Following her “surprise” appearance during Sabrina Carpenter’s Coachella set earlier this year, Madonna pulled out all the stops for the first headlining live set of her Confessions II era.
On Thursday, the Queen of Pop threw together an impromptu performance in New York’s iconic Times Square.
Madonna has long been an ally and advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, celebrating Pride month during her six-song set, which was put together in collaboration with the queer dating app Grindr, with whom she has been promoting her upcoming album for the last month.
The Like A Prayer singer kicked things off with Confessions II opener I Feel So Free, before launching into her Sabrina collab Bring Your Love and the newly-released song Love Sensation.
From there, she paid homage to her original Confessions On A Dance Floor album by performing cuts Get Together and, fittingly, I Love New York, before ending on a blast of the chart-topping Hung Up.
Over the course of her performance, Madonna paid homage to the queer freedom-fighters who paved the way for the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
Naturally, there were also some Madonna-esque chaotic antics, as she swung her leg over a safety barrier, straddled a speaker and messed with producer Stuart Price’s mixing desk mid-performance, after he joined her on stage, in addition to a flash-mob of dancers.
The Grammy winner’s performance got the seal of approval from fans watching in person, as well as those live-streaming the whole set online…
The location of Madonna’s performance was also significant, as the story goes that Times Square was dropped off by a cab driver when she first arrived in New York in her early 20s to make it as a dancer, supposedly with just $35 in her pocket.
Confessions II is due for release in just over a month, on Friday 3 July.
In an official press release, Madonna said that a lyric from an upcoming song One Step Away summed up her ethos for the album, stating: “People think that dance music is superficial, but they’ve got it all wrong.
“The dance floor is not just a place, it’s a threshold: A ritualistic space where movement replaces language.”