Madonna and Taylor Swift
Singers Madonna (L) and Taylor Swift perform 'Ghost Town' onstage during the 2015 iHeartRadio Music Awards which broadcasted live on NBC from The Shrine Auditorium on March 29, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. Kevin Winter/Getty

After taking a nasty tumble at the BRIT Awards in February, Madonna was taking no chances when she performed alongside Shake It Off singer Taylor Swift at the iHeartRadio Awards last night, as the Living For Love singer sat down on stage.

The 56-year-old performed her new single Ghost Town at the Los Angeles awards ceremony on 29 March with Swift, 25, playing the guitar. Both singers sat on stools for the slow number and although Madonna did brave standing up at the end, there was no big production or choreographed dance routine.

Swift's appearance came as a complete surprise to fans as the country singer does not feature on the album version of the ballad. The pop stars, who coordinated their outfits dressed in corsets, stockings and leather boots, embraced each other while leaving the stage together.

The performance was unusually tame for pop icon Madonna but perhaps it was encouraged after she suffered an embarrassing fall at the BRIT Awards on 25 February in London. Madge was standing on the back of a dancer when another yanked her long cape from her neck, pulling her down a flight of steps on the stage.

Like a true professional, the Material Girl hitmaker continued on with the performance but she was clearly frazzled by the incident. Speaking about the tumble to Ellen DeGeneres shortly in the days after, Madonna admitted that she cried.

"[I cried] from humiliation. Not because I was in pain, nothing hurt on me. That's the weirdest thing. I don't want to see any part of the performance because for the first 30 seconds I got back on the stage, I'm sure I was the angriest matador to walk the planet," she told the talk show host and comedian.

"The first thing that crossed my mind, 'Oh my god, am I hurt?', I was just like 'Sh*t, I made a mistake, I want to start this again'. But I just kept going."

Madonna and Swift were virtually inseparable throughout the night as the pop legend presented the I Knew You Were Trouble hit-maker with the song of the year award which she won for Shake It Off.

Watch Madonna perform at the iHeartRadio awards below:

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