Madonna booed at Paris concert over Swastika backlash
The riot at the recent Paris concert of Madonna was said to be a payback for the pop singer’s repeated use of a music video featuring a Swastika on French politician Marine Le Pen.
According to media outlet TMZ which was able to talk to some people who attended the Paris concert of Madonna on Thursday night, ten or so “fans” from the crowd who started the merciless booing were overheard shouting about French politician Marine Le Pen. Some were even holding up signs that they had brought to the concert. Previous reports have stated that people from the audience were yelling for refunds after the brief, 45-minute set of Madonna.
It all stems back when Madonna caused quite a stir during her MDNA tour by showing an image of French National Front Leader Marine Le Pen with a Swastika superimposed on her face. The said image appears behind the pop singer during her rendition of “Nobody Knows Me.” Earlier this month, National Front vowed to file a lawsuit against Madonna after the image appeared during a show in Paris.
Following her Paris concert, Madonna’s public relations team released the following statement:
“Madonna’s Paris club show was planned as her heartfelt thank you to France which she expressed at the start of her show. Despite a grueling concert tour, she desperately wanted to perform for her fans in an intimate setting at the historic Olympia as a means to honor her love for French artists, French cinema and a tribute to France’s long history of welcoming and inspiring artists, authors, painters, poets and minorities from other countries over the years. The show was not billed as her full MDNA concert and tremendous effort was made to keep the ticket prices reasonable ($100 for 2000 floor seats) and keep them strictly for her fans. The show cost Madonna close to a million dollars to produce. She has done a handful of club dates in the past and they were never more than 45 minutes. And by the way, she put on a fabulous show which was streamed for millions of fans around the world.”
For her part, Madonna isn’t backing down from the image on the music video. She argued that the swastika use on Marine Le Pen as highlighting “the intolerance human beings have for one another.”
“I always like to tell a story,” 53-year-old “Take a Bow” singer Madonna told a Brazilian television station. “Music should be about ideas, right? Ideas inspire music.”