meta-scriptMadonna Adds More Dates To Madame X U.S. Tour | GRAMMY.com
Madonna Adds More Dates To Madame X  U.S. Tour

Madonna

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Madonna Adds More Dates To Madame X U.S. Tour

Due to high demand, the pop icon has added more dates in N.Y.C., Chicago and L.A., as well as dates in additional cities

GRAMMYs/May 21, 2019 - 01:37 am

GRAMMY winner  Madonna has added 23 additional dates to her previously announced U.S. Madame X Tour. The announcement follows sold out shows for the intimate tour, which will launch in September and have the pop queen strutting through New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago.

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The icon has added shows in four new cities: Las Vegas, Boston, Philadelphia and Miami. She has also added five new dates to her first stop at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House in N.Y.C., as well as two aditional shows in Chicago and L.A. 

Following the 11-date run in L.A., she will now perform three shows at Boston's Boch Center Wang Theatre and The Met Philadelphia. The North American leg of the tour will wrap up in Miami on Dec. 19 with five nights at the Fillmore Miami Beach at Jackie Gleason Theater.

Due to the intimate size of shows, fans were to request tickets via LiveNation that were distributed by a lottery system. Madonna's legacy fan club members were given priority access. Fans that did not receive or request tickets during the first batch of dates can now put in new ticket requests here, until Fri. May 24. 

The European leg of the Madame X Tour kicks off in January 2020 with dates currently set for Portugal, London and Paris only. Complete tour info can be found on Madonna's website.

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Madonna will release Madame X, her 14th studio album, on June 14. She first announced the news on April 17, along with its catchy bilingual lead single "Medellín," featuring Latin GRAMMY winner Maluma. The Latin pop inspired bop is named after Colombia's capital city, where Maluma hails from. The pop star has since released three more singles from the LP, most recently "Future," featuring Migos' Quavo.

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Shakira's Road To 'Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran': How Overcoming A Breakup Opened A  New Chapter In Her Artistry
Shakira attends the Fendi Couture Fall/Winter 2023/2024 show in Paris.

Photo: Pietro S. D'Aprano/Getty Images for Fendi

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Shakira's Road To 'Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran': How Overcoming A Breakup Opened A New Chapter In Her Artistry

Shakira's first album in seven years is out March 22, and very much of the moment with glossy Latin pop, reggaeton, bachata and corrido. The GRAMMY winner's path to this new chapter was long, filled with professional changes and heartbreak.

GRAMMYs/Mar 22, 2024 - 01:08 pm

When Shakira’s "Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53" was released in January of 2023; its success seemed like a freak incident, explainable as a perfect but isolated storm. 

Their virulently catchy track — which happens to spill scalding tea on her breakup with retired Spanish soccer player Gerard Piqué —  set streaming records and took home a Latin GRAMMY for Song Of The Year. Today, the song's success looks more like the first crashing wave of a massive comeback for Shakira

The three-time GRAMMY winner followed her Bzrp Session with another hit single, "TQG," collaborating with Karol G. That song went to No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200, and the duo cleaned up at the Latin GRAMMYs. 

In hindsight, all of this was a mere preamble to the announcement of Shakira's Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (Women Don't Cry Anymore), due March 22. The album will be her first in seven years, but the sound is very much of the moment, leaning into a high-gloss urban Latin pop sound that delves in reggaeton, bachata and corrido. 

The album is no comeback. With a star as big as Shakira — one who performed at the Super Bowl in 2020 and had her own exhibit at the GRAMMY Museum — it's hard to make the case that she ever left the public eye. Yet the Colombian superstar has put out only a trickle of singles since 2017, when she released her GRAMMY-winning album El Dorado. Prior to the BZRP session, her last major hits were in 2016 with "La Bicicleta," a collaboration with Carlos Vives, and "Chantaje," featuring Maluma, which went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs. 

It’s impossible to talk about this period of retreat, or her new album, without talking about the personal upheavals Shakira has gone through in recent years. In June of 2022, Shakira and Gerard Piqué, with whom she has two sons, publicly announced the end of their 11 year relationship. Starting with 2022’s "Monotonía," featuring Ozuna, nearly every song she has released  since then deals directly with the split and the emotional turmoil she has felt because of it. 

The singer and songwriter herself is not shying away from the fact that her music has been a therapeutic outlet. "I feel like in this moment of my life, which is probably one of the most difficult, darkest hours of my life, music has brought light," she told Elle in 2022. 

