Photo courtesy of Logo Documentary Films

Oliver Crumes poses with a photo of himself from the Blond Ambition tour. Photo courtesy of Logo Documentary Films

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Madonna: Blond Ambition World Tour 90 (1990 & 1991 versions)

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Blond Ambition World Tour

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The Blond Ambition World Tour is the third tour by Madonna . It promoted her fourth studio album Like a Prayer (1989) and the soundtrack album I'm Breathless (1990), which was recorded for the movie Dick Tracy . The tour reached North America, Europe and Asia. It was a highly controversial tour, mainly for its juxtaposition of Catholic iconography and sexuality.

Background [ ]

Originally to be called the " Like a Prayer World Tour ", Sire Records announced the Blond Ambition World Tour in November 1989, following the success of Madonna's fourth studio album,  Like a Prayer , and Madonna's performance of " Express Yourself " at the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards - considered as a tour preview. Initially, the tour was only to reach Japan and North America, as Madonna was considering roles in several films. By the end of 1989 plans were announced to bring the tour to Europe as well because of popularity and fan demand. In December 1989, when preparations for the tour began, Madonna herself announced during a pre-recorded interview on German TV channel ZDF, that she would tour Germany during 1990. In April 1990, additional dates in Europe were added. [13]  Stage preparations and dress rehearsals took place at the Disney Studios, Burbank, California, before the tour kicked off in Japan.

The tour incorporated as central themes, sexuality and Catholicism, a combination which engendered controversy. The catholic associations called for a boycott of the show in Rome, and one of three scheduled Italian dates was eventually canceled. The show has achieved a measure of cult status, with elements such as the bullet bra and false ponytail hairpiece becoming cultural icons in their own right.

Madonna herself called the concert "like musical theater" and choreographer Vincent Paterson stated she wanted to "break every rule we can... She wanted to make statements about sexuality, cross-sexuality, the church... But the biggest thing we tried to do was change the shape of concerts. Instead of just presenting songs, we wanted to combine fashion, Broadway, and performance art."

The show's explicit overtone caused problems. In Toronto, police were alerted that the show might possibly contain lewd and obscene content (particularly a masturbation scene) and threatened charges unless parts of the show were changed. The show went on unaltered, however, and no charges were made after the tour manager gave the police an ultimatum: "Cancel the show, and you'll have to tell 30,000 people why.

French fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier designed the costumes for the tour, including the now-infamous cone brassiere inspired by Polish Art-Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka. Additional costume pieces were designed by Marlene Stewart, who had previously worked with Madonna on the 1987  Who's That Girl World Tour .

Director Alek Keshishian captured more than 250 hours of film of Madonna and her troupe during the tour. This footage was edited and released to movie theaters as  Truth or Dare (In Bed with Madonna) .

Due to ongoing throat problems, six shows had to be canceled, bringing the tour down from 63 shows to 57; altogether, 125,000 tickets had to be refunded. The proceeds of the last American date in New Jersey, was donated to the Nonprofit organization amfAR and dedicated to her friend  Keith Haring  who died of AIDS, grossing over $300,000.

Setlist: [ ]

Act 1 - Metropolis

Act 2 - Religion

Act 3 - Dick Tracy

Act 4 - Art Deco

• 1 Ray of Light Photoshoot
• 2 Erotica Photoshoot
• 3 Re-Invention World Tour

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BLOND AMBITION TOUR (1990)

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April 13 – Marine Stadium, Makuhari – Japan April 14 – Marine Stadium, Makuhari – Japan April 15 – Marine Stadium, Makuhari – Japan April 20 – Nishinomya Stadium, Osaka – Japan April 21 – Nishinomya Stadium, Osaka – Japan April 22 – Nishinomya Stadium, Osaka – Japan April 25 – Yokohama Stadium, Yokohama – Japan April 26 – Yokohama Stadium, Yokohama – Japan April 27 – Yokohama Stadium, Yokohama – Japan May 04 – The Summit, Houston – USA May 05 – The Summit, Houston – USA May 07 – Reunion Arena, Dallas – USA May 08 – Reunion Arena, Dallas – USA May 11 – UA Sports Arena, Los Angeles – USA May 12 – UA Sports Arena, Los Angeles – USA May 13 – UA Sports Arena, Los Angeles – USA May 15 – UA Sports Arena, Los Angeles – USA May 18 – Oakland Coliseum, Oakland – USA May 19 – Oakland Coliseum, Oakland – USA May 20 – Oakland Coliseum, Oakland – USA May 23 – Rosemont Horizon, Chicago – USA May 24 – Rosemont Horizon, Chicago – USA May 27 – Skydome, Toronto – Canada May 28 – Skydome, Toronto – Canada May 29 – Skydome, Toronto – Canada May 31 – The Palace, Michigan – USA June 01 – The Palace, Michigan – USA June 04 – The Centrum, Worcester – USA June 05 – The Centrum, Worcester – USA June 06 – The Centrum, Worcester – USA (cancelled) June 08 – Capital Center, Landover – USA June 09 – Capital Center, Landover – USA June 11 – Nassau Coliseum, New York – USA June 12 – Nassau Coliseum, New York – USA June 13 – Nassau Coliseum, New York – USA June 15 – The Spectrum, Philadelphia – USA (cancelled) June 16 – The Spectrum, Philadelphia – USA June 17 – The Spectrum, Philadelphia – USA June 20 – Byrne Arena, New Jersey – USA June 21 – Byrne Arena, New Jersey – USA June 24 – Byrne Arena, New Jersey – USA June 25 – Byrne Arena, New Jersey – USA June 30 – Eriksberg Stadium, Göteborg – Sweden July 03 – Bercy, Paris – France July 04 – Bercy, Paris – France July 06 – Bercy, Paris – France July 10 – Stadio Flaminio, Rome – Italy July 11 – Stadio Flaminio, Rome – Italy July 13 – Stadio Delle Alpi, Torino – Italy July 15 – Olympia-Reitstadion, Munich – Germany July 17 – Westfalenhalle, Dortmund – Germany July 19 – Wembley Stadium, London – England July 20 – Wembley Stadium, London – England July 21 – Wembley Stadium, London – England July 24 – Feyenoord Stadium, Rotterdam – Holland July 27 – Calderon Stadium, Madrid – Spain July 29 – Estadio De Balaidos, Vigo – Spain August 01 – Olympic Stadium, Barcelona – Spain August 05 – Stade De L’Ouest, Nice – France

