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Born
Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone, August 16, 1958, Bay
City, Michigan
Madonna
is the most media-savvy American pop star since Bob Dylan
and the most consistently controversial since Elvis
Presley. In the minds of her supporters, her sassy
approach to dance music and in-your-face videos gave
feminism a much-needed makeover throughout the Eighties,
smashing sexual boundaries, redefining the nature of
eroticism, and challenging social and religious mores. To
her detractors, she merely reinforced the notion of
"woman as plaything," turning the clock back on
conventional feminism two decades. One thing is rarely
disputed: At nearly every turn, she has maintained firm
control over her career and image.
Born in
Bay City, Michigan, Madonna Ciccone was one of six
children. Her mother died when Madonna was six, leaving
her father, a Chrysler/General Dynamics engineer, to raise
the family. She began studying dance at 14 and, after
graduating high school in 1976, continued her dance
studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She
moved to New York City in 1978, where she studied briefly
with the Alvin Ailey dance troupe.
Her first
crack at pop music came when a boyfriend let her sing and
play drums in his band the Breakfast Club. While in the
band, she landed a brief job as backup singer and dancer
with disco star Patrick ("Born to Be Alive")
Hernandez. In 1981 she quit the Breakfast Club and started
writing songs with a former boyfriend from her college
years, Steven Bray. The two gained attention in the trendy
New York club Danceteria, where the DJ, Mark Kamins,
played her tapes; it was Kamins who took Madonna’s demo
to Sire Records and produced her first club hit, 1982’s
"Everybody." After a 12-inch single,
"Burning Up" b/w "Physical
Attraction," hit #3 on the dance charts in early
1983, she began recording her first album with the
high-profile DJ John "Jellybean" Benitez [see
Jellybean entry[, with whom she became romantically
involved. A few months later Sire released her self-titled
debut, which peaked at #8. It spawned "Holiday,"
a single that crossed over from nightclubs to radio,
eventually topping out at #16 on the pop charts by the
following year.
Madonna
enlisted manager Freddie DeMann, who had guided Michael
Jackson from the Jacksons’ late-Seventies slump through Thriller.
DeMann soon had Madonna making history with a couple
of titillating videos. In March 1984
"Borderline" (#10), with its video celebrating
interracial love, was released; it was followed by
"Lucky Star" (#4), whose video offered
provocative glimpses of the star’s navel. Public opinion
was and would remain split. Most critics initially
dismissed Madonna as a prefab disco prima donna offering
style over substance; a few, however, saw something
different and hailed her as a strong new female voice, BOY
TOY belt and all.
In late
1984 the Nile Rodgers-produced Like a Virgin, with
its #1 title song, shot to the Top Ten upon its release;
it eventually sold more than seven million copies.
Doubtless inspired by her undisputable videogenic
presence, DeMann had negotiated movie deals for Madonna
(before her stardom, she had already acted in the
lowbudget indie film A Certain Sacrifice), landing
her a small part as a nightclub singer in Vision Quest and
the title role in Desperately Seeking Susan. Throughout
1985 Madonna was ubiquitous, appearing in both movies,
with hit songs on three albums. By March "Crazy for
You" (#1), from the Vision Quest soundtrack,
and "Material Girl" (#2), from Like a Virgin,
were in the Top Five simultaneously. Her other hits
were Virgin’s "Angel" (#5) and
"Dress You Up" (#5), and the club smash
"Into the Groove," from the Susan soundtrack.
Her Virgin Tour was the hot ticket during the first half
of the year.
In 1985
Madonna married actor Sean Penn, with whom she appeared in
the critical and commercial flop Shanghai Surprise. Then
she hit the pop world with a musical left hook: "Papa
Don’t Preach" (#1), the initial single from True
Blue (#1), drew criticism with its message that young
unwed women should keep their babies. As the lyrical
content of Madonna’s songs deepened, critical acceptance
of her began to grow. Her subsequent 1986 hits were
"True Blue" (#3) and "Open Your Heart"
(#1), followed in 1987 by "La Isla Bonita" (#4).
Another ill-advised acting venture, 1987’s Who’s
That Girl; was tied into an album of the same name,
which included the hit title song (#1) and "Causing a
Commotion" (#2). Madonna took time off the following
year to split with Penn and appear in David Mamet’s
Broadway production, Speed-the-Plow.
She
returned to music in 1989 with Like a Prayer, and
the title song’s video -- complete with burning crosses
and an eroticized black Jesus -- launched Madonna’s
biggest and costliest controversy yet. Released in March,
it was censured by the Vatican and the public response
prompted Pepsi to cancel the singer’s lucrative
endorsement deal. The ordeal made Madonna a worldwide
phenomenon. Like a Prayer spawned four other Top
Twenty hits: "Express Yourself" (#2),
"Cherish" (#2), "Oh Father" (#20), and
"Keep It Together" (#8).
Madonna
hit her megastar stride in 1990 when she appeared as
Breathless Mahoney with then-boyfriend Warren Beatty in Dick
Tracy; its soundtrack, I’m Breathless, bore
hits in "Hanky Panky" (#10) and the nonmovie
song "Vogue" (#1), which honored and revived the
popular gay dance craze. In 1991 she scored hits with
"Rescue Me" (#9) and "Justify My Love"
(#1); the video for the latter fanned the flames of
controversy yet again. She then oversaw the film Truth
or Dare, a documentary of her Blond Ambition Tour
dressed up to look like D. A. Pennebaker’s Dylan movie, Don
‘t Look Back. Madonna also became one of the first
pop stars to speak out about AIDS and help raise money for
research.
The
singer affirmed her business acumen in 1992 when she
signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Time Warner,
guaranteeing release of all albums, films, and books under
her Maverick production corporation. Her first Maverick
project was a highly controversial 128-page coffee-table
photo book, Sex, which had Madonna posing nude and
wearing S&M gear. Sex was followed by the album
Erotica, which peaked at #2 and produced Top Five
hits in 1992: the title track and "Deeper and
Deeper." "Bad Girl" and "Rain"
were both Top Forty hits in 1993. By then Maverick was
releasing work by other artists, including hip-hop
chanteuse MeShell NdegeOcello, and Madonna embarked on her
worldwide Girlie Show Tour, which drew a mixed critical
reaction. An appearance on The Late Show with David
Letterman returned Madonna to the headlines in spring
1994, when, using an abundance of profanities, she engaged
in a verbal sparring match with the comedian. She also
returned to the pop chart that year with the #2 single
"I’ll Remember," from the 1994 film With
Honors. Her late 1994 album, Bedtime Stories (#3),
presented a fairly traditional R&B sound and yielded
the hit singles "Secret" (#4,1994) and
"Take a Bow" (#1, 1995).
1983 -- Madonna
(Sire)
1984 -- Like a Virgin
1986 -- True Blue
1987 -- Who’s That Girl; You Can Dance
1989 -- Like a Prayer
1990 -- I’m Breathless; The Immaculate Collection
1992 -- Erotica (Maverick)
1994 -- Bedtime Stories
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