Madonna returns to Austin after 40 years with sweaty, sexy Celebration Tour at Moody Center

“It took 40 years to invite me back,” Madonna told an Austin audience on Sunday night. “Should I take that personally?”

The Queen of Pop indeed last performed in the Live Music Capital in 1985 at the Erwin Center. Strange, but true (blue).  Perhaps the mistress of reinvention, ever looking for the new, waited until that venue was demolished and she could pack in two nights at Moody Center. She’ll perform again on Monday.

Regardless, Austin has missed a lot of Madonna over four decades. That made her retrospective Celebration Tour all the more spectacular — and if the cradle of weird can appreciate anything, it's a spectacle. 

Madonna postponed her original September dates following a health scare, and pent-up fan pride runneth over. Before the show, material girls and leather daddies filed through the corridors of the arena. Blonde Ambition-era high ponytails mingled with “Lucky Star” hair bows. Local drag artists like Brigitte Bandit — in full “Like a Virgin” regalia — posed for photos a few steps away from a Trisha Yearwood-branded nacho stand. On the floor, a group of middle-aged ladies in tulle skirts and fishnet gloves chatted next to a row of bears in decades-old concert tees. Accessorization was key. If you forgot your chunky silver cross pendant, hopefully someone could lend you their riding crop.

The air conditioner took the night off. The show had an 8:30 p.m. start time, but the main event didn’t get going until 10:30 p.m., when tour emcee Bob the Drag Queen emerged wearing the rosy contents of Marie Antoinette’s closet. 

“It’s showtime,” Bob said with a tongue pop. 

Her Madgesty lived up to her name, appearing as a holy apparition, much more exciting than her namesake’s various cameos on pieces of toast. Cloaked in a dark kimono with giant sleeve cutouts, Madonna donned a headpiece equal parts crown and halo to sing late-’90s techno earworm “Nothing Really Matters.”  A giant lighting rig circled above like an even larger hat from heaven. It’s right there in the name, folks.

“Nothing takes the past away/ Like the future,” she sang. The song made a fitting icebreaker for the mother of all pop music: “Everything I give you/ All comes back to me.”

Then it was off to the time machine — though as the star admitted later in the show, the setlist made emotional sense, if not always the chronological kind. First stop: Danceteria. Madonna conjured her early 1980s it-girl era with “Everybody” and “Into the Groove.” Dancers swarmed around her in thrift store finery and spotted the singer in a backbend. There was a lot of crotch work.

“I’m about to share the story of my life with you,” Madonna said during the first of several rambling, prickly stretches of crowd work that skirted right up to coherence but instead opted for a middle finger. Joined by a masked dancer dressed as her past self, she asked if everyone knew what a metaphor was. An audience member asked who her next boyfriend would be. “My next boyfriend is me,” she cracked.

Then, Madonna offered a sage bit of advice for the next two hours: “Embrace the confusion.”

The singer astral projected into CBGB with an electric guitar as her guide, shredding through “Burning Up” and spewing Budweiser at the front rows. (Shout out to the stage tech responsible for wiping up Ms. Ciccone’s beer spit immediately afterward.) 

So much of Sunday’s party hinged on awe-inspiring choreography. For “Open Your Heart,” Madonna and company made iconic use of a few chairs and the laps that went on top of them. For “Holiday,” the singer and her crew became a many-headed disco hydra massed around a mirror ball the size of New Jersey.

A trip through time also invited sorrow. At the end of “Holiday,” a dancer fell to the ground as Madonna gazed mournfully. She entered a floating picture frame rigged to the ceiling, one of the night’s most oft-used set pieces, for a gorgeous rendition of “Live to Tell.” Around her, photos memorialized icons lost to AIDS — Freddie Mercury, Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, Arthur Ashe, Cookie Mueller and more. An affecting vigil from a pioneering activist.

