From Adam:
We had hot tickets, and I have no idea where the news that staff at Wembley were rude is coming from. We were actually commenting how well arranged it all was. We picked up our tickets with no problem, were directed to wait at gate J and then told many times exactly what was going to happen.
The sound check ran late, so we didn't go in until almost six. They told us we would be let in twenty minutes before everyone else in the stadium, then wait at the gates before going onto the pitch.
For us, there was never a moment of confusion. Staff were so helpful, they even told us EXACTLY how long we had to wait inside and directed us to the bars and toilets for our 'last go' before we were let in.
It was just an amazing experience....until the train station closed but that is just poor planning by transport not having enough services and nothing to do with Live Nation. So please, let people rest assured that if they have hot tickets they will have a great time.
We were right up the front for the first set then moved to the back of the gold circle where the view was even better! Being up the front was fun, but if you want to see the show go back about ten metres!
Anyway - sorry to rant but we read on another site that the Live Nation and security guys were not pleasant and as far as we were concerned that just isn't true.

From Aidan:
Not sure if you were at the Madonna concert in London last night but it was an absolute disagree.
I have been a Madonna fan for over 25 years and have gone to all her concerts. Last night I was seated to the right of the stage. There were no screens that were visible and you could not hear her. Her promoters over sold tickets and as a result Wembley Stadium received over 3000 complaints. Everyone seated towards the back were walking out of the concert after the first three songs due to them not been able to see or hear her.
I would interested to know anyone else suffered a similar experience. I know you guys only publish good stuff about Madonna on this site but I personally know that unless a lot of people get their money back from last nights concert, Madonna has lost a few die hard fans thanks to Live Nation.

From Andy:
We were at Wembley last night in the Gold Circle....to see our all time favourite! Yes she was good, BUT the sound was terrible in places.
During Into The Groove you could not hear her for the heavy bass, and when ever she spoke it was very distorted. For some one of her stature you dont expect this but we had a good night.
Love Madonna....Ray Of Light came over really bad....but Like A Prayer was fab. We were late getting in because of sound checks? Madonna really needs to kick ass!

