Gaga's review and Madonna's review from the same person..
The concert's five-part storyline involving aliens, government mind control, fashion, empowerment and religion wasn't always fully graspable, not that it really mattered considering the sheer spectacle it offered.
With almost as many costume changes as songs performed, Gaga's Born This Way Ball concert was essentially a big piece of performance art.
Unlike Madonna, whose latest Vancouver appearance was dominated by violent imagery and a borderline bullying attitude toward her longtime fans, Gaga continued to carry her trademark message of empowerment and self-love, which also appears in the form of her many charitable endeavours aimed at LGBT groups.
And in front of her giant castle she staked her claim as the queen of the pop scene once again.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertai...844/story.html
The same could be said of her concert, where some of her older material was barely recognizable (Like A Virgin transformed into a piano-driven dirge, for example), most of it flanked by cuts from MDNA and baked into a two-hour show with a loose storyline based on themes like "transgression," "prophecy," "masculine/feminine," and "celebration."
The concept didn't always work and the first segment was so dance- and Auto-Tune-driven that the Queen of Pop's microphone sometimes seemed superfluous (though to her credit, Madonna seemed to sing a good chunk of her material live), but what the ears sometimes failed to get in the form of classic songs, the eyes got in spades in terms of presentation.
"I hope you can appreciate how hard we're working up here," Madonna said between re-imagined versions of Open Your Heart and Holiday, though she mercilessly teased a fan that didn't know the words to her song.
"You're wearing a T-shirt that says Open Your Heart and you don't know the words to the song? What the f---?"
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertai...871/story.html
