This month’s artist is also a legendary singer and performer. Through the years, she’s proved her mettle with music albums which belong to categories as varied as her personality. She’s even tried her hand at acting and her concerts have been among the highest money grossing events world-wide. One of the most popular female singers of all time who continues to offer some really nice music from time to time, here’s presenting… Madonna.
Madonna Louise Ciccone, or Madonna as we know her, was born on the 16th of August 1958. There coudn’t have been a better time than her birthday month to write about her!! An american recording artist also described as an actress and now an entrepreneur, Madonna was born in Bay City, Michigan and raised in Rochester Hills, Michigan. She moved to New York city in 1977 for a career in modern dance. This explains her unusual yet entertaining form of dancing.
After performing as a member of the pop musical groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her self-titled debut album, Madonna in 1983 by Sire Records. A series of hit singles from her studio albums Like a Virgin (1984) and True Blue (1986) gained her global recognition, establishing her as a pop icon for expanding the boudaries of lyrical content in mainstream popular music and imagery in her music videos, which became a regular feature on MTV.
Her recognition was augmented by the film Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) which widely became seen as a Madonna starrer, despite her not playing the lead. Expanding on the use of religious imagerty with Like a Prayer (1989), Madonna received positive critical reception for her diverse musical productions, while at the same time receiving criticism from religious conservatives and the Vatican.
In 1996, Madonna played the starring role in the film, Evita, for which she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. Her single, “You Must Love Me” which was featured on the film’s soundtrack album won the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Original Song. Madonna’s seventh studio album Ray of Light (1998) became one of her most critically acclaimed, recognized for its lyrical depth. In 2005, Madonna released Confessions on a Dance Floor, which earned the Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album. Her eleventh studio album Hard Candy (2008), became her seventh to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 albums chart.
Madonna’s look and manner of dress, performances and music videos, became influential among young girls and women. Largely created by stylist and jewelry designer Maripol, Madonna’s style of dress; defined by lace tops, skirts over capri pants, fishnet stockings, jewelry bearing the Christian cross, multiple bracelets, and bleached hair, became a female fashion trend in the 1980s.
While filming the music video for “Material Girl” Madonna started dating actor Sean Penn and married him on her twenty-seventh birthday that year. In 1988, city officials in the town of Pacentro began to construct a 13-foot (4 m) statue of Madonna in a bustier. The statue commemorated the fact that her ancestors had lived in Pacentro. Madonna’s marriage to Sean Penn also ended. After filing and withdrawing divorce papers in December 1987, they separated on New Year’s Eve 1988 and divorced in January 1989. Of her marriage to Penn, Madonna said, “I was completely obsessed with my career and not ready to be generous in any shape or form.”
In 1992, Madonna founded her own entertainment company, Maverick, consisting of a record company (Maverick Records), a film production company (Maverick Films), and also music publishing, television, merchandising and book-publishing divisions. The deal was a joint venture with Time Warner as part of $60 million worth of recordings and businesses. The deal gave her a twenty percent royalty, equal at the time to Michael Jackson’s.
Madonna starred in the movie The Next Best Thing in 2000. She contributed two songs to the film’s soundtrack, “Time Stood Still” and the international hit “American Pie”, a cover version of the 1970s Don McLean single. Madonna’s eighth studio album, Music, was released in 2000 and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. It produced three singles; “Music”, which became Madonna’s twelfth number one US single as well as “Don’t Tell Me” and “What It Feels Like for a Girl”. The latter’s music video depicted Madonna committing murders and accidents with cars and was banned by MTV and VH1 from airing. The same year Madonna became involved in a relationship with Guy Ritchie, whom she had met in 1999 through mutual friends Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler. On August 11, 2000, she gave birth to their son, Rocco. Later that year, Madonna and Ritchie married in Scotland.
As an artist, Madonna’s music has been the subject of much scrutiny among critics. Author Robert M. Grant comments in his book Contemporary Strategy Analysis (2005), wrote that what has brought her success is “certainly not outstanding natural talent. As a vocalist, musician, dancer, songwriter, or actress, Madonna’s talents seem modest.” He asserts Madonna’s success lies in relying on the talents of others and that her personal relationships have served as cornerstones to the numerous reinventions in the longevity of her career. Conversely, Rolling Stone magazine has named Madonna “an exemplary songwriter with a gift for hooks and indelible lyrics, and a better studio singer than her live spectacles attest.” She has been called “the perfect vocalist for lighter-than-air songs”, despite not being a “heavyweight talent.”
Madonna’s Catholic background and relationship with her parents were reflected in the album Like a Prayer. It is also an evocation of the impact religion had on her career. Madonna joined the Jewish mystic religion Kabbalah in 1994 after the release of her album Bedtime Stories. She has spoken about the influence of the religion on her and donated millions of dollars for schools based on the religion, around New York and London. In 2004, she changed her name to Esther, which in Hebrew means “star”. However, her immersion in Kabbalah caused a furor and she faced opposition from Rabbis who called Madonna’s joining the religion as sacrilegious and a case of celebrity dilettanism.
According to Rolling Stone, Madonna “remains one of the greatest pop acts of all time”. She is also “the world’s highest earning female singer on earth”. Madonna’s 2008 Sticky & Sweet Tour became the highest grossing concert tour by a solo artist. In the United Kingdom, she is the most successful female in the singles chart history and has more number one singles than any other female solo artist. In 2008, she surpassed Elvis Presley as the artist with most top ten hits in the history of Billboard Hot 100. In 2007, Madonna was listed by VH1 as eighth in the Greatest Women of Rock & Roll. On March 10, 2008, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Madonna is ranked by the Recording Industry Association of America as the best-selling female
rock artist of the twentieth century and the second top-selling female artist in the United States with sixty-three million certified albums; she has sold over two-hundred million albums worldwide. In 2007, Guinness World Records listed her as the world’s most successful female recording artist of all time and she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the following year. Considered to be one of the most influential women in contemporary music, Madonna has been known for continually reinventing her music and image and for retaining a standard of anonymity within the recording industry; she is recognized as an influence among numerous music artists.
Here is a list of Madonna’s songs that are my favorites…
Frozen
Nothing Really Matters
Music
Take a Bow
Like a Virgin