Madonna shows vulnerability at homecoming concert: 'I hope you're proud of me, Detroit!'

Madonna did something at her homecoming concert Monday night at Little Caesars Arena that she has rarely done in her groundbreaking, boundary-pushing, earth-shattering career: She let her guard down.

Addressing the crowd of 13,000 — including her 92-year-old father Silvio, who is suffering from Parkinson's disease and was in attendance at the show — Madonna spoke of the strength her father gave to her, the work ethic he instilled in her as a child and the need she felt to give her hometown someone they can cheer for.

"I hope you're proud of me, Detroit!" said the Queen of Pop, who admitted to feeling nervous about coming home and performing in front of her hometown audience. "Because I care about what you think, and I want you to be proud of me."

It was a deeply personal and surprisingly emotional concert — not to mention a late night at the arena, which didn't see the Material Girl taking the stage until after 10:30 p.m. and wrapping just before 1 a.m. — as Madonna looked to be holding back and even wiping away tears on more than one occasion.

It was also an evening in which Madonna re-affirmed — or re-re-affirmed, or re-re-re-affirmed, depending on how far back you want to take this — that no one does it like her, and frankly no one else even comes close.

She took the audience on a journey across her four-decade career, wrapping her own narrative in themes of spirituality, religion, life and death, and presenting a showstopping arena spectacular of the highest caliber. Madonna has been elevating the arena experience for decades, and her current Celebration Tour keeps that bar high, as she performed a two hour, 15-minute showcase through her greatest hits, most iconic looks and all of her many eras.

Madonna, 65, has spent her whole career looking forward, and this look back seems like more than a chance to simply cycle through the hits. If it's her farewell to this level of production and touring, it's an exclamation point on the definitive pop career of the modern era. If it's just her current statement at this particular junction in her life, it will be fascinating to see how she tries to top it the next time out.

She didn't start at the beginning. Opening with "Ray of Light's" "Nothing Really Matters," Madonna hit the stage solo, performing in a crown (naturally), spinning on a circular stage underneath a large titled light rig, three huge video screens behind her. Then it was on to "Everybody," her debut single, performed with more than a dozen dancers who resembled punk rock clubgoers of Madonna's early New York City days.

And then "Into the Groove," which led to her first of two extended speeches to the crowd.

"I'm home! Wooo!" said Madonna, clutching a bottle of Budweiser and periodically chugging from it. "People don't understand how cool you have to be to be from Detroit."

She reminisced about her journey from the Motor City to New York, and then the world. "It's been four decades since I left this place and said, ‘I’m gonna be someone.’ So thank you for pushing me out in the right direction. Thank you, Detroit," she said. "Because working hard, and the working class mentality that I have running through my veins, it all started here. Period."

Later in the show, Madonna addressed being a parent and shouted out all the working parents in the crowd, before paying her respects to her father.

"My father, he taught me the meaning of hard work. He taught me the importance of earning your way through life. He taught me that life is not a day at the beach, that you better be prepared to work hard to get somewhere in life. And I thank you for that, dad," she said.

"And if you think I’m tough, and if you think I’m a warrior or you think I’m a beast or a superhero, it’s because of my father."

She went on to say that her career aspirations and accomplishments were for him.

"I pretty much went through the majority of my career just wanting to make my father proud of me, and I hope that I succeeded," she said.

Monday's concert was a makeup date rescheduled from August, after Madonna postponed her entire tour following a health scare that landed her in the ICU for several days over the summer. She said when she was in the hospital, she received a call from her father, checking in on her. "The irony," she said.

Survival, namely her own, was another theme of the show, as she paid tribute to both Prince and Michael Jackson, who along with Madonna formed the holy trinity of 1980s pop icons. Of the three, Madonna is the last one standing — add in a fourth with George Michael, and she's still the last one standing — which further hammers home the point of her resilience. Like she says in the song, "I guess I'll die another day."

She also paid tribute to AIDS victims, showing images of Martin Burgoyne, Keith Haring, Arthur Ashe, Eazy-E and dozens of others who died of the disease on scrims that hung above her stage, after solemnly turning the end of her own jubilant "Holiday" into a haunted cry of loneliness.

She was playing with the forms and the textures of her songs throughout the evening. Her defiant "Human Nature" was mashed with her torch song "Crazy for You," "La Isla Bonita" folded into her rendition of the "Evita" song "Don't Cry For Me Argentina," and "Express Yourself" was reinvented as an acoustic ballad sing-along.

Meanwhile, "Erotica" was re-contextualized through its use of boxing imagery, with mini boxing rings (which used light beams as ropes, very cool) set up through the labyrinth-like catwalks that extended from the stage onto the arena floor.

Throughout the show, Madonna visited versions of her past self, and later her past selves, as she shared the stage with her full team of dancers, all sporting the vintage looks she made famous on awards shows and stage costumes, and even her baseball uniform from "A League of Their Own." She was journeying from past to present, taking stock of where she's been and celebrating Madonna like only Madonna can.

She took flight several times, performing in a lit-up box that was like a picture frame and was lifted above the audience's heads, including during a late-evening "Ray of Light." She performed more than two dozen songs in all, closing with "Celebration," before issuing a final "thank you Detroit, I love you!" as she disappeared from the stage.

It had been since a 2015 concert at Joe Louis Arena that Madonna had performed in Detroit, but where she's made passing remarks about coming home at her concerts in the past, her comments on Monday — especially those directed toward her father — felt like she was saying things she felt needed to be said, and time was of the essence.

Time is of course the theme of all themes on the "Celebration" tour — what we do with it, how we look back on it and coming to grips with the passage of it — and knowing that nothing, not even Madonna, lasts forever. So if that means celebrating, celebrate away. And make that celebration as meaningful as possible.

agraham@detroitnews.com