|
Quote:
|
|
"In the Vogue Italia interview, Madonna explains how her experience in Lisbon has been a source of inspiration for her upcoming album.
'I always say three f’s rule Portugal: fado, football and Fatima. It’s also a very Catholic country, which suits me just fine. Doing what needs to be done: Madonna said that life has not all been plain-sailing and she, as well as her children, have made sacrifices along the way 'It reminds me of Cuba in the way that people don’t have a lot, but you can open the door to anyone’s house, go on the street corner, and you’re always going to hear music. (...) You’ll always hear lots of fado and lots of kuduro music from Angola. 'A lot of jazz also – old school jazz, which is pretty cool. I’ve just met lots of really amazing musicians, and I’ve ended up working with a lot of these musicians on my new record, so Lisbon has influenced my music and my work. How could it not? 'I don’t see how I could have gone through that year without being informed by all this input of culture.' |
Madonna is 60? She doesn't look it.
|
Quote:
|
|
|
|
Madonna: My album will break the pattern thanks to Lisbon’s music scene
Madonna explains why her new album will be out of the box thanks to Lisbon‘s music scene. And we cannot help from being excited! Talking with Vogue Italia for their exclusive August issue, Madonna reveals that, not only Lisbon was a rich palette for her to paint with on her upcoming album, but it was also and most of all “a nice antidote to what’s going on in the music business now where everything’s so formulaic, and every song has 20 guest artists on it, and everyone sounds the same.” “I’ve just met lots of really amazing musicians, and I’ve ended up working with a lot of these musicians on my new record,” says Madonna. Lisbon has influenced my music and my work. Then Madonna explained why Lisbon‘s music scene is so different and unique. “In Alfama, you’ll hear people singing and playing fado music everywhere,” she adds. “There are these weekly sessions called living room sessions which pop up in people’s beautiful homes that are 500 years old, and you walk up the marble steps which are lined with candles into the living room which is also dimly lit with candles, and there’s this rolling, very intimate performance happening where people play, they sing, they recite poetry.” “It’s like a salon; something which doesn’t really exist in many places anymore – people elsewhere say, “Call my manager, this is how much I charge.” I’m pretty sure in Lisbon people would do these shows and not get paid, they just do them for the love of what they do, and for me, this is glorious and inspiring.” “On any given night you’ll get a phone call saying these musicians are performing at this house, come by at 11 – everything happens late in Lisbon. Sometimes there would be food, other times there would just be port to drink. (…) Sometimes there would be gypsies flamenco dancing, and a lot of times there would be people playing the music of Cesária Évora, and who knew her.” https://www.drownedmadonna.com/2018/...s-music-scene/ |
Billboard Hot 100 Turns 60! The Top 60 Female Artists of All-Time, From Madonna to Mariah Carey & More
https://www.billboard.com/articles/n...-janet-jackson https://image.ibb.co/kAA0Ve/ml.jpg |
|
Articles Marking/Celebrating the Queen's Momentous Birthday are coming thick and fast.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/breaki...re-854852.html Madonna has fought her whole life against society’s bid to define her by gender, sexuality, age, and culture. At age 60 she continues to lay out the parameters of her own existence as Suzanne Harrington describes. SHE’S had the best physique, the best moves, the best live shows, the best outfits, the best boyfriends — they get hotter as she gets older — the biggest success and the most attitude, yet the world remains set on auto-vilify. What’s our problem with Madonna? https://www.irishexaminer.com/remote...48&s=ie-854852 Madonna Louise Ciccone turns 60 this August. We have known her since 1984, when she first appeared on our TV screens, and have been criticising her ever since. Not for her music — any artist who has been around that long will have produced losers as well as bangers — but for her refusal to be what we demand our female artists to be. Pliant, malleable, a bit insecure — and as they age, sexless, before becoming politely invisible. You couldn’t really call Madonna any of these things. Post-Weinstein, in this era of #MeToo and #TimesUp, Madonna’s long term stance, her refusal to go quietly, chimes perfectly with the dominant ideology of the day. The problem — for her critics, at least, the Piers Morgans of the world, the Camille Paglias — is that this has always been her stance, decades too early for the rest of us. And so we rubbished her for it — or at least, we tried, but she proved stronger than the same thing that crushed so many of her contemporaries: the fame backlash. Only in the past couple of years, has she started to speak about it with any degree of vehemence. “I stand before you as a doormat. Oh, I mean, as a female entertainer,” she told an awards audience in December 2016 when named woman of the year by Billboard. “Thank you for acknowledging my ability to continue my career for 34 years in the face of blatant sexism and misogyny and constant