Singer Madonna not long ago started a stormy...
Rumors that the popular singer Madonna wants to adopt more children have been circulating for a long time. She has repeatedly spoken about her desire to become a mother of many children in interviews with various foreign publications.
Yesterday, February 7, these rumors were confirmed by the singer’s actions. As journalist Ulyana Ulitkina learned, yesterday the highest court of Malawi allowed Madonna to adopt two 4-year-old twin girls.
Madonna with her lawyer and 2 little girls with their biological father appeared at the courthouse. As you know, the girls’ mother died back in 2012, and their grandmother had custody of the little ones for some time, but then they were sent to an orphanage.
A representative of the court said that the girls’ grandmother could not provide for them in a decent manner, so social services sent the girls to an orphanage.
Madonna with children
Let us remember that Madonna had four children. From her former fitness trainer Carlos Leon, the singer gave birth to a daughter, Lourdes, who is already 20 years old. Son Rocco (now 16) was born in marriage to British director Guy Ritchie. The parents are 12-year-old Chifundo Mercy James Ciccone and 11-year-old David Banda Ciccone-Richie, whom the star adopted in 2006 and 2007.
Madonna and Lourdes
Madonna and son Rocco
Eyewitnesses claim that Madonna looked very happy when she left the courthouse with the new adopted members of her family.
One can only guess why the star, with her busy schedule, needs so many children? After all, the singer does not always find a common language with her own children.
Previously, family photos of the singer caused a scandal on social networks. So, Madonna posted a photo of her adopted children massaging her feet. Followers immediately reacted with criticism and compared children with slaves in the comments.
Madonna and adopted children Cifundo Mercy James Ciccone and David Banda Ciccone-Ricci
Madonna herself could hardly have imagined that a completely ordinary family photo there will be such a negative reaction. Surely the singer signed the photo without a second thought: “...this is how I want to spend the day. Mercy and David are the best foot massagers." Madonna added the hashtag #motherlove to the photo.
In addition to adoption, the singer firmly defends her Political Views. At a recent protest march, to which the president responded in kind.
singer Madonna
Madonna Louise Ciccone. Born 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 its list of “25 Most Powerful Women of the Last Century,” assessing her influence on modern music.
Madonna is the best-selling rock artist of the 20th century according to the American Association record companies 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 entire history of recording among solo female singers.
Madonna became famous for constantly “reinventing” her music and images. She became one of the first female musicians to make successful career on a major label and have not lost 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 have generally received positive reviews from music critics, despite frequent media controversy regarding their themes of 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 won a record 20 MTV Video Music Awards and 7 Grammy Awards, including 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 first place on the main music charts, among which the most successful were the songs “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 as of 2016, Madonna is the richest female musician in the world with a net worth of $560 million.
The singer's 2008-09 Sticky & Sweet Tour ranks as the top-grossing solo artist of all time. Madonna's recognition in music and cinema is well known - since the late 80s the media has called her the “queen of pop”, and in 2000 the Golden Raspberry anti-award named 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 crushed by critics 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 a radiography technician. Father, Silvio Ciccone, an Italian-American, worked as a design engineer for the Chrysler/General Motors defense design bureau.
Madonna is the third child in the family, there were six children in total. The first girl in the family was named Madonna Louise in honor of her mother; this name was never officially changed. The name "Veronica" was chosen by Madonna Louise Ciccone at age 12 for the traditional Catholic sacrament of confirmation and is not official.
Madonna's mother was descended from the Jansenist early French settlers, and her piety bordered on fanaticism. My mother played the piano beautifully and sang, but she never wanted to perform in public.
During her sixth pregnancy, Madonna Ciccone (the eldest) was diagnosed with breast cancer. The 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 for the rest of her pregnancy and died a few months after the birth of her sixth child at the age of 30.
Madonna (the younger)'s rejection of the fact that God could allow her mother to die became an important aspect of the singer's life and work. 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 child died, but soon they had two more children. The stepmother cared mainly about her own children, but the father forced all the children to call the woman “mom,” which Madonna never did, considering the father a traitor to the mother’s memory.
The family was quite wealthy, but Gustafson brought into the family the Protestant spirit of total economy on clothing and food - the family ate exclusively semi-finished products and the children almost did not wear store-bought clothes. Joan's methods of upbringing made her look like a sergeant-major, which further strained the atmosphere in the family. Madonna aroused a sense of female competition in her stepmother due to the singer’s strong external resemblance to her late mother. Madonna was subjected to severe bullying by two older brothers who were drug addicts, who fought with her for the attention of their father, which, according to biographers, early laid in her a hostile attitude towards drugs.
The Ciccone family lived in the Detroit suburbs, where Madonna attended St. Frederick and St. Andrew and West Catholic schools and was a cheerleader on the basketball team. The singer graduated from high school at the secular Rochester Adams School, where she participated in theatrical productions and school musicals.
Ciccone studied with excellent marks, and the teachers took on the role of a mother in her upbringing. The singer named the teacher of philosophy and Russian history Marilyn Fallows as one of two the most important people of your childhood. Despite her grades, Ciccone was considered by her peers to be a “good girl”; she was disliked for her excellent academic performance and position as a teacher’s favorite, and boys were afraid to ask her out 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 in the same school a grade older. According to Cooper, the girl was shy and a little aloof, avoided society, dressed modestly and especially loved the books of Aldous Huxley and the novel Lady Chatterley's Lover.
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The key event of Madonna’s childhood is considered to be West’s performance at the school talent evening at the age of 14. In it, an artist covered in green and pink paint in a top and shorts shocked the audience by performing a dance to the famous song “Baba O'Riley” The group Who. The reputation of an exemplary excellent student was hopelessly damaged, the performance was discussed for a long time in the city, and the father put his 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 years old, which was acceptable for modern jazz choreography. Choreographer Christopher Flynn was her greatest influence. Flynn took her time and took the student 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 excellent student's appearance changed towards a sloppy bohemian look, scaring off others.
