American singer, songwriter and actress Madonna was born on 16th August 1958 as Madonna Louise Ciccone in Bay City, Michigan, is divorced and has 6 children. She is also a record producer, dancer, author, director and business woman.
As a kid, she attended Elementary and Middle School and got good grades, but was also popular for her distinctive manners at school. She described herself as an outcast who wanted to become someone.
Her dad wanted her to take piano lessons but she persuaded him to study ballet instead. She attended a dance school and eventually got a scholarship after graduating and continued to study dancing.
After moving to New York, Madonna worked and kept taking dance classes as well as performing in a theatre. Eventually, she became a backup dancer for numerous artists. In 1979, she created the group ‘The Breakfast Club’ with her then boyfriend, of which she was the singer and played the guitar and drums. The year after, she left the band and formed another one with another boyfriend. They wrote a few songs and recorded them too, but Madonna decided to pursue a solo career shortly afterwards.
Her first two singles, ‘Everybody’ and ‘Burning Up’, were released in 1982 and 1983 respectively, and were both successful. After this initial success, Madonna sought the help of a DJ to release her first album which included the hits ‘Holiday’, ‘Borderline’ and ‘Lucky Star’.
In 1984, Madonna became a superstar after the release of her second album, as well as for her look and fashion style, sometimes controversial, inspiring the teenage girls and youths to dress like her. The song ‘Like a Virgin’ was an instant number one international hit and the relative album broke all records by selling more than 21 million copies globally.
Likewise, the song ‘Material Girl’ was equally successful and peaked to number 2 in the US. In 1985, she met actor Sean Penn and got married. She also starred in a couple of films which included some other of her popular hits namely ‘Crazy for You’, ‘Gambler’ and ‘Into the Groove’.
Two more hits ‘Angel’ and ‘Dress You Up’ were released that year, plus a North American concert tour. Her best-selling album ‘True Blue’ came out in 1986 containing big hits like ‘La Isla Bonita’, ‘Live to Tell’, ‘Papa Don’t Preach’, ‘True Blue’ and ‘Open your Heart’. Subsequent hits include ‘Like a Prayer’, ‘Frozen’, ‘Cherish’ and ‘Hung Up’, amongst many, many others.
To date, Madonna had over 110 singles, 30 albums and 39 limited releases. She also appeared in over 60 productions including movies, TV programmes, commercials and theatrical plays.
Apart from music and movies, Madonna created fashion clothes lines, sunglasses and skin products. She also founded some charitable non-profit organisations to raise awareness about poverty and peace and human rights, amongst others.
Madonna, nicknamed ‘The Queen of Pop’, is considered as the best-selling female artist of all time, selling globally more than 300 million records. During her +40-year career, she received an outstanding total of 417 awards out of 801 nominations, plus several other accolades and entries in the Guinness Book of World Records.
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