bullying and relentless abuse….. If you’re a girl, you have to play the game. You’re allowed to be pretty and cute and sexy. But don’t act too smart. Don’t have an opinion that’s out of line with the status quo. You are allowed to be objectified by men and dress like a slut, but don’t own your sluttiness. And do not, I repeat do not, share your own sexual fantasies with the world. Be what men want you to be, but more importantly, be what women feel comfortable with you being around other men. And finally, do not age. Because to age is a sin. You will be criticised and vilified and you will definitely not be played on the radio. As a female performer in their prime, their sexuality must be passive, incorporating vulnerability and a need to please; Madonna has only ever pleased herself. Nor does a female performer get to decide when their prime is over; women are only hot as long as we allow them to be, while men can remain hot forever. Female success is permitted within female success parameters (smile and be grateful, don’t demand too much); female sexuality is permitted within female sexuality parameters (don’t frighten the horses by straying beyond their fantasy of you, rather than embodying your own); female ageing is allowed within female ageing parameters (put your sexuality away now, and take up charity work). So Michelle Pfeiffer, who turns 60 this year, is ‘still’ hot, but not as hot as Sharon Stone, whose 60th is also this year, on the arbitrary sliding scale of she’s-still-got-it. Kate Bush is 60 two weeks before Madonna, but Bush is all about the music, rather than culture, sexuality and marketing, and has therefore been allowed to age more or less in peace; similarly, rocker Joan Jett is hits 60 and continues touring, but she’s not a global icon so doesn’t come under the same scrutiny. https://image.ibb.co/cbpyMK/madonna_hero_109750521.jpg As a gay woman, Ellen DeGeneres, another forthcoming 60th , doesn’t fall under the male gaze, while Alec Baldwin, Ice T, Gary Numan, Simon LeBon and Kevin Bacon — who all turn 60 this year — are allowed to remain ageless. Rugged. Distinguished. Craggy. Handsome. Those kinds of words. Madonna has been variously written about as a bitch (“I’m tough and I’m ambitious and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.”) and a diva and a slut. The male equivalent of these words would be ambitious, powerful, potent. Speaking about her long term inspiration — David Bowie, the master of transformative reinvention — she acknowledged how “He embodied male and female spirit and that suited me just fine. He made me think there were no rules. But I was wrong. There are no rules – if you’re a boy. There are rules if you’re a girl.” Yet she has outlived not just her contemporaries Prince and Michael Jackson, who would both have turned 60 this year, but also Bowie, Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston. She has never been an addict, except to success and being in charge. Speaking in 2016 to Bad Feminist author Roxanne Gay in Harper’s Bazaar, she talked about how she has “had the **** kicked out of me for my entire career, and a large part of that is because I’m female and also because I refuse to live a conventional life. I’ve created a very unconventional family. I have lovers who are three decades younger than me. This makes people very uncomfortable. I feel like everything I do makes people feel really uncomfortable.” As well as releasing 13 studio albums, she has embodied the persona of boytoy, material girl, dominatrix, yogini, American cowgirl, English lady, disco queen, M-dolla, MDNA, children’s author, terrible actress, devout Kabbalist, spokesperson for Malawian children, and single parent of six. Madonna may not be relevant to Millennials — they have relaxed polyamory and Lady Gaga — but for Gen Xers, who grew up alongside her, she remains a symbol of liberation since the days of bra straps and belly buttons on Top Of The Pops. Culturally, she has been part of the shove forward towards women owning their own sexuality. She broke new ground, harnessing and marketing herself, trademarking her own name back in 1979 when still unknown and living a precariously bohemian existance in New York: “I learned in life there is no real safety except for self-belief.” Even her die-hard fan demographic — gay men and menopausal women, 10.9 million of whom follow her on Instagram – may not wish to see her turn into a Las Vegas parody of her former self, but it seems unlikely she would opt for this. “I’m traveling the world right now and listening to lots of different music,” she told Entertainment Weekly in 2017. “It’s time for me to take a different approach and really get back down to the beauty and simplicity of music and lyrics and intimacy.” You can’t imagine the most successful female performance artist of all time ever touring with a greatest hits nostalgia format. At least, not yet. MADONNA – 0 to 60 1958 Born August 16, Bay City, Michigan. 