From simulated sex acts to pole dancing on the belly of a woman dressed as a nun, Madonna proves she can still do whatever she wants.

You don’t have to be a lapsed Catholic to appreciate the glorious spectacle of Madonna’s Rebel Heart World Tour. But it does help.

December 1993 was the last time the legendary Madonna was in town, peddling the Girlie Show World Tour on the back of her Erotica album. So it’s fair to say it’s been a long time between drinks for the for the hoards of adoring fans who packed Rod Laver Arena on Saturday night.

One doesn’t really need to review a Madonna show, you simply have to recount it as faithfully as possible and the details speak for themselves. You don’t need to talk about the electricity in the air or the way the crowd responded rapturously to a given stunt or antic, because there’s only one way to react to one of the world’s most Iconic pop singers revolving around a cruciform stripper poll aboard a dancer dressed in a nun habit.

When you are the person setting the benchmark then everyone has to rise to your standards. At 57 years old, Madonna is the greatest pop star on the planet. The Rebel Heart show in Melbourne was precision pop perfection.

After a 23-year wait, Madonna has wowed her fans Down Under in an energy packed extravaganza and paid tribute to the first Australian man who fell in love with her – Molly Meldrum.

Pop icon Madonna has shown fans she’s not hanging up the microphone anytime soon with an energetic two-hour performance at Auckland’s Vector Arena last night.

Madonna does not disappoint. Everything you heard, everything you’ve seen, everything you never expected and everything you did – it’s all here.

They say better late than never — and how true that was for the thousands who packed into Auckland’s Vector Arena last night for Madonna’s first-ever New Zealand concert.

As they say, a queen is never late—everyone else is just early.

She might be on her Rebel Heart Tour, but when it came to meeting the Media Development Authority (MDA) guidelines the Queen of Pop was a little less than rebellious.

Despite naming her current tour, and most recent album, Rebel Heart,pop superstar Madonna proved at her maiden Singapore show that she could play by the rules after all.

In her first show in Singapore, Queen of Pop finally showed us what we’ve been missing out on.

For her grand entrance Madonna descended onto the stage in a cage from high up in the ceiling. For her exit two and a half hours later she ascended back to the air while singing her very first hit, Holiday. (That it was already past 1 o’clock in the morning of February 25, a real Holiday, made the entire number even more surreal than it was.)

Crowds lap up superstar’s stunning performance at Asia World-Expo as Madonna announces she’s starting a revolution.

As irreverent as ever, Madonna lays siege to Impact Arena with dazzling show of power pop.

Madonna kept her Thai fans waiting until 10pm on Tuesday night at Impact Arena – but then what was an extra hour or two after they’d already waited decades for a chance to see the Queen of Pop live and in person?

With the weather taking a cold turn, South Florida was warmed up by the 57-year-old Queen of Pop, Saturday, January 23rd, and Sunday, January 24th. The concert took place at the Miami American Airline Arena for her hater-silencing Rebel Heart World Tour. Before the show started, an hour and a half was filled with club […]

When an artist embarks on the tenth concert of a career that spans over 30 years, one may think that it would be nothing new or innovative. One may think that she’d be up to the same old tricks, sing (or lip sync in the case of some) the same mega-hits the way they sound on her greatest hits compilation and simply go through the motions to cash in on all that concert cash. One does not know Madonna.

Pop queen deviates from her rigid set list, surprises with Don’t Cry For Me Argentina.

Thirty years after her first arena tour, a live performance by Madonna is still an event, a pilgrimmage for generations of the faithful.

The overriding truth about Madonna’s Philips Arena performance of her Rebel Heart concert is simple: She delivered, and then some.

Thirty seconds. That’s all it took for a sold-out crowd at Philips Arena to forgive Madonna for finally gracing us with her presence at 10:54 p.m.

I’ll never forget the rush of excitement and overall fear of internally imploding when I first opened my Madonna tickets on Christmas morning.

Thirty-three years after her first hit, Madonna made her Nashville debut Monday night, as the pop icon’s Rebel Heart Tour stopped at Bridgestone Arena.

Some of the fan reports on social media and on clickbait sites following Madonna’s Saturday show at KFC YUM! Center would have you think the pop idol was a wreck on stage.

