Madonna
Madonna (born Madonna Louise Ciccone; August 16, 1958) is an American recording artist, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983. She followed it with a series of albums in which she found immense popularity by pushing the boundaries of lyrical content in mainstream popular music and imagery in her music videos, which became a fixture on MTV. Throughout her career, many of her songs have hit number one on the record charts, including "Like a Virgin", "Papa Don't Preach", "Like a Prayer", "Vogue", "Frozen", "Music", "Hung Up", and "4 Minutes". Madonna has been praised by critics for her diverse musical productions while at the same time serving as a lightning rod for religious controversy.
Madonna has sold more than 300 million records worldwide and is recognized as the world's top-selling female recording artist of all time by the 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 top-selling female artist in the United States, behind Barbra Streisand, with 64 million certified albums. In 2008, Billboard magazine ranked Madonna 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 the Billboard chart. She was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the same year. Considered to be one of the "25 Most Powerful Women of the Past Century" by Time for being an influential figure in contemporary music, Madonna is known for continuously reinventing both her music and image, and for retaining a standard of autonomy within the recording industry. She is recognized as an inspiration among numerous music artists.
Britney, Christina and Jessica were all still in diapers when this unstoppable bottled blonde shot to stardom in the early '80s with her catchy pop songs and sexy, eye-catching videos. Although far from a powerhouse vocalist, the provocative diva ruled the charts for decades by repeatedly reinventing herself, both aesthetically and musically, and by constantly causing controversy, from her make-out session with a saint in "Like a Prayer" to her X-rated 1992 picture book Sex to her lip lock with Britney Spears at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, which was viewed by many as Madonna's unique way of passing the torch to the next generation of pop stars. Her forays onto the big screen weren't as successful. She fared best when basically playing herself (Desperately Seeking Susan, Dick Tracy, the documentary Truth or Dare), but save for Evita, which earned her a Golden Globe, her attempts to be taken seriously as an actress (the wannabe screwball comedy Shanghai Surprise opposite first husband Sean Penn, the unwatchable remake of Swept Away directed by her second husband, Guy Ritchie) were met with critical and commercial scorn, as well as Razzie Awards. While Madonna hasn't exactly mellowed with age, she has shifted her focus. After years of a love-hate relationship with Catholicism, she became a very vocal follower of kabbalah. She also became a mother of two and an author of children's books, all while sporting a body most 20-year-olds would die for.
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