1964 Mother dies when she is six 1977 Moves to New York City to be a dancer 1983 Releases first album, Madonna, containing first hit, Holiday 1984 First appearance on Top Of The Pops 1984 First number one hit, Like A Virgin 1985 Appears in Desperately Seeking Susan. Marries Sean Penn. 1989 Like A Prayer infuriates Vatican. Divorces Sean Penn 1991 Her tour documentary In Bed With Madonna breaks Box office records in takings of $29m 1992 Releases book of erotic photography Sex and album Erotica 1996 Wins awards for her part in Evita movie. Gives birth to daughter Lourdes https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/...pg?imwidth=480 1998 Releases her award winning Ray of Light album https://imgc.allpostersimages.com/im...1-15312469.jpg 2000 Gives birth to son Rocco with Guy Ritchie 2005 Releases 10th album, Confessions on the Dancefloor https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ance_Floor.png 2006 Adopts first of four children from Malawi, David Banda 2009 Adopts Mercy James from Malawi 2012 Superbowl performance seen by 114m people. Releases MDNA album 2014 Guinness Book of Records says she has sold 300m records 2017 Adopts twin girls, Esther and Stella, from Malawi 2018 Turns 60 Phew!!!!!!!!!!! What a legend! |
|
Dancer Carlton Wilborn on Madonna: ‘Rehearsal truly was like boot camp’
I was 26 and living in Los Angeles when Madonna had a huge open-call audition for the Blond Ambition tour – there were maybe a thousand men there. By the time I got home I had a message: “Come meet me at the club tonight.” It was basically a callback, like, let’s see who these people really are, how they hang with alcohol. She herself being an alpha type, she was looking for very confident people – the best of the best – so I was acutely aware of how I was presenting myself. When I made the cut, I knew it was a huge opportunity. Touring was different back in the 90s. We really got to do it in the rock’n’roll way people imagine – private jets, two separate chefs, a bowl in the studio lobby stacked with cigarettes. It’s very rare that dancers are given that kind of treatment. And the afterparties – oh my gosh, are you kidding me? We won’t say much about those! Every single night, the blast-off energy from the crowd was crazy – they were so loud we could hardly hear the music. We had done so much training at this point – the rehearsal process was truly like boot camp – and it was great to finally be in the sweat of it all. When I heard her singing to an audience for the first time: it was like: “Oh ****, she’s ****ing performing now.” And it was a lot of fun working with an artist who had started in dance and who could do all these intricate moves with you. Madonna was great to work with. I was having this conversation with someone the other day – they were saying, “I bet it was crazy, when she was being really intense in the rehearsals, making people feel bad.” But that’s not what she does, at all. She has [one] personality that she knows makes her money – a bit brash and snappy and in your face – and then she has who she [really] is: just a chill, regular person. It was also a special time because she was single, didn’t have any children, and hadn’t really come against any extreme pushback, so she was very free. It was great to be a part of that. She started as a street artist in lots of ways – a Lower East Side New Yorker kind of chick – and she likes to pull from where she came from. When I was booked, I had nothing to do with voguing: I was classically trained – the underground art world was not my thing. At the time, voguing was very exclusive to that [New York black and Latino LGBT] community. Now you have all kinds of people voguing and I think that’s a great thing. She was able to dive into something that had a strong pulse and felt it was important to get the word out to the consciousness of young gay dancers – it was about helping these people thrive and feel good and powerful. What’s really great about her as a performer is that she is there to sell a story, however far she has to go. There are artists now who are taking the baton – Lady Gaga is probably the closest to it. But Madonna continues to be special because she’s just balls-out as an artist. At the core of what she represents is the secret longing of every human being: we all have quiet thoughts, we all have hungry thoughts, but most of us have been conditioned to think it’s inappropriate to let this be known. So when you have an example of somebody who is living their life against all the constructs that are blasted through the world and the media, it’s intoxicating. Madonna has always been a very generous person. There was a particular time in my life [in 1995, when Wilborn was going through a difficult time, Madonna let him live with her for several months] where she really showed me the human side of her – I’m not saying that’s the first time she showed this to me, but it was the degree of it. It was really amazing when she offered me that. After that our paths went in different directions. I auditioned for the Drowned World tour and didn’t get chosen. I started going after different things, she was doing different things. Life happened. What I would say to her now is: happy 60th birthday! And thank you. Thank you for allowing me to let all of my power be seen and expressed. https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...amp-tour#img-1 https://image.ibb.co/kGk9wK/3189.jpg |
Barbara Ellen on Madonna: ‘Popular culture still reeks of her influence’
