When people initially heard that Madonna and Taylor Swift were going to appear on stage, jaws dropped — and not in a good way. Some thought Madonna would act desperate and suck the life out of Taylor Swift. Fans for both singers weren’t too excited.
It appears that Madonna can still shock people, but not for kissing her performers or taking off her clothes. She did a straight up soaring vocal performance of her new hit “Ghosttown,” while Taylor Swift played guitar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz9Y3kDXpxE
Twitter immediate lit up with praise after the performance.
@taylorswift13 and @Madonna delivered an amazing, hot and sexy performance of #Ghosttown at #iHeartRadioMusicAwards : http://t.co/f43gwcLSPp
— JustRandomThings (@AdamAtJRT) March 30, 2015
@Madonna @taylorswift13 I love you so much, the performance was amazing, I really loved, I love you so much
— Isabela (@FairilyFairie) March 30, 2015
Madonna, who has run into quite a rough patch lately, needed to deliver and, judging from media reactions, she did. PopCrush was as stunned as anybody else about Taylor Swift and the Queen of Pop performing together.
“These days, we’re used to seeing Taylor bop around onstage in crop tops and matching skirts, so it was a pleasant change of pace to see her chilled out and strumming on a guitar like the old days while Madonna sang her track. It was an unexpectedly stripped-down performance from Madonna, who usually brings maximum theatrics to her live shows. However, we loved that this brought an intense amount of emotion.”
Madonna’s album Rebel Heart received quite the boost after the performance. It went from being nowhere on iTunes to rising to No. 48 by the end of Sunday night. While this doesn’t mean that the industry will be lining up to give Madonna platinum awards for Rebel Heart , it does mean the album has legs. Over the past week, Madonna has been bashed for her “flop” album, which dropped in sales 80 percent during the second week. Despite news sources making up lies that the 80 percent drop was the second biggest in music history, Keith Caulfield from Billboard cleared things up.
“The 80 percent erosion is steep, but not terribly out-of-the-ordinary for a title that likely had a lot of pre-order sales that made it difficult to sustain a strong second week. High-debuting albums from big-named stars regularly see second-week declines of more than 75 percent in sales.”
In fact, Madonna’s drop in sales isn’t even in the top five. Even so, many Madonna fans call the “sales drop” reports biased, especially since Rebel Heart was leaked and available for download for the past three months. Madonna will do just fine.
Taylor Swift doesn’t need the same boost Madonna is hoping for. She is the hottest singing sensation in the world and will soon play huge stadium gigs all across the world. Did you watch Madonna and Taylor Swift perform together? Let us know what you thought of the performance in the comments section.
[Photo Credit: YouTube Screen Capture]
