Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour and Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour may be over (or on hiatus, in Taylor’s case) but the original Queen of Pop is just getting started.
After postponing her career-spanning “Celebration” tour earlier this summer after being hospitalized with a serious bacterial infection, Madonna finally took the stage in London’s O2 Arena on Saturday night for her first live performance in almost three years.
“It’s been a crazy year for me,” she said to the audience at one point, in relation to her health scare (via CNN). “I didn’t think I was going to make it, neither did my doctors. That’s why I woke up with all of my children sitting around me.”
“I forgot five days of my life—or my death. I don’t really know where I was,” she added. “If you want to know my secret, and you want to know how I pulled through and how I survive, I thought, ‘I’ve got to be there for my children. I have to survive for them.’”
Speaking of Madonna’s children, it sounds like the show was a real family affair. At one point, 17-year-old Mercy James made a surprise appearance to accompany her mother at the piano for the 1992 track “Bad Girl.” In another widely-shared clip, the “Like A Prayer” singer’s 11-year-old daughter Estere brings the house down with a Vogue number set to a remix of her mother’s 1990 hit “Vogue,” of course. (Side note: Estere and Blue Ivy Carter should really do a MasterClass on getting over stage fright as the 11-year-old child of an international pop icon.)
In line with the scary situation that preceded it, it sounds like the two-plus hour, 40-odd song set wasn’t all celebratory. Per CNN, the show also included tributes to late stars Prince, Sinéad O’Connor, and Michael Jackson, as well as victims of the AIDS epidemic, including artist and friend Keith Haring.
The “Celebration” tour is currently set to run in Europe until December 6, before starting its U.S. leg in New York City’s Barclays Center on December 13.