Madonna breaks down mid-concert after Paris attacks, dedicates hit single to victims

Following the tragic Paris attacks on Friday, which targeted a concert among other venues, pop star Madonna continued with her concert in Stockholm, Sweden the very next day only to break down during her performance, reported US Weekly.

The concert, which became a tribute to the victims of the Paris attacks, saw Madonna set her guitar aside and tell attendees that despite singing and dancing she felt ''torn'' and she was only continuing as an act of defiance: "Obviously, this whole show is about celebrating life and standing up for your rights, fighting for what you believe in. It’s been very hard for me to get through the show up to this point, and not forget about what happened last night.”

"In many ways I feel torn, because it’s like, why am I up here dancing and having fun when people are crying over the loss of their loved ones? However, that is exactly what these people want to do. They want to shut us up. They want to silence us, and we won’t let them. We will never let them," she continued.

Like many artists and bands including the Foo Fighters, who cancelled their concerts for security reasons, Madonna too thought about cancelling hers but decided against it: "I was gonna cancel my show tonight but then I thought to myself, 'Why should I give that to them? Why should I allow them to stop me and to stop us from enjoying freedom?'"

The singer whose album Rebel Heart came out earlier this year let her emotions get the better of her as she spoke to her fans: “All of the places where people were killed were places where people were having fun, people were enjoying themselves, eating in restaurants, dancing, singing, watching a soccer match. These are freedoms that we take for granted of course and we must not but they're freedoms that we deserve, we work hard and we deserve to have fun and there is no one in this world that should have the right to stop us from doing what we love!"

She began the concert by singing her 1989 hit Like a Prayer, dedicating it to all those who suffered in the attacks, dubbed as the worst in Paris since World War II.