Madonna has joked that she rehearsed her BRIT Awards performance "20,000 times" in a new chat with Sirius XM DJ Howard Stern. At the ceremony last month in London's O2 Arena she suffered a tumble on stage and fell backwards down a flight of stairs, and she's admitted she "beat up" on herself for a week following the performance.
Madonna
"I rehearse everything to death. I never do anything live that I haven't rehearsed.
"I tied it [the cape] with a silk string, we rehearsed in 20,000 times ... I pulled the string that time and it didn't come undone, it turned into a knot.
"No one beats up on me more than me, I have a lot of pride in doing shows well and not messing up and I did and that's really what I did, beat up on myself. That lasted pretty much the week."
Although the singer's led an illustrious and long career, she confessed she still has anxiety before shows, especially when there are friends and family in the audience.
One such performance was at the Super Bowl halftime show in 2012, where she performed a medley of her tunes in front of a reported 114 million viewers worldwide.
"Oh my god, I was so nervous. S****ing myself."
Talking about how she felt after the performance, she added: "I was so relieved ... that I went to my locker room, lay down on the floor and cried."
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