EntranceWhat is Madonna doing now? Madonna (Ciccone Louise Veronica): height, weight and biography. Childhood years of the future star
Often the price of success is so high that on the way to it you have to sacrifice almost everything and lose the most valuable thing. Madonna's biography is an example of how not to deviate from the intended goals and leave opponents behind.
Madonna was born on August 16, 1958 in a family where, in addition to her, there were 4 older brothers. Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone - the real name of the singer - completely repeats the name of her mother. The girl was brought up in a religious family, but she was never an ideal daughter - on the contrary, she was considered strange and uncontrollable.
The future singer lost her mother very early, who, at the age of 30, a couple of months after the birth of another child, died of breast cancer. This was a big blow for the girl, and for a long time, as an adult, the singer fell into hypochondria, as she was sure that she had the same disease.
Despite the fact that the girl studied very well, she could not build friendly relations with her classmates: they envied her academic performance and considered her an “alien”. After all, the future world star could not hide its outrageous character.
To prove her eccentricity, 14-year-old Madonna Ciccone shocked everyone at the school talent competition: she sang the song, going on stage in a revealing top and short shorts, her face was painted with bright makeup. This event seriously affected the reputation of the future star and her Catholic family. The schoolgirl was put under house arrest, and insulting inscriptions addressed to Madonna often began to appear on the door.
Musical career
The young girl arrived in the city of contrasts with a small budget (only $40), with a small suitcase, extraordinary creative potential and a great desire to become a dance queen. She lived in a criminal area, often worked only for food, and even posed for photographers as a nude model (later these photos would “pop up” and end up on the pages of Playboy magazine).
Soon she meets Seymour Stein, the founder of the label "Sire Records", who saw great opportunities in Madonna and signed a long-term contract with her. The first album was a success and 30 years later was even recognized as America's best debut album. The track "Holiday" climbed to the top of all US music charts and entered the top 20 best singles in America.
The second album, which was recorded in 1984, was awarded a diamond certificate. The singer becomes the queen of the world stage. Almost all of her tracks take first place in the charts.
In total, Madonna released 13 studio albums, 8 of them topped the US charts, namely:
- 1984 - "Like a Virgin" (1st place).
- 1986 - "True Blue" (1st place).
- 1989 - "Like a Player" (1st place).
- 2000 - "Music" (1st place).
- 2003 - "American Life" (1st place).
- 2005 - "Confessions on Dance Floor" (1st place).
- 2008 - "Hard Candy" (1st place).
- 2012 - "MDNA" (1st place).
The acting career of the star was less successful than the musical one. In total, there are more than 20 films with the participation of Madonna, but most of them were not even released. Here are some facts:
- In the early 90s, a documentary was released telling about the life of the singer.
- After 4 years, she played the main role in the filmed musical "Evita".
- In 2000, the actress got a role in the film "Best Friend".
- In 2004, the second documentary about the singer appeared on the screens.
- In 2015, she tried her hand as a director.
Madonna's personal life
Madonna in her youth was not deprived of male attention, while she was not at all shy about demonstrating her intimate life in public. The singer had many novels, about which there were various rumors.
After that, the singer had affairs with many famous and respectable men from the show business sphere: among them, for example, Lenny Kravitz, Anthony Kids. All this continued until she fell in love with her fitness trainer Carlos Leon, whom she offered to become a father. Madonna asked her lover to get tested and lead healthy lifestyle life for the birth of a healthy child. Soon they had a daughter, Lourdes Maria Ciccone-Leon (at that time the singer was 38 years old).
The next relationship - with director Guy Ritchie - began unusually romantic. At first, Madonna mistook her future husband for an ordinary provincial boy. But soon all the cards were revealed, and the singer could not resist the advances of the young director. Their wedding took place in December 2000.
Madonna and Guy Ritchie lived together for 8 years. The fruit of their love was a son named Rocco, and an adopted boy from an African family also appeared in the family. Madonna soon adopted another girl, Mercy Jaime, and in 2017, two African twins: Stella and Esther. This became known after the singer shared photos with children on social networks, in which she hugged her daughters.
In 2013, the star began an affair with basketball player Denis Rodman. Madonna wanted to give him a son, but this did not happen, and their union soon collapsed.
Today, every inhabitant of the world knows the name of Madonna, her image is an icon of pop music, the personification of sexuality, outrageousness and creative originality.
How old is Madonna and how does she manage to look so young? This question is asked by everyone, seeing the chiseled figure of the star and her energetic dances during performances. Any girl can envy her external beauty - with a small height of 164 cm, the singer's parameters are ideal: 90-60-90. The personal account of the queen of pop music on the Instagram network has a lot of photos that allow fans to see their favorite in different images and scenery. Author: Anastasia Kaikova
Moved with her four youngest children to Portugal. This is the Quinta do Relgio Palace, a cultural heritage and attraction in the resort town of Sintra near Lisbon. Now the family lives in an 18th century palace with 12 bedrooms and luxurious rooms with baroque furniture.
Madonna's children
The singer has six children - two relatives and four adopted.
She regularly posts photos of her new life in Portugal on Instagram: she shows her younger daughters, five-year-old Esther and Stella.
Either they are in the kitchen preparing a birthday cake, or they are posing next to their drawings on the doors, or they are listening to their older brother David (he is 12 years old) playing the piano.
David has a penchant for more than just music. He is also a talented footballer.
After David began playing for the youth team of the Portuguese club Benfica, Madonna had to divide his time between Portugal, the USA and the UK.
Palace of the Madonna
In her palace, the singer is surrounded memorabilia and gifts.
For example, she has a pillow autographed by her close friend Michael Jackson. It says something about “the mean dirty press”, and then there are these words: “They are lying. Ban all tabloids. I very love you. You'll always be in my heart".
Baroque furniture and Chinese rugs - tradition and comfort.
The interior of the kitchen is unusual and memorable.
Madonna also has an older daughter, Lourdes (21), who lives in the US, and a son, Rocco (17), who lives in London with his father, Guy Ritchie, and stepmother, Jacqui Ainsley. Next come son David (age 12), daughter Mercy (age 11), and five-year-old twins Stella and Esther. The four younger ones are with their mother in Lisbon.
In this creative family, there is always music and dancing.
Madonna often posts videos of her kids dancing.
singer Madonna (Madonna)
Madonna Louise Ciccone (Madonna Louise Ciccone). She was born on August 16, 1958 in Bay City, Michigan, USA. American singer, songwriter, producer, dancer, writer, actress, film director, screenwriter, entrepreneur, and philanthropist.
Madonna is considered the most commercially successful performer in history according to the Guinness Book of Records. with 300 million confirmed licensed sales. Time included the singer in the list of "25 women of the last century with the most power", assessing her influence on contemporary music.
Madonna is the best-selling rock artist of the 20th century by the Recording Industry Association of America and the second-best-selling female artist in the United States with 64.5 million certified album sales.
Billboard recognized the singer as the most successful artist in the history of recording among solo singers and singers.
Madonna became famous for constantly "reinventing" her music and images. She became one of the first female musicians to have a successful career on a major label without losing her creative or financial control. The singer's videos are an integral part of MTV, adding new themes of texts or images of video clips to the mainstream.
Madonna's songs mostly receive positive reviews music critics, despite the controversy often caused in the media regarding the topics covered in them - racism, gender discrimination, religion, politics, sex and violence. Madonna's debut album of the same name was released in 1983 on the Sire label and became the first in a series of successful albums by the author/singer.
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Madonna has a record 20 MTV Video Music Awards and 7 Grammy Awards., including in prestigious nominations for the albums Ray of Light (1998) and Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005), as well as 2 Golden Globes.
The singer has many chart records and hits that reached number one on the major music charts, among which the most successful songs were "Like a Virgin" (1984), "La Isla Bonita" (1986), "Like a Prayer" (1989), "Vogue "(1990), "Frozen" (1998), "Music" (2000), "Hung Up" (2005) and "4 Minutes" (2008).
According to Forbes in 2016, Madonna is the richest female musician in the world with a fortune of $560 million.
The singer's 2008-09 concert tour, the Sticky & Sweet Tour, is the highest-grossing solo artist of all time. Madonna's recognition in music and cinema is known - since the late 80s, the media have called her the "Queen of Pop", and in 2000, the Golden Raspberry anti-prize called her the worst actress of the 20th century.
Madonna's films as director and screenwriter Filth and Wisdom and WE. We Believe in Love" were critically acclaimed and received limited theatrical release.