But this was a Madonna show, so then shirtless men in lace gimp masks came out to writhe around glowing crosses. Robed monks, rosary beads, a Catholic censer and a snippet of Sam Smith’s “Unholy” helped usher in “Like a Prayer.” One of her most controversial pop culture moments, the song played like a thumping salute to sacrilege and gymnastics.

Madonna put on a Marlene Dietrich wig and thrusted her way into the 1990s: “Erotica,” “Justify My Love” and “Bad Girl.” In the middle there, she squeezed in 2005’s “Hung Up,” which might have felt like an awkward fit for that act if not for the fleet of topless dancers.

Of course, Madonna couldn’t curate her legacy without two things: cone bras and “Vogue.” Bob the Drag Queen took the stage with a glittery bowler hat and a houndstooth fan to take Austin to the ballroom. Clips of the tour’s “Vogue” segment have gone viral for months, and it was just as joyful in person. A conically breasted Madonna always welcomes a special guest to help her judge a cavalcade of runway looks. For Sunday’s show, she brought up drag superstar Trixie Mattel, and the pair gave their 10s and chops as appropriate. A gay ol’ time.

The dancers weren’t the only ones falling into dips on stage. The setlist meandered a bit after Ginger Rogers danced on air and Rita Hayworth gave good face. “Human Nature” and “Crazy For You” led into James Bond theme “Die Another Day,” a song this reviewer appreciates for nostalgic reasons but admits is an oddball cut for a four-decade hit parade. If you longed to see Madonna dressed like a character from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “The Holy Mountain” while dropping mainstream music’s foremost reference to Sigmund Freud, congrats.

The wide-brimmed hats kept coming. Madonna stripped to full cowgirl leathers, boot-scooted and strummed out “Don’t Tell Me” from the “Music” album. For “Mother Father,” she brought out son David Banda to sing and play guitar. (She also welcomed daughters Mercy and Estere onstage to perform during “Bad Girl” and “Vogue,” respectively.)

“People don’t get tired in Texas, do they?” Madonna asked after picking up her fallen cowboy hat with her foot. More freewheeling Madge moments: bragging on the kids, talking about forgiving herself for mistakes, berating an audience member for not lighting up his phone upon her command. 

“It’s so important you understand the concept of light,” she said while vamping about darkness and such. Madonna led the “boys and girls and theys and thems” in a campfire singalong to an acoustic “Express Yourself.” 

During “La Isla Bonita,” she projected jumbo photos of cultural revolutionaries like Sinead O’Connor, Che Guevara and Martin Luther King Jr. Not sure what the thematic connection between song and imagery was, but RIP Malcolm X — you would have loved dreaming of San Pedro, I guess.

As Madonna rounded the home stretch, she changed into a pink wig and textured silver catsuit that evoked Jane Lynch performing “Super Bass” on that one episode of “Glee.” Nevermind the sartorial critique: As Madonna soared above the arena in her aerial frame and doused the crowd in lasers during “Ray of Light,” she truly was goddess of her universe.

“Take a Bow” led into a questionable amount of time devoted to a Michael Jackson tribute. But there wasn’t much time to marinate on that, as Madonna stormed the stage flanked by her cadre of dancers, all dressed in recreations of some of her most famous looks. The finale: “Bitch I’m Madonna,” of course. 

Super Bowl Madonna strutted next to “Frozen” Madonna. If you’d sealed an Austin fan in a cryogenic tube for the decades since the pop icon last came to town, the multiversal procession might have driven them to madness.

But, then again … the American-Statesman’s review of Madonna’s 1985 show praised the “slick, polished, contemporary Las Vegas-style production.” The critic also wrote: “Madonna may be considered by some music critics as a fleeting pop star and her penchant for lingerie and erotic posturing understandably irritates feminists. Nevertheless, Madonna is a formidable, timely talent.” 

Erotic posturing. Formidable talent. She might be the living avatar of reinvention, but Madonna never lost her own plot. That’s something worth waiting 40 years to celebrate.

Eric Webb is an award-winning culture writer based in Austin. Find him atwww.ericwebb.me.