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After a star reaches a certain point, it's easy to forget what they became
famous for and concentrate solely on their persona. Madonna is such a star. Madonna
rocketed to stardom so quickly in 1984 that it obscured most of her musical
virtues. Appreciating her music became even more difficult as the decade wore on,
as discussing her lifestyle became more common than discussing her music. However,
one of Madonna's greatest achievements is how she manipulated the media and the
public with her music, her videos, her publicity, and her sexuality. Arguably,
Madonna was the first female pop star to have complete control of her music and
image.
Madonna moved from her native Michigan to New York in 1977, with dreams of
becoming a ballet dancer. She studied with choreographer Alvin Ailey and modeled.
In 1979, she became part of the Patrick Hernandez Revue, a disco outfit that had
the hit "Born to Be Alive." She traveled to Paris with Hernandez; it was there that
she met Dan Gilroy, who would soon become her boyfriend. Upon returning to New
York, the pair formed the Breakfast Club, a pop/dance group. Madonna originally
played drums for the band, but she soon became the lead singer. In 1980, she left
the band and formed Emmy with her former boyfriend, drummer Stephen Bray. Soon,
Bray and Madonna broke off from the group and began working on some
dance/disco-oriented tracks. A demo tape of these tracks worked its way to Mark
Kamins, a New York-based DJ/producer. Kamins directed the tape to Sire Records,
which signed the singer in 1982.
Kamins produced Madonna's first single, "Everybody," which became a club and
dance hit at the end of 1982; her second single, 1983's "Physical Attraction," was
another club hit. In June of 1983, she had her third club hit with the bubbly
"Holiday," which was written by Jellybean Benitez. Madonna's self-titled debut
album was released in September of 1983; "Holiday" became her first Top 40 hit the
following month. "Borderline" became her first Top Ten hit in March of 1984,
beginning a remarkable string of 17 consecutive Top Ten hits. While "Lucky Star"
was climbing to number four, Madonna began working on her first starring role in a
feature film, Susan Seidelman's Desperately Seeking Susan.
Madonna's second album, the Niles Rodgers-produced Like a Virgin, was released
at the end of 1984. The title track hit number one in December, staying at the top
of the charts for six weeks; it was the start of a whirlwind year for the singer.
During 1985, Madonna became an international celebrity, selling millions of records
on the strength of her stylish, sexy videos and forceful personality. After
"Material Girl" became a number two hit in March, Madonna began her first tour,
supported by the Beastie Boys. "Crazy for You" became her second number one single
in May. Desperately Seeking Susan was released in July, becoming a box office hit;
it also prompted a planned video release of A Certain Sacrifice, a low-budget
erotic drama she filmed in 1979. A Certain Sacrifice wasn't the only embarrassing
skeleton in the closet dragged into the light during the summer of 1985 - both
Playboy and Penthouse published nude photos of Madonna that she posed for in 1977.
Nevertheless, her popularity continued unabated, with thousands of teenage girls
adopting her sexy appearance, being dubbed "Madonna wannabes." In August, she
married actor Sean Penn; the couple had a rocky marriage that ended in 1989.
Madonna began collaborating with Patrick Leonard at the beginning of 1986;
Leonard would co-write most of her biggest hits in the '80s, including "Live to
Tell," which hit number one in June of 1986. A more ambitious and accomplished
record than her two previous albums, True Blue was released the following month, to
both more massive commercial success (it was a number one in both the U.S. and the
U.K., selling over five million copies in America alone) and critical acclaim.
"Papa Don't Preach" became her fourth number one hit in the U.S. While her musical
career was thriving, her film career took a savage hit with the November release of
Shanghai Surprise. Starring Madonna and Sean Penn, the comedy received terrible
reviews, which translated into disastrous box office returns.
At the beginning of 1987, she had her fifth number one single with "Open Your
Heart," the third number one from True Blue alone. The title cut from the
soundtrack of her third feature film, Who's That Girl?, was another chart-topping
hit, although the film itself was another box office bomb. 1988 was a relatively
quiet year for Madonna as she spent the first half of the year acting in David
Mamet's Speed the Plow on Broadway. In the meantime, she released the remix album
You Can Dance. After withdrawing the divorce papers she filed at the beginning of
1988, she divorced Penn at the beginning of 1989.