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Madonna was born on August 16, 1958 in a town on the shores of Lake Huron, Michigan, USA. The singer's mother and namesake, Madonna Louise Ciccone, was French-Canadian and worked as an X-ray technician. Father, Silvio Ciccone, Italian-American, worked as a design engineer for the defense design bureau of Chrysler / General Motors.
Madonna is the third child in the family, there were six children in total. The first girl in the family was named after her mother Madonna Louise, this name has never been officially changed. The name "Veronica" was chosen by Madonna Louise Ciccone at the age of 12 for the traditional Catholic sacrament of chrismation and is not official.
Madonna's mother came from the descendants of the Jansenists from among the first French settlers and her piety bordered on fanaticism. Mother played the piano and sang beautifully, but never aspired to perform in public.
During her sixth pregnancy, Madonna Ciccone (senior) was diagnosed with breast cancer. Mother adhered to the ideas of the pre-Vatican period, which still recognized sex as an immoral act, and abortion as murder under any conditions. She refused treatment until the end of her pregnancy, and a few months after the birth of her sixth child, she died at the age of 30.
Madonna's (younger) rejection of the fact that God could allow the death of her mother became an important aspect of the life and work of the singer. Two years later, the widowed father of the family remarried the maid Joan Gustafson - a simple woman and the complete opposite of the first. The couple's first joint child died, but soon they had two more children. The stepmother took care mainly of her own children, but the father forced all the children to call the woman "mother", which Madonna never did, considering her father a traitor to the memory of her mother.
The family was quite wealthy, but Gustafson brought into the family the Protestant spirit of total savings on clothing and food - the family ate exclusively semi-finished products and the children almost did not wear purchased clothes. Joan's upbringing methods were like a sergeant major, which further inflamed the atmosphere in the family. Madonna evoked in her stepmother a sense of female competition due to the strong external resemblance of the singer to her late mother. Madonna was subjected to severe bullying by two older drug addict brothers who fought with her for the attention of her father, which, according to biographers, early laid in her a hostile attitude towards drugs.
The Ciccone family lived in suburban Detroit, where Madonna attended St. Frederick and St. Andrew Catholic Schools, and West was a cheerleader for the basketball team. The singer graduated from high school at the Rochester Adams secular school, where she participated in theatrical performances and school musicals.
Ciccone studied "excellently", and the teachers took on the role of a mother in her upbringing. The singer called the teacher of philosophy and Russian history Marilyn Fallows one of the two most important people of her childhood. Despite her grades, Ciccone was considered by her peers to be a "hello" girl, she was disliked for her brilliant academic performance and the position of the teachers' pet, and the guys were afraid to invite her on a date.
At the age of 14, Madonna was influenced as a pop lyricist by her friendship with the future recognized poet Win Cooper, who studied with her at the same school a class older. According to Cooper, the girl was shy and a little distant, shunned society, dressed modestly, and was particularly fond of Aldous Huxley's books and Lady Chatterley's Lover.
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The key event of Madonna's childhood is considered to be the performance at the evening of West's school talents at the age of 14. On it, an artist covered in green and pink paint in a top and shorts shocked the audience by dancing to the famous song "Baba O" Riley" by The Who. The reputation of an exemplary excellent student was hopelessly damaged, the performance was discussed for a long time in the city, and her father put her daughter under house arrest . "Heroine of the day", brothers and sisters began to tease: "Madonna is a whore" although it had nothing to do with sex.
From the age of four, Madonna Ciccone imitated the dances of Shirley Temple, but took up ballet at almost 15, which was acceptable for modern jazz choreography. Choreographer Christopher Flynn was her biggest influence. Flynn gave her time and took her to classical concerts, exhibitions and, to broaden her horizons, to gay clubs. Flynn was gay 30 years older, so the student's love remained unrequited, but, according to the singer's recollections, this was the only person who understood her. The appearance of an excellent student has changed towards a sloppy bohemian look that scares others.
Biographers Andersen, Taraborelli and Lucy O'Brien point out that although At 14, Madonna had a reputation for being a slut, but only at the age of 15 did she get her first sexual experience with 17-year-old Russell Long, which the whole school and father learned about at the suggestion of Ciccone. According to Lucy O'Brien, the struggle against the stereotypical attitude towards women according to the criterion of "virgin / whore" and the desire to tell others about her love experiences have become the main themes of the singer's work.
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Madonna Ciccone graduated from high school in 1976 a few months before her final exams. She continued her dance education on a budget basis at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where Flynn received a professorship. The choice of a "frivolous" profession paved a crack in the singer's relationship with her father, who wanted to see her daughter as a doctor or lawyer. The father believed that the daughter could find a better use for her excellent certificate, successfully passed IQ test(according to biographers Christopher Andersen (1991) and Randy Taraborelli (2000) the result of the singer at the age of 17 showed 140 points) and brilliant recommendations from teachers. The right to receive a free higher education in the United States is given to a few, and Madonna moved to a university dormitory full of hope for her brilliant future. According to her teachers and colleagues, she had endurance, rare even for a dancer, which was further developed by her ballet skills, and subsequently allowed her to suffocate less during the performance of songs with simultaneous dance.
According to choreographer Gaia Delang, the young Ciccone was "very slim and light, her dance was contagious." However, in technical terms, the budgetary Madonna was inferior to many ballerinas, causing their rejection and envy, and the impossibility of being absolutely the best caused protest and a desire to additionally stand out, as far as possible in the ballet class, with torn tights or unwashed short hair. In her free time, Madonna visited clubs in Detroit, in one of which she met black drummer Stephen Bray, her future co-author and co-producer.
After a year and a half at the University of Michigan, Madonna got to a master class with the famous New York choreographer Pearl Lang, and the dream was set on fire to get into her group. She dropped out of university and moved to New York in 1978, dreaming of one day opening her own dance studio.
After passing a tough casting, she entered the Lang group, but far from the first line-up, which did not allow her to pay rent. The dancer worked part-time at Dunkin' Donuts, where she burned down a donut oven by dancing behind the counter, and Burger King, where she also did not last, pouring jam on a rude visitor. She soon made her New York stage debut in Lang's "I Never Seen Another Butterfly Again" as a Jewish ghetto boy.
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Soon, Madonna Ciccone began to weaken in class due to malnutrition, and Lang arranged for the dancer to work in the evenings for food. cloakroom attendant at the Russian Samovar restaurant. Then she worked as a model in an art studio and as a nude model for photographers. Madonna rented a room in a cheap, dangerous area of New York, where she was once oral raped by a maniac armed with a knife. After a mental trauma, Madonna Ciccone became absent-minded in her classes and stopped believing in her dancing future, even with the Lang troupe, a student of the cult Martha Graham.
Due to a lack of funds to pay rent, Ciccone began auditioning for Broadway musicals and backing dancers. In 1979, at the casting for the world tour of French disco singer Patrick Hernandez, Madonna Ciccone's performance was liked by the Belgian singer producers Van Lie and Perrelain. Professionals cannot but pay attention to her plasticity and praise her pleasant voice, which sang the Christmas carol "Jingle Bells". To the complete surprise of Madonna, who had not previously considered herself a singer, she was invited to Paris, where they promised to make her "something like a dancing Edith Piaf."
The artist finally leaves the Lang troupe, her lover Dan Gilroy and spends six months with the Hernandez tour in France, Belgium and Tunisia. The producers convince her of the prospects of a career as a singer, but 20-year-old Madonna is passionate about punk rock, rebels against the Belgians and did not want to sing the proposed disco-pop material. Six months later, the singer falls ill with pneumonia and, after recovering, flies to New York, succumbing to the letters and persuasion of her boyfriend Gilroy, who was waiting for her in New York. Gilroy has a huge impact on the transformation of Madonna Ciccone from a dancer into a musician: he teaches how to play drums and electric guitar and the basics of composition. After daily drumming sessions to Elvis Costello's disc, Madonna becomes a pretty cool drummer and is accepted into Gilroy's Breakfast Club band. A few months later, the drummer begins to "pull the blanket over herself", offering her own material and leaves the team along with the joined guitarist.
In 1979, he starred in the amateur film "A Specific Victim" as a repentant sadomasochist who is raped in the toilet by a maniac. The unsuccessful amateur film was far from pornographic, but with the filing of the "sensational" press laid skepticism about Madonna Ciccone as a former porn star. According to biographers, this influenced her belated recognition as a musician. In 1980, together with Michael Monahan and Gary Burke, the singer gathered the quickly disbanded Madonna And The Sky group, and then created the rock group Emmy. Emmy - from Em, diminutive of the first letter Madonna(Madonna Ciccone signed and continues to sign her songs as M. Ciccone). The Emmys imitated the early Pretenders and Madonna played guitar and sang her own songs in the band. The singer's ex-boyfriend Steven Bray sits on the drums and with him the Emmy group continues to search for their own direction.
