Born on August 16th, 1958, Madonna Louise Ciccone created a perfect storm for fame by combining her considerable talent, her unwavering passion for success and the phenomenon of MTV to create one of the world’s most indomitable pop culture success stories. In other words:
Bitch, she’s Madonna.
Moving from Bay City, Michigan to New York City to pursue a career in Modern Dance, she quickly found herself signing with Sire Records and unleashed her self-titled album in 1982 … the same year MTV premiered.
Madonna wrote most of the songs on the album, including “Lucky Star,” “Burning Up” and “Everybody” and worked with producers “Jellybean” Benitez and Reggie Lucas on most of the album.
Her sound, her sass and her style made her an MTV fixture, but her performance of “Like a Virgin” on the first MTV Video Music Awards cemented her status as a pop culture icon.
1985 saw Madonna hit the big screen, both as a singer in “Vision Quest” and, of course as the titular character in “Desperately Seeing Susan.”
As with any star, and especially one as brazen and unapologetic as Madonna, she will have her detractors, and certainly every artist with decades of work will meet with varying success, but no one can deny the incredible achievements of The Queen of Pop.
According to Wikipedia, Madonna has sold more than 300 million records worldwide and is recognized as the best-selling female recording artist of all time by Guinness World Records. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), she is the best-selling female rock artist of the 20th century and the second best-selling female artist in the United States, with 64.5 million certified albums. Billboard ranked her at number two, behind only The Beatles, on the Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists, making her the most successful solo artist in the history of American singles chart. The magazine also declared her as the top-touring female artist of all time. She became one of the five founding members of the UK Music Hall of Fame and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in her first year of eligibility.
Desperately Seeking Madonna, indeed.