Madonna Louise Ciccone is about to turn 60, a “big birthday” by anybody’s reckoning. I remember her at the time of her breakthrough 1983 single, Holiday, a mischievous mess of bangles and swinging crucifixes, boasting that she was so hot that you could fry an egg on her belly button. From that point on, Madonna was omnipresent – confrontational, audacious, sexual, occasionally annoying and weirdly vulnerable (brought up in a strict Italian-American Catholic family, Madonna’s mother died when she was a child). She pounded through personas (boy toy, material girl, Hollywood royalty, dancefloor vixen, gangsta momma,), like an all-singing all-dancing one-woman variety show. It was never just about the music. Madonnaembodied the devilish voice in your ear, saying: “Why not?” A pop queen with a big dirty rock mouth, she was one of the first great influencers, daring at least a couple of generations of girls and young women (not to mention all her loyal gay fans) to be bolder, stronger and, crucially, a ton less humble and apologetic. The ironic question “What would Madonna do?” isn’t still doing the rounds for nothing. No surprise, then, that witch-burners have long been out in force against Madonna. She’s been called everything: ball-breaker, *****, user, crone, narcissist, talent-vampire. Vulgar taste-free zone. While taking criticism is part of the fame gig, it was as though Madonna served as a cautionary tale for women who get too darn uppity. In truth, popular culture still reeks of Madonna’s influence for a good reason: she’s earned it. Far from being a shallow shape-shifter, she always knew her way around a pop classic (her oeuvre is full of them), and developed a flair for choosing talented collaborators to keep her music fresh. Moreover, back when she could have played it safe, Madonna called herself an artist and acted like one, tirelessly reinventing herself. From plonking a black saint in the Like a Prayer video to putting out a book called Sex, at the peak of her fame, just about everything Madonna did alienated middle America, because she wanted to define the zeitgeist, not merely reflect it. In recent years, Madonna, also mother to Lourdes (by Carlos Leon) and Rocco (by Guy Ritchie), has been criticised for adopting four Malawian children (perfectly legally), having “work done” (such a shock in celeb circles) and having much younger partners (you mean, like 99% of famous older men?). Every time she tours, there’s gnashing of teeth about her “inappropriate” stage outfits – euphemisms for “too young for her”, as if someone of Madonna’s vintage should crawl on stage in a candlewick dressing gown, begging for forgiveness for not being 25 any more. Burn the witch! Burn her good! I interviewed Madonna in the mid-90s in her New York apartment. If I was unprepared for her doll-like tininess, I was impressed by her attitude, as we talked about fame, rape, dehumanisation, and everything in between. There was no tiresome stonewalling, bristling at questions or monosyllabic answers. Madonna was friendly, relaxed and engaged. She was also sane and funny, not traits to be taken for granted at her level of stardom. Not that it’s all been gravy. It’s probably best to politely ignore all that Kabbalah nonsense. It’s astonishing to me that such a clever woman managed to marry beneath her, not once but twice. I suspect that on some secret panel somewhere, Madonna has been voted “The control freak’s control freak”. (Her own brother, Christopher, wrote a memoir about working for her that could have been entitled Sissie Dearest). Her acting has been patchy at best – her personality is so strong, it always seems to seep through her performances like blood through a badly tied bandage. In retrospect, snogging Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera on stage looked less like passing on the pop baton and more like sucking their souls out through their mouths. And perhaps, in the interests of pop sisterhood, Madonna could have been a tad more gracious about Lady Gaga’s (ahem) homages. However, I’m just not into slating Madonna and not just because I’m heartily sick of everyone else doing so. Most of the things people criticise Madonna for, I tend to find rather funny, including that gigantic, nuclear-strength ego, frying to a cinder all before it. At some point, we have to ask ourselves: what do we want from our stars – humility and jogging bottoms or magic and dynamite? I know which way I’d usually go. At this stage, perhaps Madonna’s greatest achievement is that she’s a survivor. Of her era of superstars (Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Prince), she’s the last one left standing, living proof that maturing in music doesn’t just mean the Rolling Stones – it can be a wild, untamed feminine energy too. Nor has she done it via endless comebacks and the nostalgia trail. Sure, she’d be idiotic (and ungenerous) not to perform songs from her extensive back catalogue, but Madonna has been genuinely active and creative all the way through, always with a new project on the horizon. So, happy birthday to Madonna. She’s sung, danced, acted, yapped, provoked, riled, worked her butt off, kept a sense of humour and taken all the sexist slurs with her head held high. Here’s to an artist who can’t come back because she never went away. https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...rs-pop-surivor |
Andy Lecompte and Giovanni Bianco (Madonna's stylists) have arrived in NYC. So they could be shooting the artwork for her new album.