In the spring of 1981, Madonna Ciccone met the owner of the Gotham recording studio, Camilla Barbon. Soon, Barbon offers to become the singer's personal manager on the condition that she leaves the group, and Ciccone immediately agrees. Barbon decides that Madonna will perform without a guitar so that she can dance freely on stage.
Barbon proudly recalls that she was able to spot a potential star because she was one of the few female managers in the "male realm of show business." Before meeting the manager, the singer is in a desperate situation - speaking on stage in men's pajamas, asking for food from the guys she meets, she only rides a bicycle and lives illegally in a cheap studio.
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At first, Madonna awakens only maternal feelings to the thirty-year-old lesbian Barbon: Camilla rents a house for her ward, assigns a salary of $ 100 a week and gives money as needed. Ciccone's band makes several demos and plays in small clubs and student parties.
Barbon unsuccessfully seeks a label contract for the singer, but major bosses don't want to risk it. Barbon sees the new Chrissie Hynde in the singer, but soon begins to abuse alcohol, be jealous of Madonna for everyone and make scenes.
African-American Bray, the drummer of Madonna's group, has been gravitating towards dance music and hip-hop since the days of Detroit and asks the singer to record something together. After the main rehearsal, they remain alone and compose four songs: "Everybody", "Ain't No Big Deal", "Stay" and "Burning Up". By that time, Barbon had been offering the singer to labels as a new rock star for a year and a half, and the ward decides to secretly distribute a dance cassette with a demo in the Dunsteria club in Manhattan, where representatives of labels and the press sometimes drop by.
The club's DJ, Marku Kaminsu, is impressed with Madonna's demo. He takes the cassette and arranges for them to meet with Island label chief Chris Blackwell. The meeting ends in failure - Madonna lives with Kamins in a room without hot water with milk crates instead of furniture and begins to perspire profusely from excitement. Cummins is so annoyed by the failure and immediately, through his acquaintance Michael Rosenblatt, arranges for Ciccone to meet the founder of Sire Records, Seymour Stein, who immediately signs it, even while he is in the hospital with a heart attack. Ciccone becomes simply Madonna (Ciccone is often pronounced in English as Siccone), and Barbon cannot forgive the betrayal of his “baby” and for more than 20 years has not given permission to release the singer’s early songs.
Already in the 2000s, Barbon confesses to his then alcoholism and forgives Madonna the offense. Barbon highly appreciates her importance in the life of the singer, believing that thanks to her, Madonna "did not have to sleep with someone to get on stage", and "although at first there were rumors that someone was investing in her, she was eventually started take it seriously".
All rights to Madonna's songs prior to this demo belong to Gotham Studios and Barbon, and the question arises of what to release as a trial single. All the songs on the cassette are co-written, but the friends trade the rights - Bray's 100% credit on "Ain't No Big Deal" in exchange for Madonna's full rights to "Everybody". Madonna likes "Everybody", but Stein wants to release Bray's "Ain't No Big Deal" and the flip side is supposed to be "Everybody".
While the release is being prepared, Bray manages to sell "Ain't No Big Deal" to another studio that is recording a new vocalist. There is no time for a new record and "Everybody", as Madonna wanted, is released as a single. With a zero budget for promotion, the singers decide not to put the photo on the cover so as not to scare off the colored audience of the "Negro disco-soul singer." "Everybody" climbs to number 3 on the Hot Dance Club Songs chart and then to number 107 overall, just short of the top 100 on Billboard's Hot 100. Management sees this as a great result given the zero PR cost and wants to make sure "Everybody" isn't random.
At Madonna's request, Kamins is replaced by a more experienced Warner Bros. staff arranger. Records Reggie Lucas. The second single "Burning Up" also reached number 3 on the dance hits chart, repeating the success of "Everybody", and after that Madonna was allowed to rent a studio to record her first album.
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In July 1983, the debut album called Madonna was released. At first it goes unnoticed, but within a year it reaches #8 on the Billboard 200 and #6 on the UK chart. The singles "Borderline" (written by the Lucas), "Lucky Star" (by Madonna and dedicated to the retired Kamins) and "Holiday" become hits. Madonna considers the disc rather mediocre and is not too happy with working with Lucas, but years later the disc becomes a post-disco classic.
According to O'Brien, her music on the album sounds like a cross between Pat Benatar and Tina Marie. Madonna is the author of most of the album's songs, but the main commercial success comes from third-party "Holiday", found by the singer's boyfriend, DJ John "Marmalade" Benitez. This influenced the skepticism about Madonna as an author capable of writing a hit. The singer has also been criticized for her "girlish" vocals and manner of performance. Billboard writer Paul Grain made the prediction: "Cindy Lauper is a long time, and Madonna in six months will be of no use to anyone".
The singer responded to criticism: “People think that if you are sexy, visually attractive and excite the audience with this, then you simply have nothing more to offer. This is just my image. It probably looks like this on the outside, and I fit the stereotype, but I do all this quite consciously. I keep everything under control and wait for this to be understood and confused. ”.
After recording the album, on the recommendation of Stein, Freddie Demann, who previously worked for, becomes her manager. Despite initial criticism, in 2013 Rolling Stone named this album one of the top 100 debut albums of all time. On the this moment Madonna's album sales are 10 million copies, but this was largely due to the popularity of her next disc.
The second album, Like a Virgin, was released in 1984 and for the first time in her career, the singer topped the US album chart. The single of the same name remains at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for 6 weeks, and the album sells 26 million copies worldwide. The hits are "Material Girl", "Dress You Up", "Angel" and "Over and Over". Radio hit name "Material Girl"(Russian material girl, mercantile girl) is fixed as the nickname of the singer.
In 1984, Madonna performs the "title track" at the first MTV Video Music Awards and, breaking her heel, gets out of the situation as follows - she starts kneeling and wallowing on stage in a wedding dress and belt with the inscription BOY TOY, which shocks the TV audience. The song talks about "metaphysical virginity", and the clip, filmed in Venice (the city of Venus), combines sacred and profane images: Leo - the symbol of the patron saint of the city, the Evangelist Mark and the zodiac sign of Madonna Ciccone, the Bride of Christ and a modern experienced girl in crosses and fenki. "Like a Virgin" is one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 200 Iconic Songs of All Time..
In 1985, the singer starred in an episode of the film "Visual Search". The soundtrack of the picture contains Crazy For You, Madonna's second No. 1 single in the US. Later, Madonna appears in the film "Desperate Search for Susan" and this role was positively evaluated by critics. The song featured in the film is "Into The Groove", the singer's first UK No. 1 single, and was written by Madonna Ciccone (with Bray), giving her good English press. The first tour of the singer The Virgin Tour takes place in the United States in 1985 and the Beastie Boys act as the opening act. The performances reflect the surge in the singer's popularity at this time: concerts start from halls for 2,000 people, and after 3 months, 22,000 spectators gather in Madison Square Garden. Tour calls "Madonmania": girls massively dress up "under Susan / Madonna" from the film and clips.
In July 1985, Penthouse and Playboy magazines published nude black-and-white photographs of the singer, taken in 1979 and subsequently sold by photographer Martin Schreiber. This causes the first scandal in Madonna Ciccone's just-beginning big career, threatening her career, which she handles with her own hands. In the midst of criticism at the Live Aid charity concert, while wearing several layers of old-fashioned clothes, the singer is seen screaming "Take off your clothes!" crowd. She says that she will not take off her jacket even in the wild heat, as in a few years it can be used against her.
The New York Times editorial headlined "Naked Photos. Madonna: 'So what?'" becomes the basis for a painting by a friend of the singer, Keith Haring. As soon as the scandal with photographs subsides, in early August, the Los Angeles Times disseminates information that the film "A Specific Victim" (1979) with the participation of the artist is pornographic, which is immediately picked up by other publications. In October, the newspaper will write a rebuttal that, to the "disappointment of the fans," this is not the case. In the summer of 1985, on her own birthday, Madonna marries actor Sean Penn. The wedding is accompanied by an invasion of journalists in helicopters during the pronunciation of marriage vows. In his diary, he called this day "the most exciting in my life", noting the guests - "a delightful mixture of celebrities and nonentities."
Third True Blue album with a dedication to Sean Penn comes out in 1986. Rolling Stone magazine will describe it as "sounding from the heart". The record becomes the production debut of Madonna (together with Patrick Leonard) and is the most "gingerbread" and commercially successful release of the singer. The singer also changes her image and for the first time appears in the Hollywood image of a seductive blue-eyed blonde. The album includes the ballad "Live to Tell", a landmark for the singer, written for the film "At Point". "Live to Tell" becomes Madonna's first No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 as a songwriter.