Biographers Andersen, Taraborrelli and Lucy O'Brien point out that although at age 14, Madonna had a reputation as a slut, but only at the age of 15 she had her first sexual experience with 17-year-old Russell Long, which the whole school and her father learned about at Ciccone’s suggestion. According to Lucy O’Brien, the fight against stereotypical attitudes towards women based on the “virgin/whore” criterion and the desire to tell others about her love experiences became the main themes of the singer’s work.
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Madonna Ciccone graduated from school in 1976 a few months before her final exams. She continued her dance education on a full-time basis at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where Flynn received a professorship. The choice of a “frivolous” profession put a rift in the singer’s relationship with her father, who wanted his daughter to become a doctor or lawyer. The father believed that his daughter could find better use for her excellent certificate, which she successfully passed IQ test(according to biographers Christopher Andersen (1991) and Randy Taraborrelli (2000) The singer’s result 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 only a few, and Madonna moved into a university dormitory full of hopes for her brilliant future. According to teachers and colleagues, she had rare stamina even for a dancer, which was further developed by ballet training, and subsequently allowed her to become less out of breath while performing songs with simultaneous dancing.
According to the memoirs of choreographer Gaia Delang, young Ciccone was “very slender and light, her dance was infectious.” However, in technical terms, the budget Madonna was inferior to many ballerinas, causing their rejection and envy, and the inability to be absolutely the best caused protest and a desire to further stand out, as far as possible in the ballet class - with torn tights or unwashed short hair. In her free time from studying, Madonna visited Detroit clubs, in one of which she met black drummer Stephen Bray, her future collaborator and co-producer.
After a year and a half at the University of Michigan, Madonna attended a master class with the famous New York choreographer Pearl Lang, and began to dream of joining her group. She dropped out of university and moved to New York in 1978, dreaming of one day opening her own dance studio.
Having passed a tough casting, she entered the Lang group, but was far from being in the first lineup, which did not allow her to pay rent. The dancer worked part-time at Dunkin’ Donuts, where she burned a donut oven while dancing behind the counter, and at Burger King, where she also didn’t last, pouring jam on a rude customer. She soon made her debut on the New York stage in Lang's production of I Never Saw Other Butterflies, as a boy from the Jewish ghetto.
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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. At the same time, she worked part-time 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 orally raped by a maniac armed with a knife.
After a mental injury, Madonna Ciccone became absent-minded in her classes and stopped believing in her dance future, even with the troupe of Lang, a student of the iconic Martha Graham.
The artist finally leaves the Lang troupe, her lover Dan Gilroy and spends six months with Hernandez’s tour in France, Belgium and Tunisia. The producers convince her of the prospects of a singing career, 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 fell ill with pneumonia and, after recovery, flew to New York, succumbing to letters and persuasion from her boyfriend Gilroy, who was waiting for her in New York. Gilroy has a huge influence on the transformation of Madonna Ciccone from a dancer to a musician: he teaches how to play drums and electric guitar and the basics of composition. After daily drumming lessons to Elvis Costello's disc, Madonna becomes a pretty good drummer and is accepted into Gilroy's Breakfast Club group. After a few months, the drummer begins to “pull the blanket over herself,” offering her own material and leaves the team along with the guitarist who joined her.
In 1979, she starred in the amateur film “Specific Victim” as a repentant sadomasochist who is raped in the toilet by a maniac. The unsuccessful amateur film was far from pornographic, but at the suggestion 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 Berke, the singer formed the quickly disbanded group Madonna And The Sky, and then created the rock group Emmy. Emmy - from Em, a diminutive of the first letter of the name Madonna (Madonna Ciccone signed and continues to sign her songs as M. Ciccone). Emmy imitated the early Pretenders, and Madonna played guitar in the group and sang her own songs. The singer's ex-boyfriend Stephen Bray sits on drums and with him the Emmy group continues to search for its own direction. In the spring of 1981, Madonna Ciccone meets the owner of the Gotham recording studio, Camille Barbon.
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 - performing on stage in men's pajamas, asking for food from guys she meets, riding only a bicycle and living illegally in a cheap studio.
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At first, Madonna awakens only maternal feelings in the thirty-year-old lesbian Barbon: Camilla rents her ward a place to live, sets a salary of $100 a week and gives money as needed. Ciccone's group makes several demo recordings and plays in small clubs and at student parties.
Barbon unsuccessfully seeks a contract for the singer with a label, but the bosses of the major labels do not want to take risks. Barbon sees the new Chrissie Hynde in the singer, but soon begins to abuse alcohol, be jealous of Madonna towards everyone and cause scenes.
The drummer of Madonna's band, African-American Bray, has been gravitating towards dance music and hip-hop and asks the singer to record something together. After the main rehearsal, they are left alone and write four songs: "Everybody", "Ain't No Big Deal", "Stay" and "Burning Up". By that time, Barbon had already been offering the singer to labels for a year and a half as a new rock star, and the ward decided to secretly distribute a dance cassette with a demo recording at the Dunsteria club in Manhattan, where representatives of labels and the press sometimes dropped by.
Club DJ Mark Kamins is impressed by Madonna's demo recording. He takes the tape and arranges for them to meet with Island label boss 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 sweat heavily due to excitement. Kamins is so annoyed by the failure and immediately, through his acquaintance Michael Rosenblatt, arranges for Ciccone a meeting with the founder of Sire Records, Seymour Stein, who immediately signs her, even while lying 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 does not give permission to release the singer’s early songs.
Already in the 2000s, Barbon confessed to his then alcoholism and forgives Madonna for the offense. Barbon praises her importance in the singer's life, believing that thanks to her Madonna "didn't have to sleep with someone to get on stage," and "although at first there were rumors that someone was investing money in her, eventually they started her take it seriously".
All rights to Madonna's songs up to this demo belong to Gotham Studios and Barbon, and the question arises of what to release as a test single. All the songs on the cassette were co-written, but the friends traded rights - Bray's 100% credit for "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 back side"Everybody" is assumed.
