Pop singer, songwriter; actress

The reigning queen of pop music is Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone, a sultry singer-dancer born in Bay City, Michigan. Madonna has dominated the concert scene, the pop charts, and the music-video airwaves since 1985, with nary a rival able to nip at her heels. Her engaging blends of hip dance music and suggestive, campy lyrics have found audiences on every continent and have made her one of the wealthiest active performers in the world. Vanity Fair correspondent James Wolcott writes that Madonna "could be the American star who fulfills the [ultimate] erotic promise. .. .Madonna clearly has the nerve to confront a sexual equal on his own turf, redefine the boundaries of desire, then walk away from the bed unscathed."

Madonna's music videos and live concert performances have indeed featured some of the most erotic dancing and posing ever seen in the music industry. Feminists have been quick to complain that the singer perpetuates the "woman as sexual plaything" stereo-type, with her lingerie costumes and "boy toy" belt buckles. Madonna herself couldn't disagree more. She told Rolling Stone: "People have this idea that if you're sexual and beautiful and provocative, then there's nothing else you could possibly offer. People have always had that image about women. And while it might have seemed like I was behaving in a stereotypical way, at the same time, I was also masterminding it. I was in control of everything I was doing, and I think that when people realized that, it confused them.... You can be sexy and strong at the same time."

Madonna was born August 16, 1958, and was named after her mother, who was also Madonna Ciccone. The singer had a very abbreviated childhood—when she was five, her mother died of cancer after a long and painful illness. At first Madonna and her five siblings were shuttled among relatives, then they were placed under the care of a housekeeper who eventually married their father. Remembering her days at home with a new parent, Madonna told People: "I felt like Cinderella with a wicked stepmother. I couldn't wait to escape." Madonna was tapped for child care and babysitting chores to such an extent that she had little time to be a child herself. She also attended Catholic school, where she earned top grades despite a tendency to decorate her dull uniforms and cavort in class.

In junior high Madonna discovered the world of drama and dance. She began taking private ballet lessons with Christopher Flynn, a teacher who encouraged her to dream of fame. During her high-school years at Rochester Adams High in suburban Detroit, Madonna was able to make the honor roll and be a cheerleader while still pursuing dance with great seriousness. Even then she had the determination to succeed, an attitude that she took no pains to hide. She graduated early and won a full scholarship to the University of Michigan.

After only two years at Michigan, Madonna left for New York City with the clothes on her back and less than one hundred dollars in pocket money. She worked for some months as an artist's model and even posed for some nude pictures while waiting for a break into the entertainment business. Her first professional work came with the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, where she earned a spot in the third company. She left that troupe and studied briefly with Pearl Lang, but she soon became convinced that dancing alone would not provide her an avenue to fame.

Madonna gravitated to music, especially the new wave sounds of the Pretenders and the Police. Between 1979 and 1982—with a brief hiatus in Paris as a backup singer to disco star Patrick Hernandez—she performed with a number of post-punk groups, including the Breakfast Club, Emmy, and the Millionaires. She soon tired of a backup role, and with a former Michigan boyfriend, Steve Bray, she formed a band with herself in the lead. This group, simply called Madonna, caught the eye of Camille Barbone, who became Madonna's manager in 1981.

From new wave Madonna moved to funky, rap-influenced dance music, which she performed in New York's thriving dance clubs with great success. This shift from rock to funk alienated her first manager, but it won her the attention of Mark Kamins, a deejay with wide contacts in the industry. Through Kamins, Madonna signed with Sire Records, a division of Warner Brothers. She cut her first album, Madonna, early in 1983 and engaged the services of Freddie DeMann, Michael Jackson's manager.

Sales of Madonna's debut album were hardly brisk at first, but she found powerful allies in the dance clubs. Eventually the exposure led to more radio coverage of her first singles, "Holiday," "Lucky Star," and "Borderline." The latter two songs finally began to inch up the pop charts until both made it into the top twenty in 1984. While stuffy critics predicted that she would be just another flash-in-the-pan, the energetic performer set out to win the world—and she did just that in 1985.

Like a Virgin, Madonna's second album, was released early in 1985 and quickly went platinum in sales. Madonna had the rare treat of seeing two of her singles, "Material Girl" and "Crazy for You," in the top five simultaneously, while her funky tune "Into the Groove" became the rage in the dance clubs. Her fame was sealed, however, by the music videos she released with Like a Virgin—and with the white-hot performance she delivered in the film Desperately Seeking Susan. The "Like a Virgin" video featured the singer flirting from beneath a lace wedding gown, and the even campier "Material Girl" offered a tongue-in-cheek imitation of a famous Marilyn Monroe dance number. The "Like a Virgin" tour began in three thousand-seat halls, but quickly moved to the largest arenas as shows sold out in a matter of hours.

International fame brought with it the usual troubles. Critics accused Madonna of releasing only the simplest of pop schlock. The news media hounded the star, making a mockery of her short marriage to actor Sean Penn. Still, Madonna conducted herself with dignity, eventually winning over some of the hardest-to-please rock writers. Her album True Blue was the first to earn critical acclaim for its message song "Papa Don't Preach," about unwanted pregnancy, and its lovely ballad "Live To Tell. "As she confronted her own marital difficulties and disappointments, the so-called "Material Girl" began to write and sing about deeper subjects—much to the dismay of those who accused her of pandering to mediocrity.

In 1989 Madonna released Like a Prayer, an album containing brutally frank music about her childhood, her marriage, and her Catholic upbringing. As usual, the music video of the title track caused the biggest sensation, with its sly mixture of religious and sexual symbolism. Behind the sensationalism, though, was some serious music, as J. D. Considine notes in his Rolling Stone review. The songs on Like a Prayer, Considine writes, are "stunning in their breadth and achievement. .. . as close to art as pop music gets." The critic adds: "Like a Prayer is proof not only that Madonna should be taken seriously as an artist but that hers is one of the most compelling voices of [the times.]"

Madonna's 1990 album, I'm Breathless, marks a return to the funky dance-and-flirt style that made the performer famous. Having put her marriage behind her without answering the sensational press reports, the singer seems ready to have fun again. Still in her early thirties, Madonna is head of a multimillion-dollar corporation—Madonna, Inc.—that employs hundreds of people. The beautiful star shows little sign of flagging in either her ambition or her vitality; in fact, her 1990 tour was tagged the "Blond Ambition" tour.

All the hype surrounding her career notwithstanding, Madonna does have enormous talents upon which to draw. She is an able songwriter who has contributed original material to every album she has released, she is a fine dancer who can set trends, and she covers a somewhat thin voice with sophisticated but never dominating instrumentation. It is not surprising, then, that she complained to Rolling Stone: "There are still those people who, no matter what I do, will always think of me as a little disco tart." The singer is not about to tamper with her image, however—she is content to fulfill audiences' need for a sultry, campy vamp, at least until she ages some more and moves permanently into film work. Rolling Stone contributor Mikal Gilmore concludes that Madonna need offer no apologies for her hard-won fame. "Madonna will still have her detractors," the critic writes, "but somehow little girls across the world seem to recognize a genuine hero when they see one."

—Anne Janette Johnson