Three songs from the album got to the first line of Billboard: "Live to Tell", "Papa Don't Preach", "Open Your Heart", and "True Blue" and "La Isla Bonita" entered the top five. That same year, Madonna/Bray's Nick Kamen's "Each Time You Break My Heart" topped the UK charts, earning Madonna the much coveted recognition as a successful songwriter.
Madonna - La Isla Bonita
In 1987, Madonna is taken to the hospital for an x-ray after being hit on the head with a baseball bat. The press is awaiting trial, but the singer is not suing for domestic violence, as her husband Sean Penn is already facing a two-month sentence for fighting and driving while intoxicated.
Due to the aggressive behavior of "Mr. Madonna" towards journalists and his wife, the press begins to call them "evil Penns" and S&M (Sean & Madonna) - a hint at the sadomasochistic relationship in the celebrity family. In the same year, the singer starred in the film "Who is this girl?", Which fails miserably. However, the success of the soundtrack for the film is great - the title track of the same name becomes a # 1 hit in the US and the UK. The New York Times Magazine named it the worst film of the year. In the same year, he goes on the Who's That Girl World Tour, which fully compensates for the negative effect of the failed film. Criticism praised the performances for being theatrical and "turning a rock concert into a multimedia spectacle".
Reviewers write that the concerts are like a circus, where the heroine skillfully demonstrates the skills of an entertainer, an acrobat and a clown. The stage projection of Tamara Lempicka's painting The Musician (1928) shows a brightly painted woman with long nails holding a lyre against the backdrop of New York skyscrapers, and became a characteristic of Madonna's entire work for many years. According to the authoritative music critic Lucy O'Brien, Madonna is an urbanized mixture of high art with glamor and vulgarity, where she is both a muse, a creator, and a sexy woman. By August 1987, Penn was released early from prison, and in December Madonna for the first time files for divorce, but unexpectedly takes them two weeks later.
In 1988, the singer made her debut on Broadway in the production of "Move", with an obvious desire to improve the actor's reputation. The performance receives rave reviews, but Madonna herself receives negative comments from almost all critics and is disappointed in the benefits of her husband's recommendations for her acting career. During rehearsals, Madonna becomes friends with actress and openly lesbian Sandra Bernhard, causing public rumors.
The singer and Bernhard appear in identical clothes on the David Letterman show, which leads to publications about the singer's bisexuality. The final separation from her husband takes place in December 1988 after the severe beatings described in the official protocol of the detention of Sean Penn. The marriage of the singer and Penn officially ends in January 1989 and the singer takes her statement to the police, maintaining friendly relations with her husband due to his hereditary problems with alcohol. In 2003, Penn speaks about Madonna for the first time in an interview with Oprah Winfrey: “She became the biggest star. I just wanted to make a movie and not attract unnecessary attention to myself. I was an embittered young man, so many demons lived in me that I don’t even know who could tolerate me then..
In early 1989, Madonna signed a contract with Pepsi, according to which her new song "Like a Prayer" debuted in the company's commercials. The commercial is harmless and shows the singer's childhood, but the music video for the song contains an anti-racist storyline and many Catholic symbols, including stigmata and burning crosses. The ambiguous relationship between the heroine of the Madonna and the statue of a black saint who came to life shocks viewers and provokes public organizations. The company removes advertising from rotation and terminates the contract, but the singer receives the amount of five million dollars due to her. Vatican officials denounce the video, and some cardinals threaten Madonna with excommunication, but it remains a threat. The song was named the 3rd best in the history of pop music by the British weekly New Musical Express, VH1 ranked the video in 2nd place.
The fourth album, Like a Prayer, was released at the end of 1989. and becomes a turning point in Madonna's career. Like a Prayer is written and produced in collaboration with Patrick Leonard and Stephen Bray. The singer is producing her second album in a row and her desire to prove that True Blue's success was no accident is evident. Rolling Stone magazine described the album as "... as close to art as pop music can be" and included it in its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Leonard calls him "divorced" because of the singer's depression due to the painful breakup with Sean Penn. 'Express Yourself' becomes a feminist 'call to arms' with the "preaching of self-respect", representing the transition from reflection to action. Other songs are predictably themes of domestic violence ("Till Death Do Us Parts"), nostalgia for lost relationships with siblings ("Keep It Together"), dreams of a child ("Dear Jessie"). All the songs on the Like a Prayer album are written by Madonna, which makes the album the most personal, as previous discs featured one or two third-party songs.
Madonna
In 1990, the film with Madonna "Dick Tracy" and the soundtrack to it called I'm Breathless was released. The film was directed by Warren Beatty, who received a refusal from the singer to propose marriage after a year of relationship. I'm Breathless contains songs by renowned composer Stephen Sondheim and songwriting duo Madonna-Leonard. The singer enters the territory of jazz and the Broadway musical for the first time, which critics regard ambiguously. The most successful of I'm Breathless is "Vogue", which topped the major charts. Recitative “ladies with an attitude; fellows that were in the mood...” is written by Madonna on an airplane as an illustration of the 30s, but becomes a characteristic of the present. In Russia, he is known as the epigraph of the first chapter of the book "Duhless". The title of the book is a partial translation of Madonna's character's name from the film, "Breathless".
The Blond Ambition World Tour took place in 1990 in support of Like A Prayer and I'm breathless. Rolling Stone praises the tour for its innovative interweaving of theatre, ballet, film and concert at a stage level never seen before. The show's central idea of juxtaposing masturbation and religious frenzy translates into a call for a boycott of the singer's performance in Rome.
Madonna tries to justify herself on the spot, delivering an excellent speech at the Leonardo Da Vinci airport: "My show is a theatrical play that invites the audience on an emotional journey ... I do not impose my idea of \u200b\u200bhow to live on anyone, I simply describe my understanding of life to the audience, and let them evaluate everything for themselves." The singer avoids excommunication, but the concert is canceled due to low level ticket sales. For the concert video of the tour, the singer receives her first Grammy, but she herself does not consider the award to be recognition of her work, since the nomination for the video is secondary.
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In the same year, the singer once again shocked the public with a video for the song "Justify My Love". The video is banned from being shown on television due to the presence of erotic scenes. "Justify My Love" is the subject of several scandals, the first of which is related to plagiarism. Madonna uses the lyrics of a letter she saw from Ingrid Chavez, then girlfriend of the song's co-producer Lenny Kravitz, not wanting listeners to attribute it to another woman's fantasies. The Chicago Sun-Times stigmatizes the singer with words about the "unprecedented meanness" of stealing a song.
Madonna justifies herself and rewrites the song, replacing the lyrics with quotes from Revelation, but immediately receives accusations of anti-Semitism, which also have to be rejected. The unrhymed text of "Justify My Love" about the desire to make love and scandals affect the singer's pride and authorial vanity, making a qualitative leap in Madonna's creative search, for the first time bringing her into the territory of "adults".
In 1991, Sondheim's song "Sooner or Later" from "Dick Tracy" won an Academy Award and was performed by Madonna at the ceremony in character. It is from this moment that the singer is called the new Marilyn and begins to be compared with the deceased sex symbol, immediately predicting the same unenviable fate. A documentary film about the last tour is released in the same year and is called Madonna: Truth or Dare. A fragment with a joke/bravado "Madonna with a Bottle" outside the context of a party game (to tell the truth or accept a challenge), reminiscent of forfeits, contributes to the perception of the singer in the context of pornography. Outside the USA and Canada (countries where the game was popular), distributors release the tape under a different name - "In Bed with Madonna", which does not reflect the content, but the singer has no right to change, although she admits that she "hates him because of his stupidity." The film is one of the top 10 highest-grossing documentaries of all time, and The New York Times calls the film "a smart, sassy, flashy self-portrait."
In 1992, Madonna starred in the film A League of Their Own as a baseball player named Mae Mordabito. For the picture, she recorded the song "This Used to Be My Playground", which became No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. In the same year, Madonna founded her own entertainment company - Maverick, a joint venture with Time Warner. The deal provides for the singer record royalties on a par with Michael Jackson.
In 1992, the book-photoalbum "Sex" was published."Sex" contains illustrated sexual fantasies of her alter ego "Ms. Dita" talking to a psychoanalyst. The book is framed in a metal cover as an art object and is supposed to be a manifesto. "Sex" has sold 1.5 million copies in America alone and is causing a flurry of backlash in the media and AIDS-scared society.