While the release is being prepared, Bray manages to sell “Ain’t No Big Deal” to another studio, which is recording a new vocalist. There is no time for a new recording and “Everybody,” as Madonna wanted, is being released as a single. With zero budget for promotion, they decide not to put the singer’s photo on the cover, so as not to scare off the non-white audience of the “black disco-soul singer.” "Everybody" climbs to No. 3 on the Hot chart Dance Club Songs, and then ranked 107th overall, just shy of the top 100 on Billboard's Hot 100. Management considers this a great result, given the zero PR costs, and wants to make sure that "Everybody" is not a fluke.
At Madonna's request, a more experienced full-time arranger is selected instead of Kamins Warner Bros. Records by 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, their debut album entitled Madonna was released. At first it goes unnoticed, but within a year it reaches number 8 on the Billboard 200 and number 6 in the UK chart. The singles “Borderline” (written by the Lucases), “Lucky Star” (written by Madonna and dedicated to the retired Kamins) and “Holiday” became hits. Madonna considered the disc rather mediocre and was not too happy with working with Lucas, but years later the disc became a post-disco classic.
According to O'Brien, her music on the album sounds like a cross between Pat Benatar and Teena Marie. Madonna is the author of most of the album's songs, but the main commercial success comes from "Holiday" by third-party authors, found by the singer's boyfriend DJ John "Marmalade" Benitez. This influenced the skepticism towards Madonna as an author capable of writing a hit. The singer also received serious criticism for her “girlish” vocals and performance style. Billboard writer Paul Grain made a prediction: “Cyndi Lauper will last a long time, but in six months no one will need Madonna”.
The singer responded to criticism: “People think that if you are sexy, attractive and excite the public, then you simply have nothing more to offer. This is the only image I have formed. It probably looks like this on the outside, and I fit the stereotype, but I do all this completely consciously. I have everything under control and am waiting for people to understand this and be confused.”.
After recording the album, on Stein's recommendation, Freddie Demann, who had previously worked for. Despite initial criticism, in 2013 Rolling Stone named the album one of the 100 best debut albums of all time. On this moment Sales of the Madonna album amount to 10 million copies, but this was greatly facilitated by 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 in first place on the Billboard Hot 100 chart 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 title "Material Girl"(Russian material girl, mercantile girl) is fixed as the singer’s nickname.
In 1984, Madonna performed the “title track” at the first MTV Video Music Awards and, breaking her heel, came out of the situation as follows - she began to kneel and lie on stage in a wedding dress and a belt with the inscription BOY TOY, which shocked the television audience. The song talks about “metaphysical virginity,” and the video, filmed in Venice (the city of Venus), combines sacred and profane images: Leo, the symbol of the patron saint of the city, Evangelist Mark, and the zodiac sign of Madonna Ciccone, the Bride of Christ and a modern, experienced maiden in crosses and fennel. "Like a Virgin" is included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "200 Iconic Songs of All Time" list..
In 1985, the singer starred in an episode of the film “Visual Search”. The film's soundtrack contains "Crazy For You", Madonna's second No. 1 single in the US. Madonna later appears in the film Desperately Seeking Susan and this role is rated positively by critics. The film features the song "Into The Groove" - the singer's first UK No. 1 single, and was written by Madonna Ciccone (with Bray), which gives her good press in the UK. The singer's first tour, The Virgin Tour, took place in the United States in 1985, with the Beastie Boys performing as the opening act. The performances reflect the surge in the singer's popularity at this time: concerts start with halls of 2,000 people, and 3 months later 22,000 spectators gather at Madison Square Garden. Tour calls “Madonnamania”: girls dress en masse “as Susan/Madonna” from the film and clips.
In July 1985, Penthouse and Playboy magazines published black and white photographs of the singer nude, taken in 1979 and subsequently sold by photographer Martin Schreiber.
This causes the first scandal in Madonna Ciccone's newly launched big career, which threatened her career, which she deals with with her own hands. In the midst of criticism at the Live Aid charity concert, while dressed in several layers of outdated clothing, 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, since in a few years it could be used against her. The New York Times editorial with the headline “Naked Photographs.” Madonna: “So what?”” becomes the basis of the film by the singer’s friend Keith Haring. As soon as the scandal with the photographs subsided, in early August the Los Angeles Times disseminated information that the film “A Specific Victim” (1979) with the participation of the artist was pornographic, which was immediately picked up by other publications. In October, the newspaper will write a refutation that, to the “disappointment of fans,” this is not so. In the summer of 1985, on her own birthday, Madonna married actor Sean Penn.
The wedding is accompanied by the invasion of journalists in helicopters during the pronouncing of marriage vows. In his diary he called this day “the most exciting of his life,” noting the guests were “a delightful mixture of celebrities and nonentities.” with dedication to Sean Penn comes out in 1986. Rolling Stone magazine describes it as "sounding from the heart." The record becomes Madonna's producing debut (together with Patrick Leonard) and is the singer's most “gingerbread” and commercially successful release. 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 singer’s iconic ballad “Live to Tell,” written for the film Point Blank. "Live to Tell" becomes Madonna's first No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 as a writer.
Three songs from the album hit the first line of Billboard: “Live to Tell”, “Papa Don’t Preach”, “Open Your Heart”, and the top five included “True Blue” and “La Isla Bonita”. That same year, the Madonna/Bray song “Each Time You Break My Heart” performed by Nick Kamen topped the UK chart, giving Madonna the much-coveted recognition as a successful songwriter.
Madonna - La Isla Bonita
In 1987, Madonna is hospitalized for an X-ray after being hit in the head with a baseball bat. The press is awaiting trial, but the singer is not suing for domestic violence, since 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 of sadomasochistic relationships in the celebrity family. In the same year, the singer starred in the film “Who’s That Girl?”, which failed miserably. However, the success of the film's soundtrack is great - the title track of the same name becomes a No. 1 hit in the US and UK. The New York Times magazine calls the film the worst film of the year. In the same year, he goes on the Who’s That Girl World Tour, which completely compensates for the negative effect of the failed film. Critics praise the performances for their theatricality and "transforming 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, acrobat and clown. The projection on stage of Tamara Lempicka's 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 work for many years. According to authoritative music critic Lucy O'Brien, Madonna is an urban mixture high art with glamor and vulgarity, where she is at the same time a muse, a creator, and a sexy woman. By August 1987, Penn was released early from prison, and in December Madonna filed for divorce for the first time, but unexpectedly withdrew them two weeks later.
