PUSHING her body to the limit with five-hour gym sessions, sleepless nights and relentless touring, is there anyone who works harder in music than Madonna?
At the age of 64, the pop legend is still putting everything on the line to perform for her millions of fans, even if she admits it has often come at the cost of her own wellbeing.
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In January this year, the star – who has sold 300million records and racked up a fortune of £672.6million – announced plans to go on a huge world tour to celebrate 40 years of reigning supreme in the music industry.
However, it was reported yesterday that the Material Girl singer had been rushed to a hospital due to a serious bacterial infection and needed to postpone the tour due to start on July 15 in Vancouver.
Her condition is said to have been so serious that her family members thought they would lose her and began “preparing for the worst”, according to Mail Online.
A relative is quoted as saying: “She will put her career and her fame before her health until the day she is dead.”
Here, we take a look at how being on the road has taken a toll on the superstar’s health and contributed to a string of injuries and medical concerns.
‘Wearing herself thin’
Since 2015, Madonna has come up with three world tours, with all of them including dates that have completely sold out.
Her highly anticipated upcoming gigs, billed as Madonna: The Celebration Tour, were intended to be her biggest yet, with 84 shows planned.
The tour was due to start on July 15 in Vancouver and conclude on January 30, 2024, meaning she would have been on the road for six months.
According to sources, the singer, famed for being a perfectionist when it comes to her music and performances, had been “driving everyone up the wall” to ensure that the tour delivers.
Some close to her revealed that she had been working six times a week rehearsing since April, making sure every aspect of the tour goes as smoothly as possible.
She released a snap of herself practicing for the tour in protective knee pads, after undergoing surgery in 2020 after a series of injuries.
In May, a video showed Madonna in rehearsals performing intricate dance moves and riding one of her dancers.
In one clip, she was laid out on the floor while in another, she’s seen wearing a T-shirt printed with the word “tired”. In that footage, she also tells the camera: “I’m f***ing exhausted – but I’m so happy.”
A family member said: “She has not been living as healthy a life as she should be for her age, and she has been wearing herself thin over the past couple of months.”
Intense 5-hour workouts
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Madonna’s tours are known for their extravagance. To keep up with her ideas, the star, who has kept up a toned physique in recent years, puts herself through intense workout regimes.
Speaking about her punishing gym sessions in 2017, her trainer Stacey Griffith said: “Pro athletes train all day. Madonna trains all day. She trains for five hours a day, non-stop.”
Alongside her intense workouts, Madge is said to follow a strict diet to prepare for tours, favouring ‘macrobiotic’ foods based around organic produce.
According to Life & Style, this can consist of foods like “beans, nuts, and some, though not all, veggies, such as broccoli, kale, pumpkin, radishes, and carrots”.
She also reportedly enjoys sea vegetables such as seaweed, spirulina, and kombu.
Brink of exhaustion
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Although Madonna has spoken about her love for the stage, being on the road has taken a drastic toll on her health in the past.
In 2013, she admitted that she was exhausted during her MDNA tour and had to push herself to the brink in order to get through the gigs, which had 88 stops.
She said: “[The MDNA tour] was probably the hardest tour I’ve ever done.
“I was a mess. Just talk to my manager. But in my book, if you don’t leave a pound of flesh on the stage every night, you did not do your job. Go hard or go home.”
The icon added: “But you know, I sold the tickets and I can’t let my audience down. Even if I hadn’t slept the night before and I’m exhausted, before every show everyone came into my dressing room, and we got into a circle and we held hands and we said prayers.
“Fifty per cent of the time I said them, and 49 per cent of the time I was crying – usually from over-exhaustion.”
Health concerns
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In 2020, during her Madame X tour, she was forced to cancel the start of the UK leg due to doctors’ concerns over her health.
At the time, she said: “I am deeply sorry I have to cancel my concert. Under doctors’ guidance, I have been told to rest for a few days.
“As you all know I have injuries that have plagued me since the beginning of the tour but I must always listen to my body and put my health first.”
In true Madonna fashion, she was quick to assure her supporters saying: “The last thing I want to do is disappoint my fans or compromise the integrity of my show. So I will keep going until I cannot.”
But that wasn’t the only time she had been forced to ditch tour dates. Months before that, she cancelled a number of stops and said she was in “overwhelming pain”.
During one show, she had a horrific fall on stage and told fans in a post on social media: “I landed on the floor on my tailbone.”
Around that time, she wrote on social media: “If only knees don’t twist and cartilage didn’t tear and nothing hurt and tears never fell out of your eyes. But alas they do.”
After the tour ended, the megastar, who often performed despite her injuries, told fans that she was in treatment for a “missing cartilage”.
“Finally going to get my regenerative treatment for my missing cartilage”, she posted.
“I would be jumping up and down if I could after 8 months of being in pain! Wish me luck!”
Madonna also suggested that she had hip replacement surgery after the tour.
According to Extra, during a question and answer session, she said: During my [Madame X] tour… I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but I’m limping a lot…”
She apparently added: “I was in more pain than I’ve ever been in my life. I’m a bionic woman… I had hip replacement surgery.”
She later revealed that she had contracted coronavirus at the end of the tour.
Although plans further plans for her new concert are currently unclear, all talks of it have been banned from her bedside while she recovers, according to family members.
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