The press arranges a multi-page funeral for Madonna's career, believing that she has gone too far. The book "Sex" touches on the themes of masturbation, and draws a clear parallel between sadomasochism and religious self-flagellation, and also contains an ironic attitude towards taboo. Lesbians felt that the singer was mocking their movement by portraying one of them, and called her a "sexy tourist". French journalist Françoise Tournier wrote: “Having reached the essence of“ Sex ”, as if finding poisonous mushroom, you understand that the one who is called "the new baby Piaf" is driven more by the lust for money than the lust for sex ".
"Sex" and the public backlash against it has been the subject of much scientific research and is considered the most powerful inoculation to a voyeuristic society from an exhibitionistic celebrity/musician. The book has been the most wanted of the out-of-print books for several years. After the release of "Sex", Vanilla Ice's boyfriend broke off an 8-month relationship with the singer, allegedly not expecting his photographs to be published in the book.
In 1992, the fifth studio album Erotica was released. Erotica takes the second place in the American charts, and the title single - the third place in the Billboard Hot 100. In the year of release, Erotica was coolly received by critics and listeners because of the "shadow of the book", but subsequently begins to be considered one of the singer's strongest works. The singles "Erotica", "Rain", "Deeper and Deeper", "Bad Girl" and "Fever" (a cover version of an Elvis Presley song) do not have such success in the charts as the singer's previous works.
In 1993, without a release in cinemas, the film A Dangerous Game, directed by Ferrara and starring Madonna, was immediately released on video. The New York Times calls the painting "evil and morbid, where the pain feels real."
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A Dangerous Game contains Sarah/Madonna's account of a real-life rape in 1978. Erotic thriller with a singer "Body as Evidence" (1993) contains scenes of sadomasochism with bondage and fails with critics and distributors. The press cultivates the opinion that the singer is a sex maniac, the embodiment of sin, making a career exclusively through bed.
The 1993 "The Girlie Show" tour of Europe and South America (instead of the US and Canada) contains more burlesque, irony and clowning than erotica, which softens the negative after the release of the book "Sex", the album Erotica and film roles. A concert in Puerto Rico causes pickets: the singer, dressed in a military uniform, in response to the whistle of the audience at the appearance of a huge American flag, conducts Puerto Rican in the crotch area. The episode was interpreted ambiguously due to the singer's multiple romantic entanglements with Puerto Ricans, and was later scrutinized as an example of the mutual influence of Latin American culture and the United States.
The sixth studio album, Bedtime Stories, was released in 1994 and became her first Grammy-nominated disc. The hits are "Secret", "Take a Bow", "Bedtime Story" and "Human Nature". Babyface/Madonna's "Take a Bow" hits No. 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100, but breaks a record streak of 32 consecutive Top 10 hits on the UK Singles Chart.
The singer is changing her style towards R'n'B and hip-hop, and for the first time since Like A Virgin began working with major producers - Dallas Austin, David Foster, Dave Hall (who worked with Mariah Carey) and Marius De Vries and Nellie Hooper ( who worked with Björk). Bedtime Story, written by the already acclaimed Björk, becomes a milestone. Madonna perfectly masters the "Björk architecture of the text" and lays the foundation for her next albums in it. Relations with rapper Tupac Shakur end for a racist reason - his friends "couldn't believe that he was walking with a white girl."
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The singer begins a short relationship with basketball player Denis Rodman. A year after the breakup, he writes a bestseller with an entire chapter about sex with Madonna. According to Lucy O'Brien, while reading this story in the press, it became obvious that Madonna, who wants to have a child, starts relationships with unsuitable men, which harms her career.
In 1995, "You" ll See "from the album of ballads Something to Remember becomes a hit. The album reminds the public a little about Madonna's talent as a songwriter and producer, which the press had previously ignored amid scandals. According to Taraborelli, "for the first time about her career was talked about more honestly and fairly.” In 1996, the singer starred in the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Evita. where he performs the songs of the soundtrack. For the record, Madonna begins taking vocal lessons from Joan Lader for the first time, which brings results. On the Evita soundtrack, she demonstrates her upper register and diaphragm singing for the first time. The film about Argentine president's controversial wife is receiving positive reviews from film critics and author Andrew Lloyd Webber. Weber wins an Oscar for Madonna's performance of "You Must Love Me". Song Don't Cry For Me Argentina becomes a hit on the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart, and the singer receives a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical.
In October 1996, Madonna's daughter Lourdes Maria Ciccone-Leon is born. The girl's father is the singer's then boyfriend, Cuban fitness trainer and aspiring actor Carlos Leon. Seven months after the birth of their daughter, they break up, and Madonna incurs wrath public organizations"for a full family" and accusations of "pregnancy in order to promote the film." The singer baptizes the girl in Catholicism and named after the city of Lourdes in France, which her extremely religious mother dreamed of visiting. During pregnancy, the singer delves into yoga, the study of Buddhism and Kabbalah, which she describes as "a lesson in physics, a bridge between science and spirituality", and not as a religious teaching.
Ray of Light's seventh studio album (1998) reflected the "spiritual rebirth" of the singer and became decisive in all her work. The direction of his development was influenced by motherhood, a philosophical rethinking of reality and an affair with the English screenwriter and actor Andy Bird. The record received critical acclaim, and was called "one of the greatest pop masterpieces of the 90s" by the authoritative music publication Slant Magazine.
The disc was included in the list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" and ranked 28th in the "Top 100 Albums of the 1990s" by Rolling Stone magazine. The release was accompanied by commercial success: the album topped the national charts in Australia, Canada, the UK and most of Europe, and in the US it finished at number two on the Billboard 200, losing first place to the Titanic soundtrack.
Ray of Light has sold over 16 million copies worldwide. Album single Frozen the first time since "Vogue" (1990) in the discography of the singer reached number one in the UK chart. In the US, the song reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100, where Madonna set a record for the largest number singles that reached number two. On the disc, the singer "attentively peered into the past and thought a lot about the mystical side of life." After Ray Of Light, Madonna again saw a progressing musician. Evaluating the work, the singer did her best to extol the "brilliant" producer of the album, William Orbit, but he himself considered his contribution to "her" album rather modest. In a tradition of condescending attitude towards pop writers/performers, critics attributed the success of the record to Orbit. Ray of Light was awarded a Grammy(including in one of the main nominations "Best Pop Album").
Madonna
Hits were "The Power Of Good-Bye", "Nothing Really Matters", "Drowned World/Substitute for Love" and the title track "Ray of Light". The video for "Ray of Light" last received 6 MTV Video Music Awards in 1999. Madonna's performance at the ceremony with the Sanskrit song "Shanti/Ashtangi" and Ray of Light in an Indian dress with a dot on the forehead, symbolizing devotion to God, provoked protests from the country's Hindu organizations and accusations of blasphemy.
The image of the singer was influenced by her passion for the book Memoirs of a Geisha. In the same 1999, she released the single "Beautuful Stranger" (Russian beautiful foreigner), written for the soundtrack to the film "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me". The song was a big hit outside the US and earned Madonna another Grammy for "Best Song Written for feature film". The singer's relationship with Andy Bird, described in this song as a "beautiful foreigner", lasted about a year. In the summer of 1998, accompanied by him, she attended a party of Sting and his wife Trudie Styler, where she met Guy Ritchie, her future husband and father of their second child. Richie was not free, dating model Tanya Strecker, and a romantic relationship with the singer began a year later, and their development included a public fight in a bar between Richie and Bird. This story later became the basis of Robbie Williams' song "She's Madonna" (2006).
In 2000, a film was released starring Madonna "Best Friend", for which she recorded a hit. "American Pie" and the ballad "Time Stood Still". These songs ended the Ray of Light era. In early 2000, she became pregnant by Guy Ritchie, who worked on the film "Snatch". and was forced to move to him in London to record an album. In August 2000, their son Rocco was born.
In September 2000, the eighth studio album Music was released. The disc received positive reviews from critics and became #1 in both the UK and the US, repeating the success of Like a Prayer (1989). Under the influence of the co-author and co-producer of the disc, Mirva completely changed her sound and began to use a vocoder for the first time. Three singles were released from Music: Music, "Don't Tell Me" and "What It Feels Like for a Girl". The music video for "What It Feels Like for a Girl" was banned from MTV and VH1 due to its violence. For the album, the singer chose the grotesque image of a cowgirl, expressing the ironic attitude of a Londoner towards America.