From Dariush Alavi:
Half-way through her rocket-fuel propelled, rave-anthem rendition of Like A Prayer, Madonna messes up her lyrics. When she realises what she’s done, she smiles, turns around to look at a member of her band and curls her lips sheepishly.
It’s a perfect moment, despite being based on an error: the most famous woman in the world – the grand dame of all control freaks – forgets the words to one of her most iconic tracks and manages to turn the gaff into an endearing display of fallibility. A cynic would wonder if the incident is as choreographed as her show’s dance routines. But there don’t appear to be any cynics in the Golden Circle tonight.
Which, in a way, is a shame because I’ve always felt Madonna’s music – and especially her concerts – would be capable of standing up to cynicism, or at least to any form of criticism that can be bothered to probe a little deeper than the issue of whether she can still dance at the age of 50. Even though I’d read several reviews of the Sticky & Sweet show – most of them based on the Cardiff and Nice nights – I entered Wembley Stadium not really knowing what to expect. But that’s not the show’s fault.
Unwilling, or unable, to engage with the gig on any but the most obvious levels, Europe’s media failed to convey even a tip-of-the-iceberg sense of the ways in which this concert operates. Having seen the show myself now, I am mystified by the press’ refusal to go out on a ‘critical limb’ and confront the concert in the ways it’s so plainly asking to be confronted.
Maybe part of the problem is that the tour doesn’t rest easily within the confines of a traditional review....although, again, the world has had 18 years since Blond Ambition to grow accustomed to the fact that Madonna’s multi-sensory extravaganzas can’t be pigeonholed. Maybe the likes of Tracy Emin or Damien Hirst should be enlisted to give us their take on the night, but perhaps they’re not best placed to comment on its ultimate raison d’etre: the music?
I know I’m certainly not, but at least I’ve tried to meet the show half-way in its attempt to stimulate more than just a discussion on whether Madge’s cheeks are too gaunt or her biceps too pumped. Madonna’s genius has always been her ability to strike a balance between out-and-out commercial pop and coyly elusive modern art. It’s always been possible to appreciate her videos and concerts on a superficial level or see them as the site of interesting – if not always convincing – cultural commentary.
She doesn’t always sustain her arguments, but then maybe she doesn’t even try to. Maybe she just wants to throw the questions up in the air and let anyone who’s interested make what they will of them.
Thankfully, the Sticky & Sweet show doesn’t hold back on the questions. From the moment the split-screen candy-box opens to reveal the Queen seated on – what else? – a throne, to the time it closes with the words ‘Game Over’, the concert uses various elements of Madonna’s back catalogue as the basis for a two-hour discourse on how to save the world, pop music style. You can’t accuse Madge of shying away from the big issues!
The sound of a ticking clock can be heard as soon as the lights go down. Or, to be more precise, it’s the sound of Madonna pretending to be a ticking clock, the first of several instances where she’s likened to a machine, a construct of her own success. The glossy photo book which accompanies the show, and the first video interlude, portray her as a well-oiled, finely-tuned fighter, proud of the position she’s attained, but scarred, altered and isolated by the climb to the top.
'Even the devil wouldn’t recognize you,' says one of the captions. The ticking clock gives way to more machinery: the sight of wheels and cogs spinning within a giant, diamond-encrusted letter ‘M’. The colours are pink and cheerful, the costumes seem inspired by Tim Burton’s euphoric take on Roald Dahl, but the underlying mood is restless. 'On the beat goes,' she sings, 'you don’t have the luxury of time.'
By being laced with 4 Minutes, the classic Vogue moves beyond a simple homage to early 20th century Hollywood glam and becomes an insistent call to seek personal betterment beneath the surface of the lacy, high-fashion visuals flashing on the overhead screens. The parameters of the evening’s journey have been set out: now we just have to see where the trip takes us.
First stop is the recent past: the early 80s. We’ve moved from the world of glitzy bling to the industrial backdrop of the inner city, the site of Madonna’s Borderline video. But even here, nothing is what it seems. At first sight, Into The Groove plays out like a familiar dance escapade, but the almost hypnotic screen projections suggest something more complex is at work. Multi-coloured figures interconnect with each other and literally emerge from each other’s bodies. On stage, the dancers hold hands and move as one.