In 1988, the singer made her Broadway debut in the production of Move Over., 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 begins to become friends with actress and open lesbian Sandra Bernhard, causing misunderstandings among the public.
The singer and Bernhard appear in identical clothes on David Letterman's show, which leads to publications about the singer's bisexuality. The final separation from her husband occurs in December 1988 after severe beatings described in the official arrest report of Sean Penn. The marriage of the singer and Penn officially ends in January 1989 and the singer withdraws her statement to the police, maintaining friendly relations with her husband due to his hereditary problems with alcohol. In 2003, Penn spoke about Madonna for the first time in an interview with Oprah Winfrey: “She was becoming the biggest star. I just wanted to make a movie and not attract unnecessary attention to myself. I was an embittered young man, I had so many demons that I don’t even know who could have tolerated me back then.”.
At the beginning of 1989, Madonna signed a contract with Pepsi, according to which she new song "Like a Prayer" debuts in the company's advertising. The commercial is harmless and shows the singer's childhood, but the video for the song contains an anti-racist message and many Catholic symbols, including stigmata and burning crosses. The ambiguous relationship between the Madonna heroine and the animated statue of a black saint shocks television viewers and provokes public organizations. The company removes the advertisement from rotation and terminates the contract, but the singer receives her due amount of five million dollars. Vatican officials condemn the video clip, and some cardinals threaten Madonna with excommunication, but it remains a threat. The song was named by the British weekly New Musical Express as the 3rd best in the history of pop music, VH1 put 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 was written and produced in collaboration with Patrick Leonard and Stephen Bray. The singer is producing her second album in a row and it is obvious that she wants to prove that True Blue's success was not an accident. Rolling Stone magazine describes the album as "... as close to art as pop music can get" and included it in its list of the "500 Best Albums of All Time". Leonard calls him a "divorcee" because of the singer's depression due to her painful breakup with Sean Penn. 'Express Yourself' Becomes a Feminist 'Call to Arms' with a “preach of self-respect”, representing the transition from reflection to action. The themes of other songs, as expected, are domestic violence (“Till Death Do Us Parts”), nostalgia for lost relationships with brothers and sisters (“Keep It Together”), dreams of a child (“Dear Jessie”). All songs on the album Like a Prayer were written by Madonna, which makes the album the most personal, since the previous discs contained one or two songs by third-party authors.
Madonna - Like A Prayer
In 1990, the film with Madonna “Dick Tracy” and its soundtrack called I’m Breathless were released. The director of the film was Warren Beatty, who received a refusal from the singer to marry him after a year of dating. I'm Breathless contains songs famous composer Stephen Sondheim and the author duo Madonna-Leonard. For the first time, the singer enters the territory of jazz and the Broadway musical, which critics regard ambiguously. The most successful of I’m Breathless is “Vogue”, which topped the main charts. Recitative “ladies with an attitude; fellows that were in the mood...” written by Madonna on the plane as an illustration of the 30s, but becomes a characteristic of modern times. In Russia it is known as the epigraph of the first chapter of the book “Spiritless”. The title of the book is a partial translation of the name of Madonna's character from the film - "Breathless".
The Blond Ambition World Tour took place in 1990 in support of the albums Like A Prayer and I'm Breathless. Rolling Stone praises the tour for its innovative interweaving of theater, ballet, film and concert on a production level unheard of at the time. The show's central message of juxtaposing masturbation and religious frenzy culminates in a call for a boycott of the singer's performance in Rome.
Madonna tries to justify herself on the spot by giving a great speech at 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 how to live on anyone, I simply describe to the audience my understanding of life, and let them evaluate everything themselves.” The singer avoids excommunication, but the concert is canceled due to low ticket sales. For the concert video of the tour, the singer receives her first Grammy, but she herself does not consider the award a 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 prohibited from being shown on television due to the presence of erotic scenes. "Justify My Love" is the source of several scandals, the first of which is related to plagiarism. Madonna uses the text of a letter she came across from Ingrid Chavez, the then-girlfriend of the song's co-producer Lenny Kravitz, not wanting listeners to attribute it to the fantasies of another woman. The Chicago Sun-Times branded the singer with disgrace with words about the “unprecedented meanness” of stealing the song.
Madonna makes excuses and rewrites the song, replacing the lyrics with quotes from Revelation, but immediately receives accusations of anti-Semitism, which she also has to reject. The unrhymed lyrics of “Justify My Love” about the desire to make love and scandals affect the singer’s self-esteem and author’s vanity, making a qualitative leap in Madonna’s creative search, leading her into “adult” territory for the first time.
In 1991, Sondheim's song "Sooner or Later" from Dick Tracy won an Academy Award and was performed by Madonna at the ceremony as . It is from this moment that the singer is called new Marilyn and begin to compare him with the deceased sex symbol, immediately predicting the same unenviable fate. A documentary about the tour was released the same year and is called “Madonna: Truth or Dare.” The fragment with the joke/bravado “Madonna with a bottle”, outside the context of a party game (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 film 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 ten highest-grossing documentaries of all time, and the New York Times calls the film "a smart, daring, vivid self-portrait."
In 1992, Madonna starred in the film A League of Their Own as a baseball player with the self-explanatory name May Mordabito. For the film, she recorded the song “This Used to Be My Playground,” which became No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. That same year, Madonna founded her own entertainment company, Maverick, a joint venture with Time Warner. The deal provides the singer with record royalties on par with Michael Jackson.
In 1992, the book-photo album “Sex” was published."Sex" contains illustrated sexual fantasies of her alter ego "Mistress Dita" talking to a psychoanalyst. The book is framed in a metal cover as an art object and is intended to be a manifesto. “Sex” sold 1.5 million copies in America alone and caused a flurry of negative reactions in the media and a society fearful of AIDS.