December 22, 2000 married Richie, the former stepson of a baronet, which automatically ranked the singer among the English aristocracy. The wedding in a Scottish castle was held according to the Presbyterian rite. Soon Madonna became a subject of Great Britain. The "made" British accent of a native of Michigan became the subject of irritation of the Americans and the irony of the British. This has taken root in the colloquial language with the expressions "Madonna syndrome" and "Madge complex". Living on his own estate, Ashcombe, in a Wiltshire village, influenced the mood of subsequent works and attitudes towards the United States.
In 2001, for the first time in 8 years, the singer resumed touring, and the sold-out Drowned World Tour took place. The concerts received positive reviews from critics despite the dark dramaturgy. After the September 11 attacks, Madonna excluded from the show the moment of firing a gun at a samurai, who, according to the plot, was trying to cut off her head. For the first time since the early 1980s, the singer began to accompany on the guitar, and was nominated for the Orville Gibson Award.
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At the end of 2001, a single was released for the James Bond film "Die Another Day" under the same name. Die Another Day. For an episodic role in the film, the singer received the Golden Raspberry, in addition to the title of Worst Actress of the Millennium. The song received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song and a Golden Raspberry nomination for Worst Song. Movie "Gone" was critically acclaimed and was released straight to DVD in the UK. At the moment, this is the last picture of Madonna as an actress.
The ninth album, American Life, was released in 2003. and topped the US and UK charts. American Life was written and produced by Madonna in collaboration with Mirva in a minimalist concept. American Life quickly lost ground and became the biggest sales failure of its career at the time. The album garnered mixed reviews from critics due to the debunking theme of " american dream in light of 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan. Later it was rated higher. In addition to "Die Another Day" (2002), the singles were "American Life", "Hollywood", "Love Profusion", "Nothing Fails".
In France, it was a great success because of the pacifist mood, since this country did not participate in the operation against the Taliban. The video for the title track featured a parody of US President George W. Bush kissing Saddam Hussein. After accusations of lack of patriotism, a ban on playing Madonna's new songs on American Republican radio stations followed. A week before the release, she said that "there is no better time for a pacifist video than the time of war." At the last moment, she withdrew the clip, stating "unwillingness to embarrass people whose relatives are fighting in Afghanistan", which did not affect the ban.
In September 2003, Madonna Ciccone made her debut in children's literature with the picture book English Roses, topping The New York Times bestseller list. Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller unexpectedly shared his positive opinion about the book, calling it "more than just a children's fairy tale" in the newspaper Rzeczpospolita. Madonna's performance at the MTV ceremony provoked a scandal. The singer appeared in the suit of the groom, and Christina Aguilera played the role of brides. The French kiss with Spears caused a scandal in the press due to a hint of lesbianism. The singer was justified by the logic of the kiss in the performed stage images.
Madonna and Britney Spears - Kiss
In 2004, the Re-Invention World Tour took place in support of American Life. Unlike the Drowned World Tour, it contained enough of the old hits in a new sound, in addition to the songs from the new album. The performances received a mixed response from critics due to the general politicization and overt support for Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. A second documentary, I'm going to tell you a secret, was filmed during the tour. The film was made in the style of "In bed with Madonna", but showed the singer's passion for "The Zohar" and a touching relationship with her children and husband Guy Ritchie. A DVD of the film and a live album of the same name was released a year later. According to Lucy O'Brien, the film began to merge the singer with the image of the righteous.
In 2005, Madonna Ciccone had an accident on an estate in Wiltshire. The new horse unsuccessfully threw the singer to the ground during the first ride. Before the accident in the village, Madonna had completely grown into the role of an English aristocrat (by her husband), a reclusive wife and mother of a family. In addition to the British accent and riding, she began to drink ale in local pubs, learned to fish. The singer began to hunt pheasants, although before that she was a vegetarian, for which she was blacklisted by PETA.
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After the horse "played polo" with the singer, she lost consciousness and woke up with multiple fractures. After that, the singer changed internally and outwardly lost a lot of weight. The record was called Confessions on a Dance Floor and returned Madonna to leading positions in almost all charts, as well as the title of queen of the dance floor. This happened not least thanks to the mega-hit "Hung Up", written on the basis of the Abba sample. Madonna Ciccone wrote and produced the record with her longtime engineer and keyboardist, Stuart Price. Due to the lack of rotation of Madonna's new songs in the United States since the American Life scandal, the singer's homeland became one of the few countries where the single "Hung Up" did not become No. 1, but only took 7th place.
During the subsequent tour, another scandal took place, according to Lucy O'Brien, caused by the experience of the proximity of death in connection with a fall from a horse. It was the performance of the classic ballad “Live To Tell” a la Jesus Christ with a crown of thorns on a mirrored cross, accompanied by footage of suffering children in Africa and quotes from Matthew 25:40.At the end of the issue were shown addresses of websites to collect donations for sick African children.This speech raised questions and anger from social activists, who quickly died out due to the distribution of videos through the Internet, the singer's statements and the meaning of the song itself.
All tickets for the concerts of the tour were sold out, except for the first concert of the singer in Moscow, where the Russian Orthodox Church called on believers to boycott the performance, calling it "blasphemous". At the end of the tour, the singer and husband adopted a one-year-old child from Malawi, David Bandu. This caused another scandal and a wave of protests against the "purchase" of the child, since the then laws of Malawi, despite the 1 million orphans in the country, did not allow adoption by foreign citizens. In the same year, Madonna Ciccone produced and narrated a documentary film about the catastrophic state of affairs in African country Malawi titled "I Am Because We Are", which was shown at the Tribeca Festival in 2008.
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In 2007, Madonna Ciccone began to master a new profession for herself as a film director, writing the script for a partly autobiographical film parable. "Filth and Wisdom". In the film, the hero is trying to promote his rock band, while earning his living by beating up masochists for money and dressing up as. "Dirt and Wisdom" with Evgeny Gudzem in the title role got to the Berlin Film Festival in the "Panorama" program, where it was coolly received by critics. Film critics positively noted the music of the gypsy folk-punk rock band Gogol Bordello and the presence of the main character, which brought Russian obscenity to the British non-commercial film.
Eleventh album Hard Candy was released in early 2008 and topped the charts in 37 countries, including the US and the UK. To work on Hard Candy, Madonna Ciccone turned to the main hit-makers of the second half of the 2000s: Timbaland, Justin Timberlake and Pharrell Williams. The reason for the change in style, the singer explained the interest in these artists and the desire to learn from the new generation. The singer admitted that she wanted to regain the love of American radio listeners, whom she lost with the 2003 anti-war album. The record received mixed reviews from critics for the lack of originality inherent in previous works, and some crisis of the singer herself, reflected in the provocative cover of the album, which contrasts sharply with the style of "Ray of Light".
The album's first single was a duet with Timberlake 4 Minutes. The song 4 Minutes only partly lived up to expectations, becoming a radio hit and Madonna's most successful single in the States since Don "t Tell Me" (2001), but never became No. 1 in the US due to low radio rotation, despite record The song became her record-breaking 13th No. 1 single in the UK and hit in Europe with "Give It 2 Me" featuring Pharrell Williams.
The tour in support of the album was called the Sticky and Sweet Tour and contained no provocative material. The Sticky and Sweet Tour broke the record for solo artist tour success previously set by Madonna herself with the previous Confessions Tour. The gay singer's brother Christopher Ciccone's book Life with My Sister Madonna, published against her will in early 2008, showed Guy Ritchie as a clear homophobe and slippery type manipulating his sister. During the tour in October 2008, the singer announced her divorce from her husband. On June 12, 2009, the singer adopted a Malawian girl Mercy James, the desire to adopt whom is considered the main reason for Madonna's divorce from her husband, who had three children. For the first time in her career, the singer decided to extend the tour until the summer of 2009.
In 2009, the release of the third collection of Madonna's best songs took place. celebration, which ended the singer's relationship with the Warner Bros. label. The music video for the song "Celebration" features the singer's boyfriend, model Jesús Luz. In 2010, Madonna exclusively granted the rights to the entire catalog of her songs to the television series Glee. In April 2010, the episode "The Power of Madonna" was released. The episode received approval from the singer, and the soundtrack topped the Billboard 200 album chart.
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In 2010, Madonna Ciccone opened a chain of her own fitness clubs named after her Hard Candy album. In 2010, Madonna Ciccone and her daughter Lourdes Leon launched Material Girl, a youth clothing brand. At the presentation of the collection, Madonna Ciccone met Pokemon Crew breakdancer Brahim Zeba, who performed at the event, who became the singer's boyfriend for 3 years and also starred in her video.
In December 2011, the film “WE. We believe in love", where Madonna Ciccone directed and wrote the script. The film was critically acclaimed, but Andrea Riseborough's performance as Wallis Simpson and the film's soundtrack drew enthusiastic comments. The continuation of the "Russian" theme in the second picture of Madonna was noted: the main character's name is Eugene and he is depicted as an intelligent positive character.
