At opening night of her Celebration Tour on Saturday night in London, Madonna proved that she still has all her life to live and all her love to give by covering Gloria Gaynor‘s disco classic “I Will Survive.”
Madonna took a moment during her first show to talk about the serious health scare that postponed the tour from its original planned start over the summer. She credited her children — Lourdes, 27; Rocco, 23; David, 18; Mercy, 17; and twins Stella and Estere, 11 — with pulling her through after her hospitalization for a bacterial infection in June.
“I forgot five years of my life, or my death — I don’t really know where I was,” she said onstage at The O2 arena. “But the angels were protecting me, and my children were there. And my children always save me every time. If you want to know my secret and you want to know how I pulled through and survived, I thought, ‘I have to be there for my children. I have to survive for them.’”
Gaynor approved of Madonna performing her signature hit, which spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1979.
“@Madonna congratulations on the launch of #TheCelebrationTour at @TheO2,” Gaynor shared via X on Sunday, alongside a video of Madonna’s cover. “So happy that you are in good health and ready to have a holiday with fans around the world! By the way, you have excellent taste in music!”
Madonna has two more dates (Oct. 17 and 18) remaining of her four-night stint in London before heading across Europe and returning to The O2 for two more shows on Dec. 5 and 6.
See Gaynor’s Madonna appreciation below:
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