How do you measure anticipation for the one and only Madonna to take the stage? In daylights? In sunsets? In cups of coffee? In opening acts? In dancers’ sweat? In songs? In song....notes? How do you measure lateness in Madame X’s world?
According to Madonna, you don’t. Lateness doesn’t exist. In a video she posted on Twitter this past weekend from the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, after she arrived two hours past the concert start time Thursday night, she sat on a piano and said, “Here’s something that you all need to understand. And that is, that a queen is never late.”
One Florida man would disagree. The man, Nate Hollander, bought $1,024.95 worth of tickets for a December stop on the Madame X tour at the Fillmore Miami Beach concert venue, according to NBC News, which referred to the class action suit filed in Miami court. The concert was scheduled to begin at 8:30 p.m. when he bought the tickets, but then a pattern emerged over the course of the tour so far: Madonna has been arriving two hours late to some of her concerts. Live Nation rescheduled the Miami concert for 10:30 p.m., which I suppose was a fun little trick on Madonna wherein they tell her it’s starting at 8:30 p.m. and tell concertgoers it starts at 10:30 p.m., and then everyone’s expectations are managed and both parties show up at the same time. It’s the same little trick one might use when throwing a, I don’t know, Franco-American dinner party: tell American guests to arrive one hour after the desired start time, and the French to arrive two hours before the desired start time. Et voilà! Dinner on time!
Hollander took umbrage at the time change and filed a lawsuit for breach of contract and negligent misrepresentation on November 4. “Ticketholders had to work and go to school the next day, which prevented them from attending a concert that would end at around 1:00 a.m.,” the suit said. “Hollander attempted, without success, to obtain a refund for the three tickers [sic] purchased for the Madonna concert.”
He argues that Madonna and Live Nation “knew or should have known that said concerts would not start at 8:30 p.m.,” due to her showing up late to previous shows. I doubt this is how the law works, but one could see how this argument works both ways. “Life is a mystery,” Madonna once sang, but Madonna is not a mystery. If she can superimpose a swastika over the face of a far right French leader, she will. If she can flash a crowd, she will. If she can arrive two hours late to her own concert, she will. You come to expect these things. She‘s Madonna!
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