Since Madonna first burst onto the scene more than 30 years ago, many of the biggest female pop stars on the planet have come through to perform for crowds of thousands in Kentucky. And yet, Madonna — the one who basically blazed the trail and created the template for all those divas — had not graced the Bluegrass State with her presence, until Saturday.

Madonna has been the standard-bearer among female pop artists for three decades, and any time a new star emerges the comparison is always made. The verdict is usually that Madonna did it first, and better, but It’s gotten to the point of cliché, to where you aren’t sure if you can trust the narrator.

If Madonna wanted to make a splash with her first performance in Oklahoma, she certainly did that.

Madonna is still very much aware of her powers. And her Rebel Heart Tour is a showcase fit for a queen.

Madonna’s Rebel Heart burned brightly until the wee hours Sunday at the AT&T Center at her first-ever San Antonio concert appearance.

the opening act, DJ Mary Mac. But that’s okay, she’s the unapologetic Queen of Pop and you’re not really paying for punctuality. Instead you’re paying for the experience of seeing Madonna’s first visit to San Antonio. Dressed in Kimono-like garments, Madonna started the evening with Iconic, the pop song that features sound bites by none other than Mike Tyson. She undresses into Bitch I’m Madonna, a Japanese Samurai-inspired backdrop that definitely pumped up the lady behind me who proclaimed that, “this was her motherfucking song,” and then proceeded to butcher every single word except for the repetitive “who do you think you are,” and Bitch I’m Madonna.

The superstar singer treated the sold-out crowd to a stunning performance, which included an X-rated recreation of The Last Supper.

Some of you perhaps thought the Queen of Pop was the girl who wouldn’t grow up, and was still out to shock and trade provocations with lasses less than half her age. Wise up, because the Rebel Heart show is the work of a woman who has shown no inclination to compromise over 30 years of work and would like to remind us of that.

What could be more Christmassy than pole-dancing nuns and lewd acts on the table of The Last Supper?

She’s the absolute Queen of reinvention, the Queen of pop who influenced a generation to wear ra-ra skirts in the 80s, footless leggings and an arm full of bangles. Well before the likes of Lady Gaga made the rallying cry that she was Born This Way, our Madge was expressing herself in a pointy bra and masculine suit.

After her Brit Awards tumble, the Queen of Pop returns to Greenwich to wow fans with a slick show.

Ze leek nu echt ingehaald te zijn door de tijd. Madonna ontrafelde het geheim van de eeuwige jeugd, maar de nieuwe media bleken voor haar een raadsel: haar album Rebel Heart lekte ver voor officieel verschijnen naar alle kanten weg. Tot overmaat struikelde de zangeres bij de Brit Awards tijdens een dansje over haar eigen cape. De Rebel Heart Tournee kreeg daarom bij voorbaat het karakter van requiem: de popkoningin leek aan het einde van haar regeerperiode. Het is een stelling die na het twee uur-durende popspektakel, zaterdag in de Ziggodome, niet meer houdbaar is.

Madonna (57) bespeelt in Rebel Heart-tournee vitaal, grappig en met maffe dansjes de uitverkochte Ziggo Dome.

‘Kan ze het nog een beetje?’, al dan niet meewarig uitgesproken. Daar ligt de nadruk op, als die vraag over Madonna en relevantie weer eens opkomt.

The superstar put on a dazzling and joyous display at London’s O2 Arena. So keen was Madonna to make things right at London’s O2 last night (December 1) – a mishap with a matador cape caused her to tumble down a flight of stairs the last time she was here for the BRIT Awards – […]

EXACTLY 278 days, 22 hours and 44 minutes after she dominated international headlines with her unfortunate fall at the Brits, MADONNA returned to London’s O2 Arena last night.

Madonna Staged A Triumphant Comeback At The Scene Of Her Horror Fall At The Brit Awards By Returning To Perform At London’s O2 Arena On Tuesday (01dec15).

Of the two sides of Madonna revealed on her latest album Rebel Heart — one a lachrymose balladeer pleading “Just hold me while I cry my eyes out”, the other an imperious sex-crazed queen snarling “Go hard or go home” — which would predominate at the O2 Arena?

Madonna returns after her Brit Awards tumble to show London she’s still going strong, says Andre Paine.