The 'groove' becomes more than the beat of the song: it becomes the rhythm of the whole world. 'Are you ready to jump' into it? Madonna is, double-dutching herself into a frenzy which causes her to collapse to the floor in exhaustion. And even though she quickly gets up and tells us – in Heartbeat – that dancing on her own is what she likes doing best, the actual dance routine – wherein her limbs have to be propped up by various members of her entourage – suggest that she requires as much interconnectedness as anyone else.
We’re reminded of the title of her Malawi documentary: I Am Because We Are. And then the journey continues: a train appears, headed for ‘Freshville’.
Unexpectedly, ‘Freshville’ turns out to be somewhere between Mount Fuji and Transylvania, a place where cloaked figures don’t recognise each other and need to be taught each other’s language: 'Entiendo means I get it.' The disparate cultural strands seem to be coming together. We’re stopping off in various corners of the globe, trying to link locations that are 'miles away' from each other. The Buddhist peace of the east melds into the Moorish history of Europe, a time when years of cross-cultural harmony succumbed to the greed of territorialism.
We’re all taken to La Isla Bonita, where the high spirits are infectious, but the mood can’t last forever. 'Where do we go from here? This isn’t where we intended to be,' Madonna sings. It would be all too easy to tuck ourselves away and live, literally, on an island, but there’s work to be done and the outside world can’t be avoided.
So much so that it intrudes on proceedings with a brash, unashamedly blatant montage of society’s ills. Once again, we’re running out of time. Tick tock tick tock tick tock. Donning battle-armour – a cross between an American football uniform and a Samurai outfit – ‘intergalactic space-warrior Madge’ warns we’ve got only four minutes to save the world. But what’s our secret weapon? Prayer. And not just any prayer. A tectonic-plate-shifting, all-encompassing, raging chant, spelling out – literally, on the screens – that all prayers are one and the same, even though they may come in different tongues.
The prayer 'feels like home', which is exactly where we get to when the next song covers us in its stellar laser beams. Finally, the machine-imagery reaches its resolution as the ‘M’ motif turns into a space-ship, blasting all opposition out of existence, daring the world to 'give it to me.' Madonna goes back inside the box – is she the product contained therein or its maker? – and proceedings are over.
As we come crashing back to planet earth, trying to piece together what we’ve experiences, it doesn’t take long to realise all’s not well. The achievements of the show notwithstanding, it is apparent that significant numbers of people in the Golden Circle saw little, if anything, of the on-stage wizardry. Some are complaining that even the sound was substandard and didn’t compensate for the restricted views.
Perhaps Wembley Stadium simply isn’t the ideal venue for a spectacle of such intricacy? Perhaps the stage simply needed to be raised a couple of feet? Perhaps some of the voices are right when they saw that the dissatisfaction of many audience members is a sign of the growing resentment between Madonna’s new ‘record label’ and her loyal ‘clients’ (aka fans)?
Whichever way you look at it, the evening cannot be called an unqualified success. In an almost unprecedented move, Ticketmaster have now posted a message on their site inviting people to send in complaint emails if they found certain aspects of the concert unsatisfactory.
It’s a real shame, especially when the show itself is clearly as detailed, thought-provoking and life-affirming as anything Madonna’s ever done. But then, what’s the good of a gig if you can’t see or hear it? Maybe instead of complaining, the ‘clients’ should bombard Live Nation with a petition requesting that Madonna schedules extra dates in smaller London arenas, perhaps as a coda to the South American shows.
Certainly Sticky & Sweet deserves a rerun in Europe’s most important capital city. Not least so that people can have another opportunity to appreciate its accomplishments. But also so as to give the nation’s top journos another stab at appraising what is a visionary kaleidoscope of ideas from the woman who has made the ‘theatrical pop opera art installation’ a genre all her own. She’s got her boxing gloves on and she’s up for a fight. But no-one seems ready to step into the ring.