|
If this is a clip of Madonna's new music, I will faint.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BmL_n34g...eo_watch_again albummagic in progress...#lifeinsecrets #Magic 🎶🎶🎶🌌....#madonna #newmusic #beautifulgame #mirwais @madonna thank you @mae_couture |
60 incredible chart facts and feats about Madonna
To celebrate the pop icon's 60th birthday, we reveal her 60 essential chart facts. http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-...adonna__23566/ http://www.officialcharts.com/media/...6&mode=stretch A popstar so famous she only needs one name, Madonna celebrates her 60th birthday this month. She's had one of the most successful music careers of all time, and to recognise her place as the queen of pop, we delved into the archives and put together some amazing chart facts that no self-respecting Madonna devotee would be without. Don't just stand there – let's get to it. 1. Madonna has scored an incredible 71 Top 40 singles. Of those, 63 hits went Top 10. 2. From Like A Virgin in December 1984 to Secret in August 1994, Madonna logged a run of 36 consecutive Top 10 hits – no artist has bettered that since. Take a Bow broke the run in December 1994. She had another run of 17 consecutive Top 10s from You Must Love Me in Feb 1996 until Me Against The Music in November 2003. Blame Love Profusion for that one. 3. Madonna has scored 13 UK Number 1 singles – a chart record for a female solo artist. They are: Into The Groove, Papa Don't Preach, True Blue, La Isla Bonita, Who's That Girl, Like A Prayer, Vogue, Frozen, American Pie, Music, Hung Up, Sorry, 4 Minutes. 4. She’s spent 29 weeks at the top of the Official Singles Chart across her career. 5. Madonna singles have spent 516 weeks in the Top 40 since her first hit in 1984 – that’s nearly 10 years!! http://www.officialcharts.com/media/....6363636363636 6. Madonna’s first ever single was Everybody, the cover of which didn’t even feature a picture of the star. As it didn't get a proper release here, it didn’t chart in the UK. 7. Madonna’s first UK chart entry was Holiday, which was also her first Top 10, peaking at Number 6 – although it wouldn’t be the last we saw of Madonna’s signature song… 8. Holiday was rereleased in 1985 during the height of Madonna fever – she could’ve released an album of burps and gone Top 10 tbh – and reached Number 2. 9. On its second release in 1985, Holiday was stopped going to Number 1 by Madonna herself, making her one of the few artists in chart history to occupy the Top 2 at the same time. And the song that kept Holiday off? See below! 10. Into The Groove was Madonna’s first Number 1 in the UK, spending a month there in summer 1985, and totally top-blocked Holiday from Number 1 – coincidentally, this was the same week of Madonna’s 27th birthday (and her first wedding anniversary to Sean Penn, but let’s not dwell). http://www.officialcharts.com/media/....6363636363636 11. Into The Groove is also Madonna’s biggest selling single in the UK, helped in part by the fact it was from a hit movie – Desperately Seeking Susan, in which Madonna starred – and that it wasn’t available on any Madonna album. It was added to a reissue of Like A Virgin that year. 12. Madonna, surprisingly, does not have a million-selling single. Into The Groove is closest, as her top seller, with 881,000 copies shifted.. Into The Groove is tied for Madonna’s longest stint at Number 1, equalled by the four weeks Vogue managed at the top from April 1990. 13. Interestingly, Madonna’s two hugest Number 1s started life as B-sides. Into The Groove was the B-side to Angel in the US (Angel got a full release here too) and Vogue was originally meant to be the B-side to Like A Prayer albums track Keep it Together but the record label heard it and realised it was a smash. 14. Holiday was released for a third time, by the way, to commemorate her first greatest hits album The Immaculate Collection (more on that later) – Holiday reached Number 5 in 1991. 15. Borderline has been out twice too! Not many people realise it was originally released in 1984 and became Madonna’s first single to miss the Top 40, stalling at 52. Two years later, it was back! And reached Number 2! http://www.officialcharts.com/media/...500&height=500 16. Her big ballad Crazy For You also came out twice, first in 1985 and then again in 1991, and reached Number 2 both times. 