LAST time Ms Ciccone graced this stage was at the BRIT Awards when she famously stacked it thanks to “cape-gate”. Mercifully there was no wardrobe malfunctions this time. Decent Rebel Heart songs opened the set as a caged Madonna broke free to bust the kind of moves that would exhaust those half her age.

Madonna played the first night of the UK leg of her Rebel Heart Tour at the O2 Arena last night (1 December), and her spectacular set included incredible acrobatics, sexed up religious iconography, a successful cape removal and a heartfelt speech to mark World AIDS Day. See the setlist and get tickets for the remaining dates below.

Madonna has returned to the scene of her famous tumble – and got huge cheers from the crowd when her cape was pulled off without a hitch.

Queen Madge confidently took back her crown – reigning supreme once again on her Rebel Heart World Tour.

EXACTLY 278 days, 22 hours and 44 minutes after she dominated international headlines with her unfortunate fall at the Brits, MADONNA returned to London’s O2 Arena last night.

Madonna has put the painful memory of the Brit Awards behind her with a triumphant return to London’s O2 arena. The pop star accidentally stole the show at February’s awards when she was pulled backwards down the stairs by a malfunctioning matador cape. A huge cheer rang around the arena on Tuesday when she performed […]

Madonna has returned to the scene of her famous tumble – and got huge cheers from the crowd when her cape was pulled off without a hitch.

There was a huge cheer at London’s O2 Arena when Madonna divested herself of a giant Matador cape without mishap. The last time Madonna performed here, she fell off the stage. She stayed on her feet this time, more or less, but that doesn’t mean she played it safe. She descended from the arena ceiling in a cage, writhed on the top of a spiral staircase and climbed up a stripper’s pole to spin around on the stomach of a revolving nun in underwear.

Madonna goes in and out of fashion but one constant remains: her tenacity. Less than a year after being almost decapitated during the Brit awards when dancers yanked her cape and sent her flying backwards, Madonna returned to the O2 for a concert that proved that there’s nothing like a near-death experience to reinvigorate the Queen of Pop. Three years ago, Madonna played a less than impressive concert at Hyde Park. What a difference a terrifying accident makes.

Madonna is currently 39 dates into her Rebel Heart World Tour, with another 41 shows stretching out ahead of her. But tonight she breaks with her trusted setlist to mark World Aids Day: after an emotional speech, she bursts into a surprise rendition of Like A Prayer.

It’s a bit unsettling to see the self-proclaimed Unapologetic Bitch – and undisputed queen of pop – having fun, but that seems to be the agenda for Madonna’s Rebel Heart Tour

Wow! Met dat gevoel verlieten we het Sportpaleis na meer dan twee uur en een kwartier Madonna, the Queen of Pop aan het werk te zien. Een historisch optreden werd het want haar allereerste indoor show in ons land.

Madonna heeft zaterdagavond in het Sportpaleis bewezen dat ze nog steeds in topvorm verkeert. De 57-jarige Amerikaanse superster kwam in het eerste halfuur moeizaam op gang, maar sloeg daarna bikkelhard terug met een schitterende show vol verrassingen.

In een bomvol en zinderend enthousiast Sportpaleis verzekerde Madonna het publiek ervan dat niemand haar zal stoppen haar zin te doen. ‘Terwijl veel vrienden me aanraadden niet in België te komen spelen.’

In fine shape at the age of 57 and more than three decades into her career, Madonna brought her new show to Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona last night. The concert was sold out, as t is for tonight’s performance. Rebel Heart is a self-tribute show that makes constant self-references in a mix of the […]

Last Thursday at Valley View Casino Center, Madonna made the last stop of the first leg of her Rebel Heart Tour. It was a night of trailblazing musi and crazy costumes, marching warrior-like dancers, nuns with crosses, a spiral staircase dropped in from the ceiling and the crowd screaming when her dancers flexed their ripped abs after she asked them to show off for the crowd. We were stoked to be there.

Madonna has done it again! Her show at the MGM Grand Garden Arena last week was a smash. She is definitely still The Queen of Pop.

Despite missteps, including too many new songs and too few classics, her charisma shined on brightly at Thursday’s Valley View Casino Center concert.

If anyone is in doubt as to whether Madonna still deserves the reputation she once held as a world-class artist, I can tell you she very much does. In my mind, her stellar performance at The Forum on Tuesday solidified her iconic status forever.