In early 2012, Madonna's song "Masterpiece" from the movie "We. We Believe in Love" was recognized as the best at the Golden Globe Awards.
Madonna
On February 5, 2012, Madonna performed during the break of the 46th Super Bowl, which was broadcast on NBC. She sang a medley of "Vogue", "Music", "Open Your Heart", "Express Yourself", "Like a Prayer" and the new song "Give Me All Your Luvin'" with Nicki Minaj, M.I.A. and the LMFAO group. Madonna's game and performance became the most watched TV show in US history. Patriotic critics noted that the singer inappropriately mocked the "sanctity" of the Super Bowl for Americans, using the images of the goddess Isis / Cleopatra performed by Elizabeth Taylor. In the US, the new single set the record for top ten hits for a solo artist, breaking the record. The single failed in the UK.
The singer's twelfth album, MDNA, was released on March 26, 2012 and topped the US and UK charts. Critics considered the record a dark album of a painful divorce, and The Telegraph called it "the latest success" due to Madonna's lack of progress as a songwriter. The video for the second single Girl Gone Wild was censored due to explicit scenes. The record, without a promotional tour in support, became the worst in terms of sales in the singer's career.
The MDNA Tour began on May 31 and was the most successful tour of 2012. The concerts caused public outcry in the US due to the use of mock weapons on stage. Billboard once again named Madonna the record-breaking music industry with $34.6 million for the year. In 2013, Madonna received 3 Billboard Music Awards. In August 2013, Forbes magazine named her the Celebrity Earnings Leader of the Year, earning $125 million.
On September 24, Madonna released the 17-minute short film "secretprojectrevolution", performing a cover of Elliott Smith's "Between the Bars" at the premiere. The film was billed as human rights and was the result of Madonna's collaboration with photographer Steven Klein. At the same time, “secretprojectrevolution” in HD and 2K format was officially released for free download after registration on the BitTorrent “Bundle” website. The film was the first project in the framework of the joint action of Madonna and "VICE" called "ArtForFreedom" (Russian Art for Freedom). The film was accompanied by the launch of Madonna's eponymous magazine on the Flipboard service.
In December 2014, an unexpected leak of 13 demo versions of songs that were recorded while working on Madonna's thirteenth studio album occurred on the Internet. The artist was furious at what had happened, leaving later several formidable messages against the pirates. A few days after the leak, on December 20, Madonna officially announced the thirteenth longplay, called Rebel Heart. In connection with the pre-order of the album, six new songs out of 19 were made available, including the lead single "Living for Love". The album was released on March 10, 2015.
In the 2016 presidential election, she supported her distant relative -. Two weeks before the election, she announced the performance of stand-up comedian Amy Schumer, known in the United States for her below-the-belt jokes. Ciccone joked that she would give a blowjob to anyone who voted for Clinton.
On January 21, 2017, during a speech at the Women's March mass protest, Madonna twice used obscene language against the opponents of the action. In the performance with the songs "Express Yourself" and "Human Nature" that followed the speech, she changed the last line to a curse at the 45th president, with whom she had been in open hostility since the early 1990s. The singer was criticized for swearing and speaking out loud "anti-patriotic" thoughts about the White House bombing. No prosecution ensued due to the general context of the speech, in which she also quoted the Anglo-American poet Auden.
Since September 2017, Madonna moved to permanent residence in Lisbon, where her adopted son David Banda successfully qualified for the Benfica football academy.
Madonna's Height: 163 centimeters
Madonna's personal life:
Madonna's first husband was an Oscar-winning actor and director Sean Penn. They got married in 1985, and after 4 years Madonna decided to divorce - they often quarreled, and her husband also beat her.
On the set of Dick Tracy, Madonna had an affair with director and lead actor, Hollywood legend Warren Beatty. However, she did not marry the artist.
The Cuban boyfriend Carlos Leon became the father of her daughter in 1996 (the diva will part with him six months later). Madonna's daughter was named Lourdes, she has already celebrated her 18th birthday, and she has a business with her mother - her own clothing line.
Madonna and Carlos Leon
In mid-1998, together with then-friend Andy Bird, the singer attended a party with Sting. There was a meeting with director Guy Ritchie - a Briton who would later become her husband and change Madonna's personal life, and very much.
In 2000, Madonna moved in with her lover, and the couple's son Rocco was born in August of the same year.
Madonna and Guy Ritchie
Discography of Madonna:
1983 - Madonna
1984 - Like a Virgin
1986 - True Blue
1989 - Like a Prayer
1992 - Erotica
1994 - Bedtime Stories
1998 - Ray of Light
2000 - Music
2003 - American Life
2005 - Confessions on a Dance Floor
2008 - Hard Candy
2012-MDNA
2015 - Rebel Heart.
Filmography of Madonna:
1985 - Vain search for Susan
1987 - Who is this girl?
1987 - Dick Tracy
1991 - In bed with Madonna
1992 - A league of their own
1993 - Dangerous Games
1996 - Evita
2000 - Best friend
2002 - Gone
2005 - Madonna. I want to reveal my secrets to you
2002 - I am because we are
2008 - Filth and Wisdom
2011 - WE. We believe in love
2017 - (Her Story)
Madonna's books:
Sex
"English roses"
"Mr. Peabody's Apples"
"Jacob and the Seven Thieves"
"The Adventures of Abdi"
"Lotsa Tight Purse"
"English roses. Love and friendship".
Madonna (Ciccone Louise Veronica, Madonna, Louise Veronica Ciccone) was born in 1958, in the month of August, on the 16th day in the city of Bay, Michigan. At this hour, he is 162 cm tall and weighs 54 kg. Parameters and dimensions (girth) of the bust (figure): chest 92 cm, waist 61 cm, hips 87 cm. Foot shoe size 39. Eye color green. Hair color is blond. She is a Kabbalist by religion, a former Catholic.
Ciccone's father Silvio is an engineer at Chrysler and General Motors. Upon the death of his wife (Madonna Fortin), citizen Ciccone married the maid Gustafson Joan, who later gave birth to the mind of two children.
Ciccone's mother Madonna Fortin (Madonna Fortin Ciccone, born in 1933) is a technical engineer in the X-ray room. French nationality from Canada. Jansenist by religion (French Catholic). She died in 1963 from breast cancer (probably due to radiation exposure at work).
There are five brothers and sisters.
Studied at St. Andrew's, St. Frederick's, Western High School (West), Adams High School in Rochester (Adams), Michigan State University. Since 1973 she has been engaged in ballet and choreography.
She has lived in New York since 1978. She worked as a dancer for Pearl Lang. She worked in diners and as a model for filming. In 1979 she was noticed by the producers Perrelin and Van Lie and she collaborated with them in Europe for a year.
She was a drummer in the group Breakfast Club. Then, in 1980, she founded her own group Madonna and the Sky, later Emmy. Since 1981 Barbon collaborated with Camilla, who became her manager.
Since 1982 he has been collaborating with Stan Seymour. As a result, cooperation with Warner Bros. continued until 2009. The first album called "Madonna" was released in 1983. Received all sorts of Grammys (already 7 pieces!) And golden globes. Not without the golden raspberry. The song of the same name, from the second album, "Like a Virgin" entered the two hundred most iconic songs of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. "Like a Prayer", from the third album of the same name, was ranked 3rd in the history of popular music by the British magazine New Music Express, and VH1 2nd.
And always some song from her subsequent albums, like "Bedtime Stories", "Ray of Light", "Music", "American Life", "Confessions on a Dance Floor", "Hard Candy" and "MDNA" took honorable a prize-winning place in any chart.
She starred in "Specific Victim", "Visual Search", "Desperate Search for Suzy", in "Who's That Girl", in "Dick Tracy", in the documentary "Madonna. Truth or Dare” (in our box office “In Bed with Madonna”), in “A Dangerous Game”, in “Body as Evidence”, “Best Friend”.
In 2007, she filmed "Dirt and Wisdom" with the vocalist of the "Gogol Bordello" group Evgeny Alexandrovich Nikolaev, better known under the pseudonym Evgeny Gudz (his mother's maiden name). In 2010, she filmed “We. We believe in love." In 2013, the short film "SecretProjectRevolution".
In 1973, she dated Long Russell (born in 1956).
In 1979, she cohabited with Dan Gilroy (head of the little-known rock band Breakfast Club).
Also in 1979, she cohabited with Stephen Bray, drummer.
In 1983, she cohabited with Benitez John, nicknamed "Marmalade".
