Stuck In Our Head: "The Beast Within/Vogue/Nobody Knows Me" - Madonna

It's been a hectic day today. Exams, rushing around trying to sort lives out, selling bicycles, eating, eating and more eating. Between all of this, in a brief moment of a calm, we had the opportunity to listen to the opening of Madonna's triumph of a tour, Re-Invention, from 2004. If but nothing else one of the finest examples of how a pop concert should be staged, it combines a B-side from 1990 and one of the weaker songs from American Life, while slapping one of her biggest hits right in the middle. To incredible effect.

Seven years ago, American Life hadn't quite won everyone around to the extent that other records had. Personally, it's one of our favourites but we can acknowledge certain reasons why it isn't the first choice of many others. But for whatever reason, Madonna needed to re-enforce to the public why she's the fucking Queen, and so she toured. When she puts out an album which is hugely successful, the supporting tour's setlist is heavy on the album's material, naturally. The Drowned World Tour was a showcase almost exclusively for Ray of Light and Music, while Confessions was 70% Confessions on a Dance Floor. On the other hand, when an album isn't quite the roaring success it was expected to be, the tour seems to be erring more on the greatest hits side, which is fine with us. Just fine. The Re-Invention Tour was essentially a greatest hits tour, but when Madonna does a greatest hits tour, you shouldn't expect a Las Vegas-esque, feather boa, showgirl ridiculousfest (throwing shade at Kylie and Cher) - you're gonna be seeing the hits but remixed within an inch of their lives and sounding impossibly more incredible than they ever did on record.

We once read a review of the show which mentioned how the reviewer had regretted consuming a few alcoholic drinks prior, pointing to "The Beast Within" as a clue. Intoxicating enough to watch sober, a post-apocalyptic short film featuring elaborate Whore of Babylon-inspired costumes was paired with a remix of a remix of 1990's masterpiece, "Justify My Love", unfortunately leaving the sexy bits out and just using the Old Testament readings. The bass is positively hypnotic, and you can imagine just being completely enraptured standing in the arena, dizzy from the excitement and anticipation, paired with the visual and auditory stimulation. Not before long does Madonna herself raise on a platform from beneath the stage - one of the most simple but effective techniques out there, as what is more symbiotic with a performer than his or her stage? - to perform for the first time in eleven years, "Vogue".

As with every oldie he remixed, Stuart Price did a fantastic job. The house piano was enhanced, the drum beat was beefed up, but somehow it sounded sophistically stripped back from the original. Speaking to the fanboy inside of every hardcore fan, the performance itself was an enormous reference to possibly the greatest Madonna live performance of all time - the MTV Video Music Awards 1990, when she performed "Vogue" as Marie Antoinette. Following the theme of the musical arrangement, the dresses were stripped back to corsets and the coiffures were stripped back to ponytails, yet the atmosphere was magnificent. While the 2008 Sticky and Sweet Tour mix of the song was a fantastic performance in itself, this must be the greatest version she's done on a tour. The dancing was vogue-ing in 2004, the perfect mixture of elegance and power, while the dancers were suitably reverential in their interaction with Madge.

As the song ends, the army of dancers floats back into the stage and she is left on her own, performing one of the most introspective songs of her career. Incredibly interesting is how fantastic the song's live arrangement is, in respect to how flat it sounds on American Life. Price shoved a rocket of bass up it's bum, and the result is a magnificent display of strength and vulnerability. You want to punch the air when she does, storm down the length of the stage when she does, challenging her audience to contradict her.

Madonna never fails to create a magical entrance to her tour - the striptease of "Open Your Heart" on the Who's That Girl Tour sends shivers down the spine, while "Express Yourself" on Blond Ambition is about as iconic as it gets. "Erotica" on the Girlie Show was jaw dropping, while "Drowned World/Substitute for Love" on its namesake tour was a wonderfully serene entrance back to the stage after an eight year absence. Undeniable is the magnetism and gravitas of "Future Lovers" on the Confessions Tour however; it is unlikely that she will ever be able to top that. Using not a popular single but an album track nestled into the middle of the record, she appeared to float from the ceiling in a giant Swarovski disco ball to the stage. The stuff that dreams are made of? It was just today however that we realised how perfect the opening to Re-Invention was. The musical arrangements, choreography, visuals, costumes and atmosphere were in the most perfect proportions, and showed a forty six year old woman genuinely at the top of her game, showing women half her age how it was done.