Fans fume as Madonna abruptly ends show (original) (raw)

Madonna fans have been left fuming after the Queen of Pop abruptly cut short the second concert of her Celebration greatest hits tour in London today.

Madonna was performing the second in a string of four dates at London’s O2 Arena when the show ended suddenly after she performed her hit 90s ballad Rain.

Fans who’d attended the previous night’s show knew there were still a few songs left in the set, among them Like A Virgin and show closer Celebration.

Many speculated on social media that Madonna had cut the show short in order to comply with the venue’s curfew: The O2’s own website states that shows can finish “no later than 11pm from Monday to Saturday, and 10:30pm on a Sunday.”

Madonna’s first concert at the venue finished at 11:05pm on Saturday night, taking her five minutes past curfew, while the second finished at 11pm sharp. Given it was a Sunday show, this meant she was a full half-hour after curfew.

Artists who do flout venue curfews are often liable to pay massive fines – in 2012, the Rolling Stones were hit with a 200,000-pound fine for running overtime at the same venue.

Fans who’d paid hundreds of pounds for tickets took to social media to complain about receiving a shorter show, with many voicing the obvious: Could Madonna not start her show a little earlier in the evening to avoid this problem?

Complaints about late start times will be all too familiar to Madonna’s Australian fans, who endured hours-long waits past the advertised start times during her 2016 Rebel Heart tour.

Punters in Sydney and Brisbane eager to see the star in her first Australian tour since 1993 were left fuming when she didn’t take to the stage until around 11:30pm. Her late arrivals even forced public transport operators to put on late trains into the early morning to get concertgoers home.

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And the lateness continued with Madonna’s most recent tour, 2019’s Madame X, with one fan going so far as to file a class-action lawsuit against her. She started one Las Vegas concert at 12:30am, telling fans when she finally arrived on stage: “A queen is never late.”

And during her shows in London for that tour, the venue operators even cut Madonna’s lights and microphone as she attempted to keep performing past curfew.

Madonna has 76 more dates scheduled for the Celebration tour, running through to April of next year. There is no word about whether the show will reach Australia.

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