Case in point: her Bizarrap session. "Someone should have taken my photo the day I worked on the 'Bizarrap Session 53,' a before and after. Because I went into the studio one way and left in a completely different way," Shakira told Mexican television channel Televisa. "He gave me this space, this opportunity to let it out and it really was a huge release, necessary for my own healing, for my own recovery process."


That feeling of catharsis continued in her work on Las Mujeres. "Making this body of work has been an alchemical process. While writing each song I was rebuilding myself. While singing them, my tears transformed into diamonds, and my vulnerability into strength," the artist said in a statement on Instagram.

Shakira is styling the album as a testament to resilience in the face of adversity, tapping into an understanding that her experiences have a broad resonance. While accepting Billboard’s 2023 Woman Of The Year award, Shakira discussed her "year of seismic change."

"I've felt more than ever — and very personally — what it is to be a woman," she said. "It's been a year where I've realized we women are stronger than we think, braver than we believed, more independent than we were taught to be." 

Indeed, with strength and bravery, Shakira proceeded to channel her individual hurt into a message of universal empowerment. Ahead of her album release, she’s even more explicit about the details of her separation and the impact the relationship had on her career. "For a long time I put my career on hold, to be next to Gerard, so he could play football. There was a lot of sacrifice for love," recently told The Sunday Times.

As she told Billboard for her 2023 cover story, settling down in Barcelona with Piqué and their two children, far from music industry centers, made it difficult for her to work. "It was complicated logistically to get a collaborator there. I had to wait for agendas to coincide or for someone to deign to come," she explained. 

Shakira has since relocated to Miami, a location that played a major role in making her new album possible.

One of the hallmarks of a true pop star is the ability to evolve with the culture without losing their identity. Over decades, and with each release, Shakira has broken a barrier or risen above an obstacle to succeed beyond expectations – whether it’s leading the first Spanish-language broadcast on MTV with her 2000 "Unplugged" concert, or learning English to write her own crossover pop debut. Each move has felt authentic.

It is not an easy task, but Shakira accomplishes this alchemy beautifully every few album cycles, starting with her debut as an alt-leaning, brunette singer/songwriter in the mid '90s. At the turn of the millennium, she made the jump to international fame with a cascade of golden curls and Laundry Service, the English-language album that capitalized on the first wave of crossover Latin pop. She closed out the decade in a whirl of high-gloss dance pop with the Pharell produced She Wolf. Along the way, there was one platinum selling album after another and the No. 1 hit "Hips Don’t Lie," among several Top 10 singles, setting the stage for her to blaze through much of the 2010s. 

Shakira is well-aware of how hard she has had to work even after crossover success. 

In 2019, she told Billboard, "This whole new world had opened up to me, and with it came so many great opportunities, but I continued to pursue impossible goals such as making a song like 'Hips Don’t Lie,' for example—that had a Colombian cumbia and a mention of Barranquilla in the middle of it—play on American radio. I remember I said to [then Sony Music Chairman] Donny Ienner, ‘You have to trust me on this one. This is going to happen, this song is going to blow up.’" 

With El Dorado, she caught the second wave of Latin pop crossover, the one tipped off by Luis Fonsi’s now-infamous 2017 earworm "Despacito." El Dorado, is one of Shakira’s more Latin leaning albums in the long history of her bicultural and bilingual music career. The songs are sung largely in Spanish and her choice of features on the album are almost entirely Latin pop and reggaeton artists: Maluma, Nicky Jam, Prince Royce and Carlos Vives. The album's May 2017 release coincided with a rising global interest in reggaeton.

Shakira wasn’t following a trend; she was just in touch with the moment as usual. She released "Chantaje" months before "Despacito," and "Bicicleta," her song with Carlos Vives, which combines elements of reggaeton and vallenato, came out in 2016. 

With the continued mainstream global success of Latin artists, Shakira may no longer see a need to release an English-language album for every album in her mother tongue. Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran breaks with tradition in that it is her second Spanish-language album in a row. It's also loaded with features from the world of Latin music, including Ozuna, Rauw Alejandro, Manuel Turizo, and Karol G. The moment could not be better for an album that explores forward looking pop reggaeton, assisted by some of the brightest young stars in the genre.

If the past is any indicator, this era is going to be another step up for the artist. Beyond the album release, Shakira is teasing another tour. As she told Billboard, "I think this will be the tour of my life. I’m very excited. Just think, I had my foot on the brakes. Now I’m pressing on the accelerator­ — hard."