The press holds a multi-page funeral for Madonna's career, considering that she has gone too far. The book "Sex" touches on the themes of masturbation, and draws clear parallels 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: “When you get to the bottom of Sex, like finding a poisonous mushroom, you realize that the one who is called the “new little Piaf” is driven more by a thirst for money than a thirst for sex.”.
“Sex” and the violent reaction to it in society has become the topic of many scientific studies and is considered the most powerful inoculation against the exhibitionistic celebrity/musician in a voyeuristic society. The book has been the most wanted book out of print for several years. After the release of “Sex,” boyfriend Vanilla Ice 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 took second place in the American charts, and the lead single reached third place on the Billboard Hot 100. In the year of release, Erotica was coolly received by critics and listeners due to the “shadow of the book,” but subsequently began 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) did not have the same chart success as the singer's previous works.
In 1993, without a theatrical release, the film “Dangerous Game,” directed by Ferrara and starring Madonna, was released straight to video. The New York Times calls the film "angry and painful, where the pain seems real."
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"Dangerous Game" contains Sarah/Madonna's account of a real-life rape that took place 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.
1993 "The Girlie Show" tour of Europe and South America(instead of the USA and Canada) contains more burlesque, irony and clownery rather than eroticism, which softens the negativity after the release of the book “Sex”, the album Erotica and film roles. A concert in Puerto Rico causes pickets: a singer dressed in military uniform, in response to the audience whistling when a huge American flag appears, holds a Puerto Rican flag in the crotch area. The episode was interpreted ambiguously due to the singer's numerous romantic interests with Puerto Ricans, and was later subjected to scrupulous analysis as an example of the mutual influence of Latin American culture and the United States.
Her sixth studio album, Bedtime Stories, was released in 1994 and became her first Grammy-nominated album. 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 changes 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", the lyrics of which were written by the already recognized Björk, becomes an important milestone. Madonna perfectly masters the “Bjorkian architecture of the text” and lays the foundation for her next albums in it. The relationship with rapper Tupac Shakur ends for a racist reason - his friends “couldn’t believe he was hanging out 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, during the press coverage of this story, 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 became a hit. The album reminds the public a little about Madonna’s talent as a songwriter and producer, which the press had not previously paid attention to amid the scandals. According to Taraborrelli, “for the first time about her career was spoken about more honestly and fairly.” In 1996, the singer starred in the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Evita., where he performs songs from the soundtrack. For the recording, 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 singing with her diaphragm for the first time. The film about , the controversial wife of the Argentine president, 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 UK Singles Chart, and the singer receives a Golden Globe for Best female role in a comedy or musical.
In October 1996, Madonna gave birth to a daughter, Lourdes Maria Ciccone-Leon. 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 separate, and Madonna incurs the wrath of public organizations “for a complete family” and accusations of “pregnancy for the purpose of promoting a film.” The singer baptizes the girl in Catholicism and named her 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 physics lesson, a bridge between science and spirituality” rather than a religious teaching.
Seventh studio album by singer Ray of Light (1998) reflected " 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 album received critical acclaim, and the authoritative music publication Slant Magazine called it “one of the greatest pop masterpieces of the 90s.”
The disc was included in the list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" and took 28th place in the "100 Best Albums of the 1990s" according to Rolling Stone magazine. The release was also accompanied by commercial success: the album topped the national charts in Australia, Canada, the UK and most European countries, and in the USA it finished at number two on the Billboard 200, losing first place to the soundtrack to the film “Titanic”.
Ray of Light has sold over 16 million copies worldwide. Album single "Frozen" the first time in the singer’s discography since “Vogue” (1990) that it reached number one in the UK chart. In the US, the song reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100, where Madonna set the record for the most number of singles to reach number two. On the disc, the singer “looked carefully into the past and thought a lot about the mystical side of existence.” After Ray Of Light, Madonna was again seen as a progressive musician. Evaluating the work, the singer tried in every possible way to praise the “brilliant” producer of the album, William Orbit, but he himself considered his contribution to “her” album to be rather modest. Following the established tradition of a condescending attitude towards pop authors/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 - Frozen
The hits included "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 a song in Sanskrit "Shanti/Ashtangi" and "Ray of Light" wearing an Indian outfit with a dot on his forehead, symbolizing devotion to God, sparked protests from the country's Hindu organizations and accusations of blasphemy.
The singer’s image was influenced by her passion for the book “Memoirs of a Geisha.” Also in 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 became a big hit outside the US and earned Madonna another Grammy for "Best Song Written for a 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 for Sting and his wife Trudie Styler, where she met Guy Ritchie, her future husband and father of her second child. Ritchie was single, dating model Tanya Strecker, and a romantic relationship with the singer began a year later, which included a public bar brawl between Ritchie and Bird. This story later became the basis for Robbie Williams' song “She's Madonna” (2006).
In 2000, the film “Best Friend” starring Madonna was released, for which she recorded a hit "American Pie" and the ballad "Time Stood Still". These songs ended the era of the Ray of Light album. At the beginning of 2000, she became pregnant from someone who worked on the film “ Big jackpot» Guy Ritchie and was forced to move to London with him 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 rave reviews from critics and went to No. 1 in both the UK and the US, repeating the success of Like a Prayer (1989). Under the influence of the disc's co-author and co-producer, Mirve completely changed her sound and began using 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 video for "What It Feels Like for a Girl" was banned from MTV and VH1 due to scenes of violence. For the album, the singer chose grotesque image cowgirls, expressing an ironic attitude towards America of a London resident.
Married Richie on December 22, 2000, the former stepson of a baronet, which automatically ranked the singer among the English aristocracy. The wedding in a Scottish castle took place according to the Presbyterian rite. Soon Madonna became a British citizen. The Michigan native's fake British accent became a source of irritation for Americans and irony for the British. It caught on in spoken language expressions “Madonna syndrome” and “Madge complex”. Life on his own estate, Ashcombe, 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 drama. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, Madonna excluded from the show the moment of shooting a samurai with a gun, according to the plot, who was trying to cut off her head. For the first time since the early 1980s, the singer began accompanying on guitar, and was nominated for an 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 her cameo role in the film, the singer received the Golden Raspberry Award, 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 Award for Worst Song. Movie "Gone" was critically panned and released straight to DVD in the UK. At the moment, this is Madonna's last film as an actress.