Madonna remains the ballsy legacy act that routinely—and generously—favors her most recent songs over the safe-and-easy greatest hits show.

As watchful a superstar as pop has ever known, Madonna paused not long into her concert at the Forum to appraise the recent renovation of the venerable Inglewood arena, which has housed so many of her performances over the decades that “I feel like this is one of my homes,” she said.

“It’s decent work, if you can get it,” Madonna told a capacity crowd at The Forum in Los Angeles on Tuesday night. The pop music legend was surrounded by her dance crew; a group always there to lift her up, to help her down stairs, to fetch her water when she is thirsty. But this little quip could have applied both to herself and her infinitely impressive troupe, as a recurring theme through her two-hour set was humility. She would joke about the ceiling seeming lower because of her inflated ego, but the reality is that even after 32 years of reigning as the Queen of Pop, she remains grateful of her life and profession.

One has to hand it to Madonna. She is, perhaps, the only performer alive who can make people snarl in disappointment when showing up on stage 50 minutes late and make the same people walk out of the show in awe over what they just witnessed. The Rebel Heart Tour’s Monday evening stop at the Forum in Los Angeles was one of the best concerts Madonna has given in her 32-year career.

“Nobody f—- with the Queen! Learn that, motherf—–!”
Perhaps not the most eloquent way to put it, especially for a family-friendly newspaper and website such as the Las Vegas Sun (hence the hyphens), but if critics have entertained the notion that superstar Madonna is past her prime and irrelevant, think again.

It’s been a minute or two since Like A Virgin, but at 57 Madonna can still be counted on to deliver the goods, getting Into The Groove while still pushing the cultural buttons that rocked the PTA.

On Monday night, Madonna brought her 10th tour, Rebel Heart to San Jose for one night. Over 12,000 people attended to see the Queen of Pop perform hits from her 13th studio album, Rebel Heart, and classics from her thirty-year career.

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the title character retains eternal youth because a painting absorbs all the negative affects of his aging. Madonna must have one of those locked away in a Calabasas Kabbalah Center. She’s nothing short of a demi-god. And last night, during her appearance at the SAP Center, every single walk of life came to worship at her phallic altar.

When pop queen Madonna performed in San Jose Monday night, she was not showing her age. The fifty-something singer didn’t send out a memo out to her fans that she was going to play a late show on a school/work night.

Madonna’s Rebel Heart Tour, which came to the SAP Center in San Jose Monday night, is a definite mixed bag, with almost as much going for it as against it.

It’s really hard to determine exactly which part of Madonna’s Rebel Heart Tour, which hit San Jose’s SAP Center on Monday night, was the best.

Consider this my formal apology for any negative thing I have ever said about Madonna.

Early in the set during Madonna’s nearly two-hour Moda Center show, a man wrapped in Jewish religious gear—a tallit, or prayer shawl, and a yamulkah—danced in a gleaming group to the sounds of Devil Pray.

Further confirming my half-baked yet deeply entrenched theory that you can tell a lot about a concert by the contents of the performer’s merch table, Madonna’s appearance at Rogers Arena Wednesday night was calculatedly provocative, fantastic to look at and a little confusing.

Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone, known professionally as Madonna, is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and businesswoman who recently brought her 35-city Rebel Heart Tour to Chicago on September 28, 2015 at the United Center.

The Queen of Pop has reigned for nearly four decades and lest anyone forgets, she stopped in on Vancouver Wednesday evening with a strongly worded reminder: B-tch, I’m Madonna.

Edmonton hearts rebel Madonna. More than 14,000 fans got into the groove, vogued, and expressed themselves during Our Lady of Pop’s inaugural visit to Edmonton.

As watchful a superstar as pop has ever known, Madonna paused not long into her concert at the Forum to appraise the recent renovation of the venerable Inglewood arena, which has housed so many of her performances over the decades that “I feel like this is one of my homes,” she said.

People who rip Madonna for not acting her age should take a good hard look at Mick Jagger. Do people make fun of him for acting like a stud on stage? OK, bad example. Point is, if it’s OK for the aging male rock stars, why shouldn’t Madonna try as hard as she can to remain relevant, hip, sexy, shocking, whatever she wants? It’s inspiring to see a 57-year-old woman up there twerking on top of pole-dancing nuns in their underwear … and where were we?