From 1985-08-16 (which, by the way, is her birthday) to January 1989, she was married to Pann Sean.
According to unconfirmed information, in 1988 she had a relationship with Bernhard Sandra (Sndra Bernhard, 1955-06-06).
In 1990, she cohabited with Beatty Warren (Henry Warren Beatty, 1937-03-30, director), but refused to marry him.
In 1992, she had a relationship with Van Winkle Robert Matthew (1967-10-31), better known as Vanilla Ice.
In 1996, in October, the 14th day from the actor and fitness instructor Leon Carlos gave birth to a daughter Leon Lourdes Maria Ciccone (in other words, Lola Leon).
In 1998, she cohabited with Andy Bird (Andy Bird), an actor and screenwriter from the UK.
From 2000 to 2008 for Richie Guy. In 2000, in August, on the 11th day, she gave birth to a son, Richie Rocko. There is also a son, Richie Ciccone, adopted on 2008-05-28, David Banda (born 2005-09-24) and a daughter, adopted on 2009-06-12, Ciccone Chifundo Mercy James (born 2005).
Since 2010, he has been cohabiting with break performer Zeba Brahim.
Madonna, full name - Madonna Louise Ciccone (born August 16, 1958) is an American singer, actress, director, and philanthropist. It is considered the most successful singer who has had a significant impact on modern music. Her album sales exceed 300 million copies. Winner of many awards.
Childhood
She was born in Bay City, Michigan, USA. Madonna's mother was her full namesake, and was of Canadian descent. She mainly did housework. Silvio's father had Italian roots, was an outstanding automotive design engineer.
By seniority, the girl was the third of six children. She studied at a Catholic school, with the exception of high school. From an early age she loved to dance.
During her last pregnancy, Madonna's mother was diagnosed with a malignant breast tumor. Being very religious, she decides to bear the child and refuses treatment until the birth. Having given birth, she dies a few months later, at that time she was only 30 years old.
Two years later, my father married a maid. Despite the fact that the family did not live in poverty, the stepmother introduced an austerity regime on everything: she sewed clothes on her own and used only semi-finished products.
In high school, Madonna attended a regular school, where she got the opportunity to participate in amateur performances, school plays and musicals. She also did cheerleading. She was an outstanding student, for which her peers often disliked her, considering her a little strange. The modest girl also did not seek to make friends. In addition, at home she had to endure the antics of her older brothers who were addicted to drugs.
Childhood photo of Madonna
However, Madonna still had several close people. Among them are the poet W. Cooper, who studied with her at the same school, and her philosophy teacher. From her childhood, the singer took out a sharply negative attitude towards drug addiction and a peculiar one - towards God, who allowed the death of her mother. The turning point of his youth was the shocking dance performance of fourteen-year-old Madonna at a school party, after which her father put her daughter under house arrest. Her reputation as an exemplary excellent student is finally destroyed.
From the age of 15, the girl begins to study ballet. Her mentor, gay K. Flynn, had a great influence on Madonna. Together they attended exhibitions and concerts, as well as gay clubs. The appearance of the Madonna becomes sloppy and eccentric, and her behavior also changes. She made her first sexual experience public throughout the school. After graduating, she goes to the University of Michigan and learns to dance there, despite her father's desire to give her a medical or legal education.
The path to a career
The teachers were surprised by the endurance of Ciccone, she was described as a very capable student. However, after studying for a year and a half, she decides to leave for New York, where she hopes to get into the dance troupe of P. Lang. She succeeds, but her earnings do not allow her to rent a house. From malnutrition, she begins to weaken, and the dance director gets her a job as a restaurant cloakroom attendant. Later, Madonna becomes a model, and also poses in the nude genre.
Madonna in her youth
She then lived in a cheap criminal area, where she was once sexually assaulted. After that, he experiences depression, leaves the Lang troupe and attends dance auditions. On one of them, the Belgian producers of the singer P. Hernandez were noticed, who were able to appreciate not only the girl's dancing skills, but also her voice. Ciccone spends six months on a European tour of the singer, during which time he manages to endure pneumonia. She does not give in to the producer's persuasion to sing in the style of pop disco, preferring punk rock, and returns to America, where her abandoned boyfriend D. Gilroy is waiting for her.
Gilroy prepared Madonna as a musician: he taught her how to play several instruments and invited her as a drummer to his group. In 1980, she created her own team, which did not last long. Then he collects the rock band "Emmy", in which he performs as a performer of his own songs and a guitarist. The financial situation continues to be disastrous.
A year later, Ciccone meets the owner of the recording studio K. Barbon, leaves the group and signs a contract with her. The new manager saw a future star in her, she decides that Madonna should perform without an instrument, but with a dance. Over time, their relationship worsens.
80s
Together with an old friend S. Bray, Ciccone writes several dance compositions, the recording of which he gives to the DJ of one of the clubs, M. Kamins. He arranges for Madonna to negotiate with S. Stein, the owner of Sire Records. Since then, the singer has become just Madonna. At zero cost and no photo of the singer, her first single "Everybody" proved to be quite popular, and she begins work on the album.
Ciccone early in his career, 1983
The first disc is released under the name "Madonna" in 1983 and contains several hits. The former manager of Michael Jackson F. Demann begins to work with the singer. The second album is released in a year and becomes the leader in the American album chart. The composition "Like a Virgin" has become a hit for more than one decade. In 1985, Madonna went on her first domestic tour, after which the number of her fans grew rapidly.
Then the first scandals arise around her. Photos of the naked singer from the past are published, after which the press begins to accuse her of participating in adult films. Madonna coped with the attacks of ill-wishers and continued to work. A new successful album is released in 1986. The appearance of the singer changes to Hollywood style. Acted in films, but unsuccessfully.
In 1989, the next disc was released, already the second, produced by Madonna herself. Her performances turn into real shows, combining concert, theatrical elements, as well as ballet and video accompaniment. Becomes the object of new scandals, accused of plagiarism, anti-Semitism. At the same time, the singer's audience is expanding significantly, and they begin to compare her with Marilyn Monroe.
Blond Ambition World Tour (1990)
90s
In 1992, Madonna opens a company in the entertainment industry and calls it Maverick. A new disc "Erotica" is released. The singer is perceived as the personification of sin, blasphemy and vulgarity. He aggravates the situation with his participation in the D. Letterman show, allowing vulgar behavior on television.
The 1994 album becomes a Grammy nominee. Madonna's performance style is complemented by R'n'B elements. Gradually, the attitude towards the singer softens. Her participation in the 1996 film "Evita" was highly appreciated, for her role in the film she received the "Golden Globe". At the same time, Madonna is fond of Buddhism, Kabbalah and yoga. In 1998, an album was released showing her spiritual transformation. "Ray of light" wins a Grammy.
Madonna in the new century
The beginning of the new millennium is accompanied by the release of the album "Music", a motion picture with the singer in the title role "Best Friend" and her move to the UK. In 2003, the next disc "American life" was released, which became the most unsuccessful in the singer's career because of her pacifist attitude. Madonna is accused of lack of patriotism, and her songs are banned from some American radio stations. The popularity of the singer falls somewhat.
In 2003, she tries herself as a writer for children. Her illustrated book, Roses of England, was received quite warmly, but a new scandal immediately followed after a kiss with Britney Spears during a performance. Madonna tried to disown allusions to unconventional orientation.
The 2005 album returns the singer to her former popularity. In 2008, the singer begins to work with young stars, releases the disc "Hard Candy". The same name is given to the network of fitness clubs opened by her in 2010. In addition, a clothing line for young people has been launched. The 2012 disc becomes even less successful than American life. However, the tour following the album is popular. In 2013, Madonna is named the highest paid singer. The release of the new album took place in 2015.
Madonna with her children
Personal life
There were many men in Madonna's life. She had relationships with L. Kravitz, W. Beatty, D. Rodman, E. Kiedis and others. She was married twice. The first husband was actor S. Penn. Family life passed under the vigilant attention of the press, was accompanied by scandals and beatings, and lasted four years (1985-1989). In 1996, the singer gave birth to a daughter from her coach of Cuban origin K. Leon. She named the girl Lourdes.
In 1998, while visiting Sting, Madonna met her second husband, British director Guy Ritchie. Having become pregnant, she moved to London. In 2000, their son Rocco was born. After the wedding, the singer receives a new citizenship. The marriage lasted until 2008, the couple managed to adopt a boy from Malawi. In 2009, Madonna independently adopts a Malawian girl. Further, Madonna had affairs with men younger than her: fashion model H. Louis, dancer B. Zaibat. In 2015, information appeared in the press about the resumption of relations with her first husband.