The ninth album, American Life, was released in 2003. and topped the charts in the US and UK. American Life was written and produced by Madonna in collaboration with Mirvais in a minimalist concept. American Life quickly lost ground and became the worst seller of its career at that time. The album received mixed reviews from critics due to its theme of debunking the "American Dream" in light of 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan. Later it was rated more highly. In addition to “Die Another Day” (2002), the singles included “American Life”, “Hollywood”, “Love Profusion”, “Nothing Fails”.
In France it was a great success due to the pacifist mood, since this country did not participate in the operation against the Taliban. The video for the title song featured a parody of American President George W. Bush and his kiss with Saddam Hussein.
After accusations of lack of patriotism, there was a ban on playing Madonna's new songs on American radio stations. A week before the release, she said that “there is no better time for a pacifist video than during war.” At the last moment, she withdrew the clip, stating that she “did not want to embarrass people whose relatives are fighting in Afghanistan,” which did not affect the ban. The French kiss with Spears caused a scandal in the press due to its hint of lesbianism. The singer justified herself by the logic of the kiss in the stage images she performed.
Madonna and Britney Spears - kiss
In 2004, the Re-Invention World Tour took place in support of American Life. In contrast, the Drowned World Tour contained a sufficient number of old hits in a new sound in addition to songs from the new album. The performances received mixed reactions from critics due to the general politicization and open support of Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11. During the tour, a second documentary film, “I’m going to tell you a secret,” was filmed. The film was made in the style of “In Bed with Madonna,” but showed the singer’s passion for “Zohar” and her touching relationship with her children and husband Guy Ritchie. A DVD of the film and live album of the same name was released a year later. According to Lucy O'Brien, the film began the merging of the singer with the image of the righteous woman.
In 2005, Madonna Ciccone suffered an accident at her Wiltshire estate. The new horse unsuccessfully threw the singer to the ground during her first ride. Before the accident in the village, Madonna had completely grown into the role of an English aristocrat (by marriage), a reclusive wife and mother of the family. In addition to the British accent and horse riding, she began drinking ale in local pubs and learned to fish. The singer began hunting 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 this, the singer changed internally and outwardly lost a lot of weight. The album was called Confessions on a Dance Floor and returned Madonna to the leading position in almost all the charts, as well as the title of queen of the dance floor. This happened not least thanks to the mega-hit “Hung Up”, written based on an 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 near death due to a fall from a horse. This was the performance of the classic ballad “Live To Tell” a la Jesus Christ with a crown of thorns on a mirror cross, accompanied by video of children suffering in Africa and quotes from Matthew 25:40. At the end of the issue, addresses of sites for collecting donations for sick African children were shown. This speech caused questions and anger among activists of social movements, which quickly faded due to the spread of the video. the Internet, the singer’s statements and the meaning of the song itself.
All tickets for the tour concerts were sold out, except for the singer's first concert 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 her husband adopted a one-year-old child from Malawi, David Banda. This caused another scandal and a wave of protests against the “purchase” of a child, since the then laws of Malawi, despite 1 million orphans in the country, did not allow adoption by foreign citizens. That same year, Madonna Ciccone produced and narrated a documentary about the disastrous state of affairs in the African country of Malawi, entitled I Am Because We Are, which was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2008.
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In 2007, Madonna Ciccone began to master the new profession of film director, writing the script for a partly autobiographical parable film "Dirt and Wisdom". In the film, the hero tries to promote his rock band, while earning his living by beating up masochists for money and dressing up as. “Dirt and Wisdom” with Evgeny Gudze in the title role was included in the Panorama program at the Berlin Film Festival, 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 Russian swearing brought into the British non-commercial film.
The eleventh album Hard Candy was released in early 2008 and topped the charts in 37 countries, including the US and 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 singer explained the reason for the change in style with her 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 her 2003 anti-war album. The album received mixed reviews from critics for the lack of originality characteristic of previous works, and some crisis of the singer herself, reflected in the provocative cover of the album, which sharply contrasts with the style of “Ray of Light”.
The album's first single was a duet with Timberlake, 4 Minutes. The song 4 Minutes only partially met 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 United States due to low rotation on radio, despite record-breaking sales, the song became her record 13th No. 1 single in the UK. A hit in Europe was the song "Give It 2 Me", performed with Pharell Williams.
The tour in support of the album was called the Sticky and Sweet Tour and did not contain provocative material. Sticky and Sweet Tour broke the tour success record for solo artist, previously established by Madonna herself with the previous Confessions Tour. The book by the singer's gay brother Christopher Ciccone, Life with My Sister Madonna, published against her will in early 2008, showed Guy Ritchie as an obvious homophobe and a slippery guy 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, whose desire to adopt 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 third collection of Madonna's best songs was released. Celebration, which ended the singer’s relationship with the Warner Bros. label. The singer's boyfriend, model Jesus Luz, starred in the video for the song "Celebration". In 2010, Madonna exclusively granted the rights to her entire catalog of songs to the television series Glee. In April 2010, the episode "The Power of Madonna" was released. The episode received the singer's approval, 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 the youth clothing brand Material Girl. 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 screenplay. The film received scathing criticism, but Andrea Riseborough's performance as Wallis Simpson and the film's soundtrack drew rave reviews. The continuation of the “Russian” theme in Madonna’s second film was noted: the main character’s name is Eugene and he is depicted as an intelligent, positive character.
At the beginning of 2012, Madonna's song “Masterpiece” from the film “Us. We Believe in Love" was recognized as the best at the Golden Globe Awards.