Of the two other members of the great triumvirate of ’80s pop, Madonna explicitly mentioned only one on Thursday night at the Xcel Energy Center. “Yeah, we shook it up,” she said, dedicating her performance of La Vie En Rose to the megastar who’s “actually from this area.” The two “wrote a few songs together—the queen and the Prince.” (Only after I wrote this review did I discover that the two still hang out together—as in, at Paisley Park, after Madonna’s show.)

It’s easy to admire Madonna and not necessarily easy to like her.

Madonna plays by her own rules. Although she was fashionably late — hitting the stage at 9:45 p.m. Thursday at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul — it seemed as if most fans knew what to expect. Many seats were empty until the house lights dimmed and the Queen of Pop appeared.

Madonna sure knows how to stage an engaging and spectacular tribute to herself. Not just by hauling out the oldies — Madonna’s vision of herself insists that Madonna is always contemporary, so nearly half her two-hour set at an undersold Xcel Energy Center last night was drawn from her 2015 album, Rebel Heart. The star began her career by referencing glamorous women of the past, blurring the distinction between parody and homage. She continues that practice today, but now the only glamorous woman she references is herself.

She is Madonna. Simply and boldly, just Madonna. When the term “icon” in the music industry is passed around, a few artists come to mind. Names like Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Jimmy Hendrix, The Beatles, and Bob Dylan immediately spring up. And rightfully so. These musicians are original and have had significant influence on many generations of fans and basically all musicians today. Sadly, many of them have long past into history, or simply lost their grasp with modern society. Despite a new wave of sound, one icon has found a way to stay relevant in pop-culture and continue to push boundaries.

Charismatic singer, 57, puts on physically intense, highly theatrical two-hour show at Air Canada Centre Monday night that shows age is just a number. At 57, Madonna is still wears her Rebel Heart on her sleeve.

A storm descended on Atlantic City Saturday night, and it didn’t have anything to do with rain or winds.

After three decades of this, you thought Madonna might start taking it easy?

Though Madonna has dissed her Michigan roots lately, the Queen of Pop stood onstage at Joe Louis Arena Thursday night as part of her Rebel Heart Tour and declared to her 20,000-odd fans in attendance “Detroit made me who I am today.”

“Motor City — the hometown girl is back!” Madonna declared near the start of her Rebel Heart Tour stop Thursday night, Oct. 1, at Joe Louis Arena.

“Motor City, your hometown girl is back.” Madonna made sure she let fans in Detroit know she’s from the Detroit area and she’s proud of it.

On September 16, pop superstar Madonna performed at New York’s Madison Square Garden, and she put on a spectacular concert.

Madonna performed for a sold-out audience at Chicago’s United Center on Monday evening, and judging by comments from people leaving the show, it was the best concert Madonna had given in Chicago during her 30-year performing career. Madonna brought out the best in herself and her fans. Madonna made performers like Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, and Lady Gaga seem like “Beta” pop stars, and that’s saying a lot, since all the mentioned performers are great.

Even before Madonna took the stage Monday at the United Center, the senses hit overload. Warrior dancers hoisted crosses, Mike Tyson issued threats from the video screen, fake blood streamed as if from a tabloid murder photo, and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” provided the soundtrack.

Madonna carries the burden of being 57 in a world where Britney is an old maid at 33. But if we ignore Madge’s age, or forget that the current crop of hot, unremarkable young things run the pop industry, we can step back and enjoy the Rebel Heart Tour for the mature spectacle that it is.

There’s a long tradition in popular culture of artists who pushed the envelope and redefined the boundaries, but when it comes to pop music, few performers have so gleefully filled the role of iconoclast as Madonna. To say that she’s been a groundbreaker for female music stars would be an understatement, and a short list of current stars who were largely influenced or inspired by her would have to include Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Pink, The Spice Girls and Nicki Minaj.

Truth or dare? Truth: Madonna’s performance at TD Garden on Saturday night was a crowning achievement in a year that has unjustly denied her such moments.

Madonna carries the burden of being 57 in a world where Britney is an old maid at 33. But if we ignore Madge’s age, or forget that the current crop of hot, unremarkable young things run the pop industry, we can step back and enjoy the Rebel Heart Tour for the mature spectacle that it is — click here for a link to a Herald photo gallery.