Interview with Carlton Wilborn

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier

Interview with Mike McKnight

Vincent Paterson on Blond Ambition Tour

Interview with King Bee

Blond Ambition Tour

Europe 1990

Hans Schaft

Fred Gillotteau

Rotterdam 1990

Dave Crombeen

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The Story Behind Madonna’s Iconic Jean Paul Gaultier Cone Bra

By Liam Hess

On the first night of Madonna ’s Blond Ambition tour, held in April 1990 in Chiba, Japan, few in the audience could have prepared themselves for the spectacle about to unfold. With its $2 million dollar stage set, explosive choreography by voguing legends from the New York City ballroom scene, and headline-grabbing aesthetic fusion of Catholic imagery and BDSM, the show solidified Madonna’s position at the top of music’s pantheon. In less than two hours, she was no longer just a pop star—she had graduated to become a fully-fledged pop culture icon.

For her most avid fans, though, it was less of a surprise: Madonna was merely following up on the string of controversies that accompanied her latest album, Like a Prayer , a year earlier. A $5 million sponsorship deal with Pepsi was swiftly pulled after she debuted the video for her lead single, “Like a Prayer,” the plot of which implicitly drew a link between racial injustice and organized religion. Featuring Ku Klux Klan-style burning crosses and Madonna receiving the stigmata, it led to a direct call from the Vatican to boycott Pepsi and its subsidiaries. “Art should be controversial, and that’s all there is to it,” Madonna told the New York Times with nonchalance in the lead-up to the album’s release. (This laid-back response may have been due to the fact that Pepsi, eager to extricate themselves from the kerfuffle, let Madonna keep the $5 million check.)

Yet outside of the pearl-clutching backlash that followed the tour’s debut, the image that would come to define it was far more modest, arriving within the first few minutes of the show. Sporting an artfully slashed pinstripe suit, Madonna levitated to the stage on a hydraulic platform. She held a monocle hanging off her necklace up to her eye, before launching into “Express Yourself.” Then, moments later, she and her backup dancers whipped off their jackets to reveal something a little more sexy.

The pink conical bra that Madonna wore underneath is so embedded within the canon of both pop music and fashion that it now requires little introduction. Designed by Jean Paul Gaultier, who Madonna personally requested to create the costumes for the tour (she even handwrote him a letter to express her admiration for his humorous take on fashion), the look was the product of many months of collaboration, with fittings taking place both in New York and Gaultier’s ateliers in Paris.

“When Madonna first called me in 1989, it was two days before my ready-to-wear show, and I thought my assistant was joking,” said Gaultier in a 2001 interview with the New York Times . “I was a big fan. She knew what she wanted—a pinstripe suit, the feminine corsetry. Madonna likes my clothes because they combine the masculine and the feminine.” Indeed, it was this gender-bending spirit that made the tour’s visuals so memorable; just take her male dancers, who threw flamboyant shapes while sporting Tom of Finland-esque leather lace-back tops paired with Bob Fosse bowler hats. (The less glamorous side of which was explored memorably in the 2016 documentary Strike a Pose , where these dancers, many of whom were living with HIV/AIDS, saw their hopes and aspirations either realized or heartbreakingly thwarted.)

By Elise Taylor

By Jenny Berg

By Marley Marius

What made Madonna’s take on this undergarment truly subversive, though, was its nuances. The cone bra grabbed the public’s attention for the way in which it rebelled against the narrow definition of the beautiful female body that, for so many centuries, had been dictated by corsetry’s body-morphing strictures. Sure, designers like Vivienne Westwood had also spent the ’80s exploring a more freeing, playful take on the corset, but Gaultier’s version—first debuted on the runway in 1987 before being adapted for the Blond Ambition tour—took the piece and made it feel defiant, aggressive even. In place of the soft curves the corset was supposed to shape, the female anatomy became a spiky, phallic weapon, one that Madonna celebrated by exerting her dominance, sexual or otherwise, over the dancers she frolicked with across her one-and-a-half-hour musical extravaganza. This was a pop star in control, and her outfits told the story before she even opened her mouth to sing, or began gyrating wildly across the stage (or simulated masturbation, in a sequence that almost resulted in her Toronto leg of the tour being shut down).

Gaultier would go on to collaborate with Madonna on multiple occasions, including a memorable appearance at Gaultier’s 1992 AIDS fundraising gala in support of amFAR, where she walked the runway in Los Angeles before dropping her jacket to reveal a bondage-inspired harness top that left her breasts fully exposed. “I love Madonna,” Gaultier added in his New York Times interview. “She’s the only woman I ever asked to marry me. She said no, of course, but every time she asks me to work on her shows, I can’t say no.” Thirty years after making its first debut, the cone bra is more than just a part of fashion history, or an artefact hanging in a museum. Its legacy lies in the very real way in which it has encouraged generations of female pop performers in Madonna’s wake to channel their sexuality through the outfits they choose to wear without shame, and on their own terms. To paraphrase Gaultier, who could say no to that?

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