Madonna - Masterpiece
On February 5, 2012, Madonna performed at halftime of the 46th Super Bowl, which aired on NBC. She sang a medley of “Vogue,” “Music,” “Open Your Heart,” “Express Yourself,” “Like a Prayer” and a 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 television program in US history. Patriotic critics noted that the singer inappropriately mocked the “sacredness” of the Super Bowl for Americans by using images of the goddess Isis/Cleopatra performed by Elizabeth Taylor. In the US, the new single set a record for top ten hits for a solo artist, breaking the achievement. The single was a flop 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 record of a painful divorce, and The Telegraph called it a "late-break 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 album, without a promotional tour in support, became the worst-selling album in the singer's career.
The MDNA Tour began on May 31 and became the most successful tour of 2012. The concerts caused a public outcry in the United States due to the use of imitation weapons on stage. Billboard once again named Madonna the record holder for income music industry- $34.6 million per year. In 2013, Madonna received 3 Billboard Music Awards. In August 2013, Forbes magazine named the singer the top celebrity earner of the year, earning $125 million.
On September 24, Madonna released a 17-minute short film“secretprojectrevolution”, performing a cover version of Elliott Smith’s song “Between the Bars” at the premiere. The film was billed as a human rights film and was the result of a collaboration between director Madonna and 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” site. The film became the first project within the framework of a joint campaign between Madonna and VICE called “ArtForFreedom” (Russian: Art for Freedom). The film was accompanied by the launch of Madonna's magazine of the same name on the Flipboard service.
In December 2014, there was an unexpected leak on the Internet of 13 demo versions of compositions that were recorded during work on the thirteenth studio album Madonnas. The artist was furious at what happened, later leaving several threatening messages addressed to the pirates. A few days after the leak, on December 20, Madonna officially announced her thirteenth long play, called Rebel Heart. In connection with the pre-order of the album, six new songs out of a possible 19 have become available, including the lead single "Living for Love". The album was released on March 10, 2015.
In the 2016 presidential elections, she supported her distant relative -. Two weeks before the election, she announced a performance by 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 mass protest “Women's March,” Madonna twice used obscene language towards opponents of the action. In a performance that followed the speech with songs like “Express Yourself” and “Human Nature,” she changed the latter line to an expletive directed at the 45th president, with whom she had been in open feud since the early 1990s. The singer was criticized for swearing and speaking out loud “anti-patriotic” thoughts about the explosion of the White House. There was no prosecution due to the general context of the speech, in which she also quoted the Anglo-American poet Auden.
Since September 2017, Madonna moved permanently to Lisbon, where her adopted son David Banda successfully qualified for the Benfica FC football academy.
Madonna's height: 163 centimeters
Madonna's personal life:
Madonna's first husband was an actor and director, an Oscar winner. Sean Penn. They got married in 1985, and 4 years later Madonna decided to get a divorce - they often argued, and her husband also beat her.
On the set of Dick Tracy, Madonna began an affair with the director and leading actor, Hollywood legend Warren Beatty. However, she did not marry the artist.
Her daughter's father became her Cuban boyfriend Carlos Leon in 1996 (the diva would break up with him six months later). Madonna's daughter was named Lourdes, she has already celebrated her 18th birthday, and she has a joint business with her mother - her own clothing line.
Madonna and Carlos Leon
In mid-1998, together with her then friend Andy Bird, the singer attended a party with Sting. There, a meeting took place with director Guy Ritchie, a British man who would later become her husband and change Madonna’s personal life, and very much so.
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
Madonna discography:
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 - Susan's Search in Vain
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 tell you my secrets
2002 - I am because we are
2008 - Dirt 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 Wallet"
"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 in the city of Bay, Michigan. Currently height 162 cm, weight 54 kg. Bust (figure) parameters and dimensions (girth): chest volume 92 cm, waist volume 61 cm, hips volume 87 cm. Shoe size feet 39. Eye color green. Hair color is light brown. By religion she is a Kabbalist, formerly a Catholic.
Ciccone's father Silvio is an engineer at Chrysler and General Motors. After the death of his wife (Madonna Fortin), citizen Ciccone married the maid Gustafson Joan, who subsequently gave birth to two children.
Ciccone's mother Madonna Fortin (Madonna Fortin Ciccone, born in 1933) is a technical engineer in the X-ray room. She is a French Canadian by nationality. By religion she is a Jansenist (French Catholic movement). She died in 1963 from breast cancer (probably due to radiation exposure at work).
There are five brothers and sisters.
She studied at St. Andrew's, St. Frederick's, West High School, Adams High School in Rochester, and the University of Michigan. Since 1973 she studied ballet and choreography.
Since 1978 she has lived in New York. She worked as a dancer for Pearl Lang. She worked part-time in eateries and as a model for filming. In 1979, she was noticed by producers Perrelin and Van Lieu and collaborated with them in Europe for a year.
She was a drummer in the band Breakfast Club. Then, in 1980, she founded her own group, Madonna and the Sky, later Emmy. Since 1981, Barbon collaborated with Camille, who became her manager.
Since 1982 he has been collaborating with Stan Seymour. As a result, cooperation with Warner Brothers continued right up to 2009. The first album entitled “Madonna” was released in 1983. She received all kinds of Grammys (as many as 7!) and Golden Globes. There were also golden raspberries. The song of the same name, from the second album, “Like a Virgin,” was included in the two hundred most iconic songs in the Rocknroll 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 2nd by VH1.
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 pride of place a prize place in some chart.
She starred in Specific Victim, Visual Search, Desperate Search for Susie, Who's That Girl, Dick Tracy, and the documentary Madonna. Truth or Dare" (in our box office "In Bed with Madonna"), in " Dangerous game”, in “Body as Evidence”, “Best Friend”.
In 2007, she filmed “Dirt and Wisdom” with the vocalist of the group “Gogol Bordello” Nikolaev Evgeniy Aleksandrovich, better known under the pseudonym Evgeniy 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 lived with Dan Gilroy (the head of the little-known rock band Breakfast Club).
In the same 1979, she lived with Stephen Bray, a drummer.
In 1983, she lived with John Benitez, nicknamed “Marmalade.”