With over 300 million records sold worldwide and recognised as the best-selling female recording artist of all time, Madonna Louise Ciccone was back in Quebec City.

“I’m ME, motherfuckers!” Madonna declared to a sold-out Madison Square Garden last night — although, naturally, no one was arguing with her. We’d already been treated to an ornate, vaguely Asian-inspired rendition of Bitch I’m Madonna, and some among us had purchased $60 tank tops emblazoned with those words.

Two hours into a show in which transgender nuns twirled on stripper poles and hot-bodied dancers simulated most imaginable sex acts, Madonna’s eyes glistened.

Madonna let fans see her sweat when her Rebel Heart Tour started its two nights at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday. She belted HeartbreakCity, a bitter, accusatory breakup song, from a staircase as she battled the embraces of an acrobatic dancer. Then she tossed off a jacket to reveal a sweat-soaked blouse, and traded heartache for triumph with the first words — “I made it through the wilderness” — of Like A Virgin. She pranced and strutted through it with some moves from her 1980s videos and opened the blouse to reveal lingerie and cleavage. The lesson: Madonna the indomitable sexpot would prevail.

Yes, it was a night of controversy. But it was also unexpectedly filled with joy.

In the first of two Rebel Heart Tour shows at the historic venue, the pop queen brings out Amy Schumer, Game of Thrones, transgender nuns, a ukulele … and her greatest hits. *****

You don’t get Madonna tickets to see a light-hearted show. You go to watch Olympic-level choreography routines that have been exhaustively road-tested by men who pole-dance on giant crucifixes. You go to see Madge dressed up in elaborately designed samurai, matador, and flapper outfits with so much theatrical flair, they look like they were hand-stitched by the ghosts of Rogers and Hammerstein’s costume designers.

Bitch, there’s only one Madonna. The 57-year-old Queen of Pop made that abundantly clear during a more than two hour stage spectacular last night at Madison Square Garden, the first of three NYC-area dates of her hater-silencing Rebel Heart World Tour.

“You know what they say — it’s lonely at the top,” Madonna told the crowd near the end of her New York show last night. “But it ain’t crowded!” And on the second U.S. show of her hotly awaited new Rebel Heart Tour, Our Lady spent three hours proving what a goddess she is, not to mention what an Unapologetic Bitch. Damn right it’s not crowded, because there’s nobody else near her throne. The whole night was a tour of everything only Madonna can do. She’s not the same. She has no shame. She’s on fire.

The first questions posed when the subject of a new Madonna tour comes up are typically what was the controversy, how dark was it and did she skimp on the hits?

“I still believe in love — even if Barack Obama didn’t come to my show,” Madonna teased near the end of Saturday night’s concert at the Verizon Center. “Maybe I’m too provocative.” Like all her tours, Rebel Heart had its fair share of provocation, chiefly through repeated sacrilegious references to God and Catholic iconography.

Queen of Pop Madonna has kicked off her Rebel Heart Tour in Montreal. The 57-year-old iconic singer, who has been wowing audiences for over three decades, belted out a selection of old and new and even performed Material Girl from the first time since her Blonde Ambition Tour in the 1990s.

Pole dancers dressed like nuns, Mike Tyson and nonstop theatrics. Welcome to the church of Madonna.

Madonna performed the opening night of her Rebel Heart Tour in Montreal last night. It was a night filled with spectacular visuals, original and expertly performed choreography and most importantly, the Material Girl herself who proved why she is considered a living legend.

Madonna has kicked off her long-awaited Rebel Heart Tour, packing in a set laden with hits, costume changes and no tumbles (thankfully).

In an uncharacteristically unadorned segment around two-thirds into the kickoff of her Rebel Heart Tour, Wednesday at the Bell Centre, Madonna announced she was “going to sing a little song here on my guitar — back to where it all began.”

The most shocking thing about Madonna’s Rebel Heart Tour, which opened at Montreal’s Bell Centre Wednesday, had nothing to do with sex (how could it at this late date?).

Bad luck has struck Madonna with each and every step of her Rebel Heart campaign, from the album leaking in demo form before even being announced to the backward yank-and-thud down the stairs heard ’round the world at the 2015 BRIT Awards.