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There was a proposed Madonna-Prince tour that never happened

By Ben Kelly

A proposed joint tour between Prince and Madonna didn’t happen because the late star believed the world “wasn’t ready” for it.

The surprising new was revealed by Madonna’s manager Guy Oseary in a lengthy Instagram tribute to Prince at the weekend, who he explained was his childhood hero, and later a friend.

“I called him a few years back with the idea of Madonna and Prince going on tour together,” he wrote. “I pitched it to Madonna and within a second she said ‘I like it, we can call it the Royalty Tour… The Queen and The Prince’…I love the way she thinks.”

But, he revealed that it was the purple one who pulled the brakes on the project.

“When I told Prince the idea he said, ‘the world isn’t ready for this, it’s too big’..”

Oseary continued to say, “I always felt like one day I would pull it off,” adding that when Madonna performed in Minnesota last year on the Rebel Heart Tour, Prince hosted them at Paisley Park afterwards and performed for them.

“He didn’t go on stage until 3am, and per usual the show performance was mindblowing,” he said.

Just hours after his death, Madonna paid tribute to Prince by sharing an image of them together  on Instagram, calling him “a true visionary.”

He Changed The World!! A True Visionary. What a loss. I’m Devastated. This is Not A Love Song.

A photo posted by Madonna (@madonna) on

The paid did collaborate on her 1989 Like A Prayer album, with Prince co-writing and performing on ‘This Is Not A Love Song’, as well as concocting the bizarre outro track ‘Act of Contrition’ but the song was not a single, and the pair never performed live together.

Prince was found dead at his Paisley Park home early last Thursday (April 21), after reports of illness in the previous week. His cause of death is still being determined by coroners, but they have ruled out suicide.

More stories:
‘Prince dared to see sexuality and gender for the kaleidoscopic spectrum we now know it to be’
Madonna’s Rebel Heart Tour: the highlights and lowlights