Like a Prayer, released in the spring of 1989, was her most ambitious and
far-reaching album, incorporating elements of pop, rock, and dance. It was another
number one hit and launched the number one title track as well as "Express
Yourself," "Cherish," and "Keep It Together," three more Top Ten hits. In April
1990, she began her massive Blonde Ambition tour, which ran throughout the entire
year. "Vogue" became a number one hit in May, setting the stage for her co-starring
role in Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy; it was her most successful film appearance
since Desperately Seeking Susan. Madonna released a greatest-hits album, The
Immaculate Collection, at the end of the year. It featured two new songs, including
the number one single "Justify My Love," which sparked another controversy with its
sexy video; the second new song, "Rescue Me," became the highest-debuting single by
a female artist in U.S. chart history, entering the charts at number 15. Truth or
Dare, a documentary of the Blonde Ambition tour, was released to positive reviews
and strong ticket sales during the spring of 1991.
Madonna returned to the charts in the summer of 1992 with the number one "This
Used to Be My Playground," a single featured in the film A League of Their Own,
which featured the singer in a small part. Later that year, Madonna released Sex,
an expensive, steel-bound soft-core pornographic book that featured hundreds of
erotic photographs of herself, several models, and other celebrities -- including
Isabella Rossellini, Big Daddy Kane, Naomi Campbell, and Vanilla Ice -- as well as
selected prose. Sex received scathing reviews and enormous negative publicity, yet
that didn't stop the accompanying album, Erotica, from selling over two million
copies. Bedtime Stories, released two years later, was a more subdued affair than
Erotica. Initially, it didn't chart as impressively, prompting some critics to
label her a has-been, yet the album spawned her biggest hit, "Take a Bow," which
spent seven weeks at number one. It also featured the Björk-penned "Bedtime
Stories," which became her first single not to make the Top 40; its follow-up,
"Human Nature," also failed to crack the Top 40. Nevertheless, Bedtime Stories
marked her seventh album to go multi-platinum.
Beginning in 1995, Madonna began one of her most subtle image makeovers as she
lobbied for the title role in the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita.
Backing away from the overt sexuality of Erotica and Bedtime Stories, Madonna
recast herself as an upscale sophisticate, and the compilation Something to
Remember fit into the plan nicely. Released in the fall of 1995, around the same
time she won the coveted role of Evita Peron, the album was comprised entirely of
ballads, designed to appeal to the mature audience that would also be the target of
Evita. As the filming completed, Madonna announced she was pregnant and her
daughter, Lourdes, was born late in 1996, just as Evita was scheduled for release.
The movie was greeted with generally positive reviews and Madonna began a campaign
for an Oscar nomination that resulted in her winning the Golden Globe for Best
Actress (Musical or Comedy), but not the coveted Academy Award nomination. The
soundtrack for Evita, however, was a modest hit, with a dance remix of "Don't Cry
for Me Argentina" and the newly written "You Must Love Me" both becoming hits.
During 1997, she worked with producer William Orbit on her first album of new
material since 1994's Bedtime Stories. The resulting record, Ray of Light, was
heavily influenced by electronica, techno, and trip-hop, thereby updating her
classic dance-pop sound for the late '90s. Ray of Light received uniformly
excellent reviews upon its March 1998 release and debuted at number two on the
charts. Within a month, the record was shaping up to be her biggest album since
Like a Prayer. Two years later she returned with Music, which reunited her with
Orbit and also featured production work from Mark "Spike" Stent and Mirwais, a
French electro-pop producer/musician in the vein of Daft Punk and Air.
The year 2000 also saw the birth of Madonna's second child, Rocco, whom she had
with filmmaker Guy Ritchie; the two married at the very end of the year. With
Ritchie as director and Madonna as star, the pair released a remake of the film
Swept Away in 2002. It tanked at the box office, failing to crack seven digits,
making it one of the least profitable films of the year. Her sober 2003 album,
American Life, fared a little better but was hardly a huge success. That same year
she released a successful children's book, The English Roses (it was followed by
several more over the coming years). Confessions on a Dance Floor marked her return
to music and to the dance-oriented material that had made her a star; released in
late 2005, it topped the Billboard charts, and was accompanied by a worldwide tour
in 2006, the same year that I'm Going to Tell You a Secret, a CD/DVD made during
her Re-Invention Tour, came out. In 2007 Madonna released another CD/DVD,
Confessions Tour, this time chronicling her controversial tour of the same name. ~
Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
Source : Some of the information on this page came
from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU Documentation
License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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