Every Year Is The Year Of Shakira: 10 Songs That Prove She's Always Been A Superstar

2024 GRAMMYs Presenters Announced: Christina Aguilera, Oprah Winfrey, Meryl Streep, Kacey Musgraves, Maluma, Taylor Tomlinson & More
(Clockwise, L-R) Christina Aguilera, Lenny Kravitz, Lionel Richie, Mark Ronson, Maluma, Kacey Musgraves, Taylor Tomlinson, Samara Joy, Oprah Winfrey, Meryl Streep

Photos courtesy of the artists

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2024 GRAMMYs Presenters Announced: Christina Aguilera, Oprah Winfrey, Meryl Streep, Kacey Musgraves, Maluma, Taylor Tomlinson & More

Additional presenters for the 2024 GRAMMYs include Lenny Kravitz, Lionel Richie, Mark Ronson, and Samara Joy. The 2024 GRAMMYs will broadcast live from Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on Sunday, Feb. 4.

GRAMMYs/Jan 31, 2024 - 03:00 pm

Updated Friday, Feb. 2, to add Kacey Musgraves as a presenter.

Presenters for the 2024 GRAMMYs have been announced: Christina Aguilera, Lenny Kravitz, Lionel Richie, Mark Ronson, Maluma, Kacey Musgraves, Meryl Streep, Samara Joy, Taylor Tomlinson, and Oprah Winfrey are all confirmed to take the GRAMMY stage on Music's Biggest Night this weekend, Sunday, Feb. 4. Of course, it wouldn't be a proper GRAMMY night without a few surprise guests, so make sure to tune in to find out who you'll see on GRAMMY Sunday.

In addition to the star-studded presenter lineup, the 2024 GRAMMYs will feature breathtaking performances from the leading artists in music today. Performers at the 2024 GRAMMYs include Billie Eilish, Billy Joel, Burna Boy, Dua Lipa, Joni Mitchell, Luke Combs, Olivia Rodrigo, SZA, Travis Scott, and U2. Several confirmed GRAMMY performers will make GRAMMY history at the 2024 GRAMMYs this weekend: Mitchell will make her GRAMMY performance debut, while U2 will deliver the first-ever broadcast performance from Sphere in Las Vegas. Additional performers will be announced in the coming days. See the full list of performers, presenters and host at the 2024 GRAMMYs to date.

Learn More: 2024 GRAMMY Nominations: See The Full Nominees List

2024 GRAMMYs: Explore More & Meet The Nominees

The 2024 GRAMMYs, officially known as the 66th GRAMMY Awards, will broadcast live from Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on Sunday, Feb. 4, at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on the CBS Television Network and will be available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+.^ Prior to the Telecast, the 2024 GRAMMYs Premiere Ceremony will broadcast live from the Peacock Theater at 12:30 p.m. PT/3:30 p.m. ET and will be streamed live on live.GRAMMY.com. On GRAMMY Sunday, fans can access exclusive behind-the-scenes GRAMMY Awards content, including performances, acceptance speeches, interviews from the GRAMMY Live red-carpet special, and more via the Recording Academy's digital experience on live.GRAMMY.com.

Trevor Noah, the two-time GRAMMY-nominated comedian, actor, author, podcast host, and former "The Daily Show" host, returns to host the 2024 GRAMMYs for the fourth consecutive year; he is currently nominated at the 2024 GRAMMYs in the Best Comedy Album Category for his 2022 Netflix comedy special, I Wish You Would.

The 66th GRAMMY Awards are produced by Fulwell 73 Productions for the Recording Academy for the fourth consecutive year. Ben Winston, Raj Kapoor and Jesse Collins are executive producers.

^Paramount+ with SHOWTIME subscribers will have access to stream live via the live feed of their local CBS affiliate on the service, as well as on demand in the United States. Paramount+ Essential subscribers will not have the option to stream live but will have access to on-demand the day after the special airs in the U.S. only.

Stay tuned for more updates as we approach Music's Biggest Night!

How To Watch The 2024 GRAMMYs Live: GRAMMY Nominations Announcement, Air Date, Red Carpet, Streaming Channel & More

Living Legends: Chicago's Robert Lamm On Songwriting and Longevity
Robert Lamm (center front) with Chicago.

Photo:Joshua Helms/ Gallery Films

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Living Legends: Chicago's Robert Lamm On Songwriting and Longevity

Following decades of hits and holiday cheer, Robert Lamm discusses Chicago's evolution and their festive new Christmas album featuring Dolly Parton.

GRAMMYs/Dec 18, 2023 - 04:51 pm

As one of the longest-running and biggest selling bands in music history, GRAMMY-winners Chicago have staked a claim as the ultimate “rock band with horns” since their debut album was released over a half-century ago.

