Madonna Wraps Record-Breaking Sticky & Sweet Tour in Israel

After 85 shows performing songs from Hard Candy and her 26-year catalog, Madonna has wrapped her Sticky & Sweet tour with a pair of gigs at Israel's Yehoshua Gardens. All told, the numbers for the singer's year-long global trek are jaw-dropping: $408 million grossed, more than 3.5 million fans attended and 32 countries hit, according to Live Nation, the tour's producer. The figures make Sticky & Sweet the highest-grossing tour every by a solo act, and the second-highest grossing trek of all time. Madonna even broke her own record: 2006's Confessions tour held the honor of most successful solo tour with a $194 million gross. Take a bow, indeed.

Sticky & Sweet up close: photos from Madonna's tour.

"Sometimes getting onstage is the easiest thing in the world," Madonna tells Rolling Stone in our new issue. "Other times, it's like, 'Can someone please hit me with a stun gun?' "

Rolling Stone was there when Madonna's tour hit New York on its second U.S. stop last October, and when the Material Girl played an exclusive club show with Justin Timberlake to debut Hard Candy tracks (check out photos from the tiny gig here.)

Madonna's next project is greatest-hits set Celebration, which is due later this month. Earlier this week, she unleashed a video for one of the collection's two new songs, "Celebration," produced by Paul Oakenfold. Watch the clip and get the full Celebration track list.

Check out video from Madonna's last date on Sticky & Sweet:

More Madonna:
• Madonna: The Rolling Stone Covers
• 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock & Roll: Madonna at the VMAs in 1984
• The Immortals - Madonna by Britney Spears

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Song Stories

“Too Close”

Next | 1998

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'" 

More Song Stories entries »

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