From Flavio:
Basically I just came back from Wembley and couldn't wait to share with you guys how excited I (still) am.
Madonna was just 'superb'. She got confused with the words of Like A Prayer....can you believe it?
She also thank God that it didn't 'fucking' rain. I was at the pitch standing and I did fell some drops though.
It was a blast. She was unbelievable amazing. The concert started at 21:08 after a short DJ session from Paul Oakenfold.
Summing up, it was a shame that she performed just once on London, but hey....she is the Queen of Pop....SHE CAN!

From Juan:
I'm sure you would agree not every single comment about Madonna and her concert can be good, agree?
I bought 2 tickets at 160GBP each plus 15GBP booking fee as soon as they were first released....Block 141, Row 4....all seemed too good to be true. The reality was that we all on blocks 141 and especially 140, had a complete restricted view and everyone sitting around me was sulking the whole concert. I'm sure blocks 126 and 127 on the other side experienced the same problem?
Full price ticket for restricted view? I am sorry, that is so not right. As a big Madonna fan all I can say is I feel completely let down. I even left before concert ended. What was the point? I was just looking at the big screen the whole time. How bad was that?
What a shame. I was so looking forward to the concert....

From Lucius:
The Madonna concert in London last night was amazing. Highlights for me were the Britney video – even though I seemed to be the only one screaming – Borderline, which visibly made Madonna happy, and Heartbeat, which was stunning and had perfect sound. Furthermore, You Must Love Me proved that Madonna's voice gets more technical with age, the Like a Prayer mix was even better than the original, the Give It To Me routine is so innovative, and the art direction for Devil was breathtaking.
However, nothing came close to Ray of Light. I would have liked to stay in that moment for the rest of my life. With that being said, don't print 50,000 tickets that say 'doors open 5:00pm' when they open at 6:00pm. It's impolite. And then we waited for hours inside as well, it seemed. I'll be sending my sports massage bill to the Ritchie residence.
Paul Oakenfold was great but where were the dancers and the pyro? I was disappointed that so few audience members danced when Madonna finally came on. What's wrong with people? It's not Rain Man at the Apollo, it's Madonna at Wembley for God's sake. Dance, sing, scream, shout. Please! Everyone kept looking at us is as if we were on ecstasy or something. Maybe the ticket prices eliminate fun people, who knows....(Except the blonde lady standing next to us, who really got into it, but I owe her an apology as I kept landing on her foot when I was jumping up and down.)
And I wish people would stop holding up their cameras. They block other people's views, and we know there's going to be a DVD next Christmas anyway. It's impolite. I'm sure Madonna would much rather like to see her fans dancing and singing along to her music than 50,000 people watching her show through an LCD screen on a tiny, tiny digital camera.
Sorry, I needed to get that out of my system. The show was beautiful. Madonna is a legend. So are her legs.

From Mark:
I must say I have attended her last four tours and this is the only one that has disappointed. I lost momentum totally towards the end. I caught Madonna twice scowling at the sound guy (her stage left) for the appalling sound. 'Hung Up' and 'Give It 2 Me' were totally pants – if it wasn’t for the fact that I could see her singing I would never have known that she had started 'GI2M'! No keyboard sound could be heard at all! I am a die-hard fan but left Wembley debating whether I would go to a stadium gig again.

From Mark E:
I cannot believe that I am writing to complain about Madonna having thrilled and excited me for over 25 years, but the gig on Thursday was bloody awful. I was on the pitch and could not figure out why I was not getting 'into the groove'. At first I thought she had a cold as her vocal faded in and out, (more out than in), the bass was so high it distorted the quality of sound and at times most songs were inaudible.
Things got better from 'Like A Prayer' (has to be released as a reworked single) but again was tarnished by the fact that I had to leave one song early, anticipating the crowds and imminent tube closure, that paticular fact was in Madonna's total control and she needs to take responsibility for that but as we know the lady feels she does not need to apologise to anyone. A shame really as I thought studying Kaballah was supposed to be teaching her humility to others, something she has not done in her official response to the crticism.

From Marta:
I was at Madonna's London show at Wembley last night. She came out 35 minutes late and I found the show to be too all over the place - way too much electic guitar and the end of the gypsy section was odd as she had some old man play his guitar for 5 minutes as the crowd just sort of stood there watching, failing to get into it. Sure she danced around for 2 hours straight which was impressive, but compared to her past tours, this one was just not as good. Overall a disappointment.
The highlight were the celebs seated amongst us - Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Hudson, Penelope Cruz, and Fergie.

From Matt:
I went to the show last night and was incredibly disappointed. We had tickets in the upper level - I've been to the last four tours and have had closer seats so wasn't expecting it to be as great an experience of course - but it wasn't any experience at all - we were up top left as you faced the stage, and I am absolutely certain something was not right about the sound - we could barely hear Madonna half of the time - every time she spoke you could see everyone looking at each other to see if it was just them. Some songs were unrecognisable until the chorus - it sounded like we had our ears full of water.
Secondly, I disagree 100% with the official response that the time lines are only a guide - they aren't when Ticketmaster send an email schedule to every ticket holder which included two items of note: '2030 Madonna', and '2230 Curfew' - curfew is not a guideline, and the many thousands of people who had their night ruined cramming into the last train and getting home with hours to go before work would surely feel the same way.
The response from Madonna's team feels highly insensitive, and smells curiously like a response given purely to argue against a fine - if any admission is made, then a fine is inevitable. The result is an artist who has alienated many of her fans that had paid in good faith to see what should and could have been an excellent show.
I've been a huge fan for years and in all honesty I'm far more likely to defend Madonna against criticism but on this occasion the tour deserves a heavy drubbing - it was scandalously bad. As someone who has loved Madonna since childhood, I can only sum it up in one way: I actually felt embarrassed to be there.

From Michael:
Hi, I'm from Belfast, and I've been to a few Madonna concerts in Wembley and Slane Castle. This tour excels them all, for a woman her age it was breath taking, from the moment she arrived on stage, it was incredible. Okay a few lines were hard to make out, but honestly the atmosphere was electric, the dancing, singing, costumes, lighting, stage made you forget any mishaps. Well done Madonna and hope you make it to our shores on your next tour!