17. Madonna was very prolific in 1985, scoring seven Top 10 hits in that calendar year. 18. Not content with having the most Number 1 singles of any female artist, Madge also has the most Number 2 hits of *any* artist – clocking up 12 of them. 19. Artists who prevented her from getting to Number 1? Sister Sledge, Billy Ocean, Falco, Partners in Kryme, Vanilla Ice, The Simpsons, The Clash, All Saints, S Club 7, Room 5 feat Oliver Cheatham, Beyoncé, and Busted! Quite an eclectic lineup! 20. Madonna holds the record for most Number 1 albums by a female artist – 12 so far! They are: Like A Virgin, True Blue, Like A Prayer, The Immaculate Collection, Evita, Ray of Light, Music, American Life, Confessions on a Dance Floor, Hard Candy, Celebration, MDNA. 21. Second album Like A Virgin took 44 weeks to climb to Number 1 on the Official Albums Chart All subsequent chart-topping albums went straight in at Number 1, with the exception of 1996’s Evita, which took 13 weeks to get there. 22. With third album True Blue, Madonna was actually the first US artist ever to go straight in at the top of the Official Albums Chart. http://www.officialcharts.com/media/...500&height=500 23. Madonna’s True Blue was the biggest selling album of 1986. True Blue spent six weeks at Number 1 and in just under six months on release, sold just shy of two million that year. 24. True Blue is Madonna’s top selling album in the UK, going platinum seven times. In the US, however, Like A Virgin is her big one. 25. Of all Madonna’s albums, True Blue yielded the most Number 1 hits. It has three: Papa Don’t Preach, the title track, and La Isla Bonita. 26. Greatest hits set The Immaculate Collection landed nine straight weeks at Number 1 from November 1990 – her longest stint at the top for any of her albums. 27. The Immaculate Collection is Madonna’s best selling album – and with 30 million copies sold worldwide is indeed one of the biggest selling of all time. It’s currently the 13th best selling album ever in the UK http://www.officialcharts.com/media/...500&height=500 28. 1994’s Bedtime Stories – her sixth studio set – was her first album since her debut to produce a single that missed the Top 10. The song in question was Take A Bow, which peaked at 16 but, ironically, is her longest run at Number 1 in the US, topping the Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks! http://www.officialcharts.com/media/...500&height=494 29. After Vogue in 1990, Madonna had to wait eight years before her next one – the comeback ballad Frozen in 1998. 30. Frozen was Madonna’s first single to debut at Number 1. 31. Her most recent Number 1 was 4 Minutes in 2008, meaning this is the longest Madonna has gone without a chart-topper in her entire career. 32. Madonna has had Number 1 albums across four decades – '80s, '90s, '00s, and the '10s. 33. Across her 12 Number 1 albums, Madonna has spent 30 weeks at the top of the Official Albums Chart. This was a record until Adele overtook her in 2016. 34. Madonna has never missed the Top 10 with a studio album, and only one didn’t make the Top 5: her self-titled debut, which peaked at 6 when it was reissued as “The First Album” in 1985. 35. Madonna’s longest gap between studio albums is just short of four years, between Hard Candy (2008) and MDNA (2012), although, in fairness, she did whack out both a greatest hits and a live album in between. 36. For the first 19 years of her career, Madonna was credited as sole artist on all her singles – she broke that spell with a cameo on Britney’s Me Against the Music in 2002. Another of her Number 2 hits. 37. Funnily enough, it would be over five years before she allowed another artist to take a feature credit on one of her singles for the first time – 4 Minutes featured Justin Timberlake. 38. Madonna’s lowest selling Number 1 is 2006’s Sorry. 39. Her biggest selling single to miss the top is actually her second biggest selling single of all time: Like A Virgin peaked at 3 in 1984. http://www.officialcharts.com/media/...500&height=500 40. Madonna’s top selling Number 2 single is Crazy For You. 41. Madonna doesn’t have many cover versions under her belt. She first had a hit with one in 1993, when she reimagined the old-school Peggy Lee classic Fever as a ‘90s house banger. When appearing in Evita, she released two covers of songs from the classic musical, going Top 10 with both. 42. Madonna’s most successful cover version was her do-over of Don McLean’s American Pie – she took it to Number 1 in 2000. 43. Hung Up is Madonna’s longest-running single on the Official Charts, notching up 40 weeks in the Top 100. 44. 