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Madonna's Biography
Born
in 1958 near Detroit, Madonna Ciccone was the eldest daughter of her engineer
father and housewife mother's eight children. (Madonna's mother died of breast
cancer when she was six.) The plucky girl exhibited a showbiz flair at a young
age, and signed up for such artistic outlets as school shows, the cheerleading
squad, piano lessons, and ballet classes. Madonna's dancing skills earned her a
scholarship to attend the University of Michigan. In 1978, two years into her
college studies, Madonna grew impatient for stardom, dropped out, and moved to
New York. Legend has it that she set down in Times Square with only thirty-five
dollars and abundant ambition to her name. A
series of low-wage jobs, including a stint behind the counter at the Times
Square Dunkin' Donuts, ensued before Madonna landed some short-lived gigs with
the acclaimed dance troupes of Alvin Ailey and Martha Graham. Her restless
aspirations prevented her from remaining a nameless face hidden among a sea of
dancers for long — besides, her attention had wavered away from dance to
music. The dancer-turning-singer joined a succession of small-time bands, and,
during the early eighties, she first tried her hand at writing songs and
gradually learned to play guitar and piano. Madonna landed gigs singing at local
dance clubs, attracting considerable attention for her boogie-inducing tunes and
her enthusiastic, naughty stage presence. In 1982, star DJ Mark Kamins supplied
Madonna with her big break: he created a club-scene hit from one of her demo
singles, "Everybody," and introduced the budding performer to Warner
Bros. executives, who liked what they heard — and saw — and promptly signed
her to a recording contract. Madonna's
eponymous debut album was released to zero fanfare in 1983. Tracks from the
record nonetheless became must-plays in New York's nightclubs. The record's
first single, "Holiday," made the leap from dance-floor turntables to
airplay by inner-city radio stations and, incredibly, into America's Top 20
chart. In quick succession, "Lucky Star" and "Borderline"
followed the debut single's trajectory. Both those tunes were boosted by music
videos that introduced the world to Madonna's intriguing look: layered mesh
halter tops, exposed midriff, short skirts, all set off by religious
accessories and a pointedly bad dye-job. While hits from Madonna were
still camped out on the charts, Warner Bros. released Like a Virgin
(1984). Its title track became the singer's first No. 1 single, and the album
topped the charts. In 1985, Madonna sold more singles and albums than any other
artist that year. Now
a certified sensation, Madonna embarked on a sold-out tour; appeared in the
modestly entertaining feature films Vision Quest and Desperately
Seeking Susan (both 1985); married actor Sean Penn; and made her theatrical
debut opposite him in a 1986 production of David Rabe's Goose and Tom-Tom.
The media-magnetic couple wed in 1985 — on Madonna's birthday, August 16 —
in Malibu, California. The partnership produced the truly dreadful film Shanghai
Surprise (1986) and zillions of tabloid headlines, and ended in divorce less
than four years later. Controversy
— not entirely unwanted controversy — became Madonna's next companion. The
title track to her 1989 album Like a Prayer reaped tremendous publicity
by virtue of its highly contested music video, which featured a slip-clad
Madonna dancing before burning crosses, kissing an African-American saint, and
displaying spontaneous stigmata. The resulting outcry from religious groups
prompted Pepsi to cancel its sponsorship of her tour and to pull the plug on a
TV commercial starring the kinky video vixen. And what lesson did Madonna take
away from this escapade? Scandal sells. She went on to employ similar
promotional techniques to boost ticket sales for her 1990 Blonde Ambition tour,
box-office figures for the documentary Truth or Dare (1991), and sales of
the X-rated Sex book and the similarly-themed album Erotica
(1992). In
1992, Madonna cemented her superstardom with a seven-year, $60-million deal with
Time Warner. Under the pact, Madonna became head of her own label, Maverick,
which she formed with longtime manager Freddy DeMann. Initially dismissed as a
vanity studio, Maverick has succeeded beyond even the Material Girl's most
ambitious dreams, thanks largely to the label's best-selling artists, Alanis
Morissette and the English techno band Prodigy. After
the uproar surrounding Sex subsided, Madonna, realizing she was seriously
overexposed, slipped out of the limelight and into a handful of low-key film
roles in such indie fare as Blue in the Face and Four Rooms (both
1995). When she reemerged, she embodied two new personae: mother-to-be and
serious actress. On October 14, 1996, she and then-boyfriend Carlos Leon
welcomed daughter Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon — whom mama Madonna calls Lola
— into the world. In addition, the lambasted star of such filmic flops as Who's
That Girl? (1987) and Body of Evidence (1993) appeared as the titular
heroine of Evita (1996). It was a role she seemed born to play. At least
the Hollywood Foreign Press Association thought so — it honored Madonna with a
Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. Ever
the shape-shifting provocateur, Madonna has built her career by aggressively
strip-mining pop culture, donning a spectrum of usually shocking, always
rebellious cultural personae like so many costume changes in her quest for
self-realization. But in the wake of Lourdes' birth, a singularly sedate,
subdued, and spiritually-centered woman emerged: a hardworking and
privacy-guarding mom devoted to raising her kid, managing her empire, and
selecting her artistic projects very carefully. Nowhere
was Madonna's newfound state of meditative reserve and self-awareness more
readily in evidence than on her 1998 release Ray of Light, a moody,
introspective album she created with the express intent of affecting people
"in a quieter way," as she related to one interviewer. Never one to
limit her media boundaries, the continually morphing pop icon also set about
establishing two new Maverick divisions: Mad Guy Television and Mad Guy Films. Four
years passed before her next cinematic outing, in The Next Best Thing,
the story of best friends a straight woman (Madonna) and a gay man (Rupert
Everett) who decide to have a child together. Soon after the film's release, a
spokeswoman from Madonna's record label confirmed months-old rumors that the pop
icon and her then-beau, British film director Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock, and
Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch), were expecting a child. Son Rocco arrived
en scène in August 2000. Amid much media frenzy, Madonna took the plunge for
the second time, marrying 32-year-old Ritchie at a fairytale Scottish castle in
December 2000. Madonna’s Latest Album Music turned out to be a
revelation for this Mass Media Phenomenon, which was released in the winter of
2000.
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