Since those early days and throughout a run of instantly-recognizable songs from “25 or 6 to 4” to “You’re the Inspiration” and “If You Leave Me Now” (which won the GRAMMY for Best Pop Vocal Performance By A Duo, Group Or Chorus at the 19th Annual Awards Ceremony), vocalist and songwriter Robert Lamm has remained an unchanging frontman in an ever-changing lineup.

It’s an ongoing legacy that continues this holiday season with their latest album Greatest Christmas Hits which extrapolates Lamm and company’s penchant for recording seasonal tunes accented by their unique sound, a creative kick that began in 1998 with Chicago XXV: The Christmas Album.

Along with holiday hallmarks like “Winter Wonderland,” the new album also features guest artists like Dolly Parton who joins in with the band on the Paul McCartney staple "Wonderful Christmas Time.”

Lamm spoke to GRAMMY.com about their long legacy, songwriting and choosing the right seasonal songs to give their personal spin.

You and the band recently performed on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Would that rank up there as one of the more unique places you've performed?

Well, there was a circus venue in Paris, and it was a very fancy night for some reason. I guess Chicago had made an impression in Paris, so one day they called us to play in a big top [tent] there. It was quite beautiful and strange.

Do unique spaces make performing more fun, or are you 'on guard' because you're out of your element?

Actually, it wasn't upsetting or scary or anything like that. It was curious, but then we got down to business.

I think the tendency is to group all of your songs together. As a result, a chronology is lost on people. They forget that "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is" was the first song you recorded for your debut album. Did that feel like being the first batter of a baseball game scoring a home run?

Well, thank you. Yes, I feel that way. In the early days when we were first recording, a lot of the songs were songs that I had written, and I had no idea what was going to happen with them. We did have a great producer in James William Guercio and most of us had not ever been in a recording studio, so that was the most nervous thing for everybody. It was in a seriously good studio in New York and he had to show us where to stand and what instruments should be put here and there. So it was that kind of thing, all very new.

It was almost like the songs were secondary to figuring out how to do this and record. So thankfully it turned out fine. A number of songs from that first album became popular and for a recent performance, we brought out a lot of songs which were on that first album; we never played most of them for most of our career. We pulled them out to examine them; songs that were very strange rock songs.

When you look back at your peers from the early days, not too many are still touring or recording.

Or still alive.

That must give you a unique perspective on music, success and the industry?

I think we feel mostly very lucky. Obviously 55 years into a career where we really never stopped, the thing that changed was the various people who have come into the band and left for one reason or another. 

That was always something we had to figure out how to do, for someone to come in and be a drummer, bass player or singer even. Being open to learning the repertoire, which obviously throughout every year got larger and larger and larger. That was something we had to learn how to do again. We've done a lot of learning over the years [Laughs].

I know you have lectured at NYU and Stanford University about songwriting. Is there one big lesson you'd give to aspiring songwriters?

Wow, I'm making this up now as we speak, but I think that you have to believe in what you're writing. You have to like it, or love it. I've always tried to not repeat myself ever in writing songs, whether it's the lyrics or the musical structure. 

I have always said, "Don't repeat what you're doing." I've always thought that writing a song is like learning something completely different than I've ever done. Writing the song, I've learned something. It might be a small thing, or it might be a big thing. 

I love writing songs. I didn't know I was going to be a songwriter, I was just a guy in a rock band. For a long time I thought that's what I was. But I'm a songwriter.

So as a songwriter, what are you looking for when you choose to cover a Christmas song? There are millions to choose from, as evidence in your new Greatest Christmas Hits album.

There are millions of bad Christmas songs [Laughs]. I have to like it, the guys in the band have to like it. Like when we did "The Christmas Song," Mel Torme's composition, which is a great song and he's a great musician. But I was living in New York at the time when we had decided to do the first Chrisrtmas album. It's not that we wanted to disguise these songs as something else because these songs are legitimate, popular songs done by many, many people. What we had going for us as a band is that we have a sound. We have a way of arranging things that is us, so the combination of a good song and the arrangement by Chicago, that's the deal.

When it comes to the new Christmas album, the bulk of the songs are remastered. What's the remastering process like for an artist?

As recording technology has blossomed in the digital age, in the beginning it was a little tedious. Between the actual digital equipment on the one hand but also the playback equipment was very different. So the guys who do that for a living are extremely creative and extremely top-drawer. There's a lot of bad recording out there and there always has been.

This Christmas album is one of the only albums you released that isn't numbered. Where did the idea come from to start, and continue numbering?

I have to give credit to our original producer, James William Guercio, who produced probably among the greatest Chicago albums. He suggested, "Let's not get caught up in tricky, phony titles for the albums." So by and large we stayed with the numbering because we want to have people considering collecting the albums, like other collectors of music. We wanted to have it be somewhat more respectable.