2007 was the first year since Madonna’s career began that she didn’t have a single appear on the chart at all – 23 years after her first hit. She’d previously had years without any new entries – 1988 and 2004 – but there had been a couple of songs lingering in the Top 40 from the previous year. 45. Madonna’s most downloaded song is her most recent Number 1, 4 Minutes, which sold 458,000 downloads. 46. Madonna’s most streamed tune – since we started counting in 2014 – is Like A Prayer. 47. Her most streamed video – by a huge margin – is La Isla Bonita. http://www.officialcharts.com/media/...383&height=500 48. Twelve of Madonna’s hits have featured in films in which she also starred: Crazy For You, Gambler (both from Vision Quest, later renamed Crazy For You for obvious reasons); Into The Groove (Desperately Seeking Susan); Who’s That Girl, Causing a Commotion, The Look of Love (Who’s That Girl); This Used to be my Playground (A League of Their Own); You Must Love Me, Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, Another Suitcase in Another Hall (Evita); American Pie (The Next Best Thing); and Die Another Day (that Bond theme!). Trick question for a pub quiz: Hanky Panky was on the I’m Breathless album which served as a partial soundtrack to Dick Tracy, which Madonna starred in, but the song wasn’t in the film itself. 49. Additionally, four of Madonna’s hits have been recorded for movies she didn’t star in: Live To Tell (At Close Range, starring then-husband Sean Penn); I’ll Remember (With Honors); Beautiful Stranger (Austin Powers 2); Masterpiece (W.E. which Madonna actually directed) 50. 1993’s Deeper and Deeper was Madonna’s first single to miss the Top 5 in eight years. 51. Hung Up contained a sample of ABBA’s Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! and managed to outchart it – Hung Up was a Number 1 but Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! peaked at 3. 52. Madonna has seen three of her singles peak at Number 10. Spookily, the first one and the last were each the third single off their parent album: Bad Girl (Erotica, 1993) and Drowned World/Substitute for Love (Ray of Light, 1998). You Must Love Me is the other one, lead single off the Evita soundtrack 53. When Confessions on a Dancefloor singles Hung Up and Sorry went to Number 1, it was the first time Madonna had topped the charts with the first two singles from an album. Pub quiz trick question: In theory, she did this with American Pie and Music, from the Music album, but American Pie was only added to European editions of the album and was never part of the Music campaign – and Madonna was raging about it. 54. Madonna had three Top 10 albums in 1990: Like A Prayer (released in 1989 but still big), I’m Breathless, and The Immaculate Collection. 55. Madonna’s most recent Number 1 album was 2012’s MDNA. Rebel Heart was her first studio album to miss the top spot since Bedtime Stories in 1994. http://www.officialcharts.com/media/....1666666666667 56. Madonna has released live albums of every tour since her Re-Invention jaunt in 2004. Only one has reached the Top 10: The Confessions Tour peaked at 7 in 2007. 57. Madonna’s music has been covered many times, but few of these new versions have made an impression on the charts. Of the most notable: Dutch dance outfit MadHouse reached Number 3 with Like A Prayer in 2002 and Number 24 with Holiday the same year. Kelly Osbourne managed a Top 3 hit with a punky cover of Papa Don’t Preach in 2002, and the cast of Glee hit Number 16 with their version of Like A Prayer in 2010. 58. Madonna is one of very few artists to have occupied every space in the Top 10. It took her 11 years to do. Here’s how: 59. She has 13 Number 1s, 12 Number 2s, 9 Number 3s, Five Number 4s, Seven Number 5s, Four Number 6s, Seven Number 7s, One Number 8 – Human Nature, which completed her set, Two Number 9s, and Three Number 10s. 60. As is very fitting for a huge star who has been very good getting everyone’s attention for over 30 years, the most common word to crop up in the titles of Madonna’s hits is “me”, with seven songs. They are: Rescue Me, You Must Love Me, Don’t Cry for me Argentina, Don’t Tell Me, Me Against the Music, Give it 2 Me, Give Me All Your Luvin’. She also referred to “my playground” and “my love” that she expected you to justify. It is ALL about Madge, and quite right too. Girl is second, with five Top 100 mentions. |
The electronic music producer, DJ and musician, Sophie on Madonna’s continuing musical influence...
