"Tick-tock, tick-tock," Madonna's backup singers sang as video screens and subwoofers blasted to life at the Izod Center. Time obsesses Madonna on her Sticky and Sweet Tour, which made its first American stop here on Saturday.
Time means beat and rhythm, and it means the pop history encapsulated in the hits Madonna has been making since 1982. It also means the aging that she defies with workouts, image makeovers and what looks like plastic surgery. At 50, Madonna can no longer be seen as a clubland ingénue, a Hollywood glamour queen, an iconoclast rejecting a Roman Catholic upbringing or a kinky provocateur, and she won't be any kind of dowager yet. Time has brought out her core: careerist ambition and a combative tenacity.
Has there ever been a colder pop sex symbol? For all the invitations in her lyrics, Madonna has always projected more calculation and industriousness than affection. She works; her audience looks and pays, becoming another conquest.
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