From Ruslan:
Yesterday I attended my icon's show in Wembley, I flew frim America to see it, bought hot ticket for 250 GBP, stood from 14:00 and excpected to be amazed.
What happened? Has Madonna lost her mind, I mean playing Borderline with a guitar, the sound was so horrible, even standing in front of the stage, I imagine what happened in the back upstairs, with those small screens people were not able to see her, since they were not able to hear maybe it would've help.
It was such a disappointment, the worst performance ever by Madonna, she must understand that performing live means LIVE, not what she was doing last night!
Live Nation should get an idea how to respect people who pay a lot for such a poor concert, at least they have to arrange transportation in order to get out of the stadium, or the performer should resepct their fans and be on stage ontime, have you seen what happened yesterday with people who couldn't catch a train, I was on of them, and all this happened to me when I've spent time, a lot of money to come, standing in lines etc, what a freaking stuff.
I think Madonna must do something about it, it it not about getting millions of dollars from shows, she forgot how she get where she is today and her fans are her career, but it seems she doesn't want to think about it, or maybe she is just tired?
I am so disappointed, I don't even want to listen to her music.

From Shane:
I'm just back in Ireland from been in London to see Madonna, I thought I'd send my best photos from the Golden circle, not as close as most but it's the closest I've ever been, I heard there were some bad reviews for the sound in the stadium.
I arrived on the day for 12 to queue for the hot tickets, the organisation for the ticket collection by Live Nation was dreadful, I expected to be treated better after spending €315, but we international people eventually got our tickets and passes and started queuing in the next line at 3pm till 5pm then got inside to another queue to wait till Madonna Finished rehearsal. I got to see her on stage in a green tracksuit and saw her play some guitar to Ray Of Light and practise some dance routines with her choreographer.
Then we quickly ran to the stage and I got a good spot close to the stage and beside the catwalk, 2nd row, so I was happy then there was the long wait till Madonna appeared, we got to see her manager and some dancers before she arrived, then the moment arrived after some brilliant Mexican waves she came on stage after some amazing opening graphics which worked fine right through the show I was worried after nice that they wouldn't.
I have never seen Madonna this close even in G.A.Y., she has an amazing arse....and is so slim. She danced like a 20 year old, a number of times I got eye contact and she smiled at me once, I thought she was impressed with our singing and I screamed out Beautiful Stranger as a request which she had already said she did not know the words to, she seemed to be in fine form, the whole show was amazing, my friend who had been to the Nice show said she took a 20 minute break in the middle but on this evening she only occasionally stopped to have a drink of water.
I loved all the song reworkings including the new techno Like A Prayer and 'here comes the rain again sample' I really didn't think give it to me would be as good a closing song as Hung Up but she proved me wrong, she had the crowd in the golden circle in an uproar bouncing up and down, I must say the concert was amazing, brilliant and she did seem to interact with the crowd alot more than I had seen before she seemed really relaxed and full of energy considering she celebrated Guys birthday the night before.
Anyway I thought the whole operation on the day for the concert went off well except for ticket collection, but the police organisation afterwards to get everyone onto a tube train looked well organised and I personally got back to my hotel in Russell Square easily. The sound and visuals were fine from where I was, and I do feel bad for anyone whose evening was ruined by a bad sound system at the back. All I can say is it was great to have a laugh with Madonna.

From Tracy:
Fabulous as ever, I'll be honest I wasn't expecting too much as I'm not crazy about the Hard Candy CD but she blew me away yet again. The opening song was fabulous, great entrance, the whole thing was spectacular.
Loved the reworking of Vogue and Borderline. Like A Prayer was also fabulous. The only bit I didn't like was the end of the gypsy section. You Must Love Me was beautiful, felt very honest and personal.
Devil Wouldnt Recognise You - I was in awe! The stage was gorgeous! My only problem was the time she came on - 40 minutes late - we had a coach to catch at 11:00pm!