"Her work is so vast – there’s a reference for any situation’ "In my mind, Madonna created the blueprint for modern pop stars. Her creativity has gone further, wider and longer than anyone else I can think of; I feel like her songs have been consistently memorable and meaningful. I have loved all of Madonna’s different phases at different points, but I think the Bedtime Stories era [1994] is really intriguing, especially the production – it has a unique feeling. It’s so much more fully formed and sexy than a lot of the trip-hop stuff that was coming out around that time. It’s definitely been an influence on my own music. My earliest memories of Madonna are of when my half-sister used to listen to her loads on family holidays. Davina was, and still is, a very fun party girl, so my early impressions of Madonna are merged with my half-sister’s teenage punk energy – I still think of Madonna in that way. Working with her [on track Bitch I’m Madonna, which Sophie co-wrote and co-produced, the third single from Madonna’s 2015 album Rebel Heart] was really quite a one-off, spontaneous thing – I suppose a happy coincidence. I felt a connection with the title. But you have to prevent yourself from getting too excited about that kind of thing. People still write about that song in every article they write about me, so I guess she still means a lot to everyone operating in music right now. Madonna’s work is so vast – there’s an appropriate Madonna reference for any situation. But I think the factor that sets her apart from others is that each phase seems to be a byproduct of a genuine journey of self-discovery, and always addresses some prejudice or other. Whatever is the established, easy‑to-consume current thing, Madonna always seems to push past that. I think anyone who has struggled with having their voice heard can relate to what Madonna stands for and feel empowered by her story and her music. She is not buying into people’s bull****. I think what I’ve learned from her is that you can work hard and still be a good person. Anyone who fights so long and so hard deserves to be an important figure in music. And she looks like she’s having more fun than a lot of people I know at that age, so whatever she’s doing, in my opinion she’s doing it right" https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...ical-influence |
How Madonna Defined Pop Culture
https://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.new...0/0intomad.jpg From pissing off the Pope to kissing Britney, these are the Queen of Pop’s most groundbreaking moments. Singing about abortion. Writhing on a cross. Publishing her sexual fantasies. Even those cone bras. Madonna seems to have done so much in her life that it’s hard to grasp that she’s a real person, instead of the lofty icon her name suggests. As the singer turns 60, the desire to take stock of her enormous cultural impact seems Herculean. That’s because her body of work is so vast, spanning four decades and countless changes in sound, style and creative direction. Yet despite her chameleon instincts, she’s always remained resolutely herself—a willfully provocative presence in an industry which can so easily smother its stars into blandness. As Madonna herself said: “A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That’s why they don’t get what they want.” Her unapologetic, in-control attitude has been a source of inspiration for women and LGBTQ fans, who watched her carve her own space out in popular culture, and play with gender conventions in a way that was both witty and provocative. Her influence is still felt in contemporary pop culture: Think Beyonce’s highly-controlled personas, Miley Cyrus’s sexual shock tactics, Cardi B’s uncensored New York brashness. This toughness has allowed her to continue through moments which might have wiped out lesser popstars. She’s certainly had a few missteps, such as her disastrous starring role in the 2002 rom-com Swept Away and some dodgy forays into culture-as-costume. But her refusal to either slow down or tone down, even in the face of sneers that she’s too old to be leaping around in revealing outfits, proves she’s still taking on taboos—this time, it’s the assumption that women should fade into the background as they age. We’ve charted Madonna’s career, picking out the moments she truly defined the zeitgeist. From pissing off the Pope to kissing Britney, these are the Queen of Pop’s most groundbreaking moments....... |
....How Madonna Defined Pop Culture (Continued)
Inventing 80s style Madonna, and the music videos it spawned (such as for “Lucky Star”, pictured), established her decade-defining style of heavy makeup, junk shop jewellery and eclectic clothes. The look established her as a tough but magnetically alluring new breed of pop star. https://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.new...mjq0nze0mq.jpg |
....How Madonna Defined Pop Culture (Continued)
Popularising dance music According to AllMusic, Madonna “began her career as a disco diva in an era that didn't have disco divas.” She bridged the gap between the world of pop and the world of the clubs by mixing “great pop songs with stylish, state-of-the-art beats… it shrewdly walked a line between being a rush of sound and a showcase for a dynamic lead singer.” https://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.new...4828master.jpg |
....How Madonna Defined Pop Culture (Continued)
Taking creative control Since her debut album, for which she wrote hit “Lucky Star,” Madonna has written a number of her own songs. Rolling Stone called her "an exemplary songwriter with a gift for hooks and indelible lyrics." https://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.new...b-rtr1gkp5.jpg |
....How Madonna Defined Pop Culture (Continued)
Owning her sexuality... With her second studio album, 1984’s Like a Virgin, Madonna played with the ancient madonna/***** trope, posing on the cover in a wedding dress, but with a knowingly seductive look. https://image.ibb.co/ewLpi9/madonna_...el_1984_01.jpg |
....How Madonna Defined Pop Culture (Continued)
...despite negative attention The album’s hit song “Like a Virgin” sparked protests from conservative groups who saw the song’s themes to be corrupting traditional family values. https://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.new...1903master.jpg |
| All times are GMT. The time now is 10:03 PM. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2025, vBulletin Solutions Inc.
User Alert System provided by
Advanced User Tagging (Pro) -
vBulletin Mods & Addons Copyright © 2025 DragonByte Technologies Ltd.
