Madonna is currently in the closing stretch of her North American Celebration tour, with a career-spanning setlist and an array of surprises that have kept her in the headlines since the tour started in the U.K last fall. Yet the biggest headlines came in the months prior, when a serious bacterial infection landed the star in an induced coma for four days in summer of 2023, postponing the start of the tour.
In the midst of her five-night stand at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles on March 4, the star revealed more details of her "near-death experience" onstage, including her first words after waking up from a coma.
Madonna's Celebration tour has been generating headlines since it kicked off last fall.
“It was pretty scary," Madonna told the crowd. "Obviously I didn’t know for four days because I was in an induced coma, but when I woke up, the first word I said was, ‘no.' I’m pretty sure God was saying to me, ‘You wanna come with us? You wanna come with me, you wanna go this way?’ And I said, ‘no. No!'”
Acknowledging her doctor, who was in attendance, Madonna also detailed her recovery process. "It was so hard for me to walk from my house to the backyard and sit in the sun,” she said. “I know that sounds insane, but it was difficult. I didn’t know when I could get up again and when I could be myself again. It was a strange thing to finally not feel like I was in control. That was my lesson to let go.”
'It was a strange feeling to finally not feel like I was in control,' Madonna told the crowd on Tuesday.
The Celebration tour has already featured plentiful surprises and cameos, especially during the performance of "Vogue," for which the likes of Eric Andre, FKA Twigs, Stella McCartney, Donatella Versace and onetime Madonna biopic star Julia Garner have come onstage as "guest judges."
The star has also dealt with a series of snafus on the road, as well. Last week, the estate of Luther Vandross submitted a request for the late R&B star to be removed from a montage of AIDS casualties during the performance of "Live to Tell," which Madonna's camp promptly obliged. She was also hit with a bizarre lawsuit filed by two concertgoers due to a late-starting New York concert in December. Her reps eventually responded to the suit with a statement, saying that the shows in question "opened in North America at Barclays in Brooklyn as planned, with the exception of a technical issue December 13th during soundcheck. This caused a delay that was well documented in press reports at the time. We intend to defend this case vigorously."
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The Celebration tour will continue to wind its way through the U.S. in the coming weeks, with dates still scheduled for Colorado, Arizona, Texas and Florida. The North American tour will conclude with five nights at Mexico City's Palacio de los Deportes from April 20-26.
Check out Q's tribute to the Material Girl's 40-year career: "Madonna's Immaculate Ambition."