What about your inspiration for a song like "Saturday in the Park," which lays out scenes in a park like a little musical? 

We were in New York when I think we were recording our third album. It was summer and those were the days when Central Park was open on the weekends to the public and I think that was a fairly new development in the city. 

Because we were in New York, I always in those days carried around a Beaulieu Super 8 camera just for the hell of it. I shot a lot of footage of what I was seeing and what I was experiencing on that particular day: the park being open like that and people really enjoying the park experience in Manhattan, which is still really great. I was trying to capture that and when I finally got home and looked at the film, I just described what I was looking at to write the lyrics.

What about writing a lyric like "Saturday in the park, I think it was the Fourth of July." Including "I think" adds a deeper layer to it, because you could have just as easily said that it was the Fourth of July.

Well, yeah. And that's because I actually had two consecutive years where I was filming the park. So it was either the Fourth of July, or it may have been the fifth of July the following year. And I also just liked it lyrically, whether it was accurate or not.

Going back to your debut, it was released in 1970. Does it feel like that was a fortuitous time to come onto the scene? If you came out in the mid-60s, maybe it wouldn't have been received at the time because the industry was dealing with the effect of the Beatles. But if you came out in the mid-70s, you would have gotten lost in disco.

Yeah, we would have been lost in the shuffle in the mid-70s and we virtually were by the end of the 70s. We really had to figure out how to survive. We wanted to keep recording, but it was tricky.

Was there a pressure to have a more disco sound?

For a minute, yeah; for as long as disco lasted. We actually came in during the later end of that trend and it was futile. It was awful. We've done other recordings without trying to be disco or thought of as disco. We had done subsequent recordings for subsequent albums that would have qualified but we were past it, and so was everybody else.

Is there a song in your entire discography that you thought should be a bigger hit?

Well, yeah. As the songwriter or the arranger or even the vocalist or instrumentalist of any particular song, there's a lot of them. They're my babies and I'd like people to be introduced to the babies they have never heard before. 

So, is there a song you'd tell people to stream right now?

I can't answer that, there's just too many. I haven't had enough coffee [Laughs.]

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Watch: Maluma & Carín León Unite To Perform Their Next-Gen Norteño Hit "Según Quien" At The 2023 GRAMMYs
(L-R) Carin León and Maluma perform at the 2023 Latin GRAMMYs on Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023 in Seville, Spain

Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Latin Recording Academy

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Watch: Maluma & Carín León Unite To Perform Their Next-Gen Norteño Hit "Según Quien" At The 2023 GRAMMYs

Latin pop met regional Mexican flavor during the swaggering performance of the Colombian and Mexican stars' cross-genre collaboration. The 2023 Latin GRAMMYs performance featured a medley of "Según Quien," "Procura" and "La Fórmula."

GRAMMYs/Nov 16, 2023 - 11:49 pm

Three months after Colombia's Maluma and Mexico's Carín León teamed up for "Según Quien," the duo reconnected onstage for a performance of their tears-and-beer-soaked hit. 

Maluma delivered a medley of his hits from his album Don Juan starting with "Según Quien." Looking sharp in matching black cowboy hats and dark shades, the duo kicked things off with a quick but heady taste of their corrido. León then left Maluma onstage for the more upbeat "Procura," a bachata, and the swinging salsa of "La Fórmula." Maluma had no problems bringing the firepower solo, but made sure to take a moment during his performance to leave the stage and kiss his partner, Susana Gomez.

"Según Quien" is a hit single from Don Juan, which dropped in August. Sharing songwriting duties with León, Maluma made a graceful and successful first foray into the increasingly hot world of música Mexicana with the song, adding a rhythmic touch of Latin pop in the process. The ballad's distinctive beat inspired a TikTok trend that, no doubt, contributed to its success.

Don Juan helped Maluma earn two nominations at the 2023 Latin GRAMMYs, as his salsa single with Marc Anthony, "La Fórmula," is up for Record Of The Year and Best Tropical Song.

A leading light in his generation of regional Mexican music, León released his third studio album, Colmillo de Leche, in May. The 18-track project, which earned a 2023 Latin GRAMMYs nomination for Best Norteño Album, is a sweeping waltz through the sounds of banda, Norteño, and mariachi with flourishes of country and blues. Last year, the singer/songwriter won his first Latin GRAMMY for Best Regional Mexican Song for "Como lo Hice Yo," his collaboration with Matisse. 

2023 Latin GRAMMYs: See The Complete Nominations List