From 1985-08-16 (this is her birthday, by the way) until January 1989, she was married to Penn Sean.
According to unconfirmed information, in 1988 she had a relationship with Bernhard Sandra (Sndra Bernhard, 1955-06-06).
In 1990, she lived 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, on the 14th day, actor and fitness instructor Leon Carlos gave birth to a daughter, Leon Lourdes Maria Ciccone (to put it simply, Lola Leon).
In 1998, she lived with Andy Bird, an actor and screenwriter from the UK.
From 2000 to 2008 behind Richie Guy. In 2000, in August, on the 11th day, she gave birth to her son, Richie Roco. There is also Richie Ciccone's son, David Banda, adopted on 2008-05-28 (born 2005-09-24) and Ciccone Cifundo's daughter, Mercy James, adopted on 2009-06-12 (born 2005).
Since 2010, he has also been cohabiting with break performer Zeba Brahim.
1. Salma Hayek - the Hollywood actress was 40 years old when she gave birth to her daughter Valentina Paloma Pino. The girl's father is French billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault.
2. Halle Berry gave birth to her second child, a boy named Maceo, at the age of 47. “It was the biggest surprise of my life,” she told CNN.
3. Julianne Moore gave birth to her second child, daughter Liv, when she was 41 years old.
4. Nicole Kidman gave birth to her first child, daughter Sunday Rose, at 41.
5. Mira Sorvino and her husband Chris Backus have four children. Mira gave birth to the youngest of them, daughter Lucia (pictured), at the age of 44.
6. Marcia Cross, an actress known for the TV series “Desperate Housewives,” gave birth to twins, Eden and Savannah, at almost 45 years old.
7. Madonna gave birth to her son Rocco a few days before her 42nd birthday.
8. Gwen Stefani gave birth to her son Apollo at the age of 44.
9. Actress Kelly Preston, wife of John Travolta, gave birth to son Ben at the age of 48.
10. Actress Geena Davis, at the age of 46, gave birth to a daughter, Alizeh, and two years later, twins, Kiana and Kaiisa.
11. Celine Dion. The singer gave birth to twins Eddie and Nelson at the age of 42.
12. Annette Bening gave birth to her youngest daughter, Ella, at the age of 42.
13. Kim Basinger gave birth to daughter Ireland Eliesse at 41.
14. Marcia Gay Harden was 44 years old when she gave birth to twins.
15. Singer Mariah Carey gave birth to twins in 2011, when she was 41 years old.
16. Uma Thurman, star of the film Kill Bill, gave birth to her third child at the age of 42.
17. Helen Hunt gave birth to her daughter Makeny Lei Gordon Canahan at the age of 40.
18. Cherie Blair - wife former prime minister Great Britain's Tony Blair became a mother for the fourth time at the age of 45.
19. Jennifer Connelly gave birth to daughter Agnes Lark at the age of 40.
20. English actress Thandie Newton, known for the film “Mission: Impossible 2,” gave birth to her third child at the age of 41.
21. Eva Mendes gave birth to her first child at the age of 40.
22. Susan Sarandon gave birth to son Jack Henry at the age of 42, and son Miles Guthrie at the age of 45.
23. Brooke Shields gave birth to daughter Grier at the age of 41.
24. Meryl Streep gave birth fourth child at the age of almost 42 years.
25. Courteney Cox - star of the series "Friends" - gave birth to her first child at 41 years old.
26. Beverly D'Angelo, at 49, gave birth to twins Anton and Olivia Pacino, whose father is her ex-partner Al Pacino.
27. Jane Seymour gave birth to twins, John Stacy Keach and Christopher Stephen Keach, when she was 44 years old.
28. Emma Thompson gave birth to a daughter named Gaia Romilly Wise at the age of 40.
29. Actress Amanda Peet gave birth to her third child at the age of 42.
30. The famous model Elle Macpherson, who has two children from a previous marriage (she gave birth to her youngest son at the age of 39), got married for the second time in 2013. She is now 51 years old, and she and her husband, businessman Jeffrey Sofer, are planning a child together.
Singer Madonna (full name Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone) has retained the undisputed title of Queen of Pop for the third decade in a row. Along with the star’s natural talent and high performance, her appearance also played a significant role in this - at over 50, she looks at most 35-40!
Of course, this fact could not help but give rise to numerous discussions about Madonna’s possible plastic surgeries, although the singer herself categorically denies any rumors about visits to surgeons.
To create a more or less objective picture, we will try to put together assumptions, facts, photographs of the star before and after the proposed corrections, as well as the opinions of eminent specialists.
What kind of plastic surgery did Madonna have?
Journalists and fans attribute several plastic surgeries to Madonna at once - most often we are talking about and - as well as regular “” and hardware procedures. It is worth noting that the first such assumptions appeared at the beginning of the two thousandths: until that time, there were no doubts about the natural origin of her appearance.
Obviously, through sports and diets, which the star definitely knows a lot about, it is quite possible to slow down the aging process, but it is unlikely to completely stop time. But this is exactly what happened to Madonna at the turn of the millennium, as her photos eloquently testify to.
The secret of Madonna's youth: plastic surgery or cosmetology?
It is quite possible that the singer was pushed to radical methods of rejuvenation by her married life with director Guy Ritchie, who is 10 years younger than her. But another version seems more plausible: when the relationship with her husband began to crack, Madonna became seriously concerned about the imminent need to re-arrange her personal life - which was the impetus for her visit to the surgeon.
Her most enchanting appearance was at the 2007 Oscars (shortly before her divorce from Richie) - the incredible youth and freshness emanating from the singer gave food for thought to both fans and experts in the field of plastic surgery.
Of course, the wonderful transformation of the star could be attributed to successful makeup, the play of light and computer processing of photographs, but over the next few years, Madonna’s appearance did not change at all - in a variety of settings and angles, she remained just as young and attractive.
“Looking at a woman her age, you expect to see wrinkles in the forehead and eyebrows beginning to sag,” English commented on the star’s new look plastic surgeon Adrian Richards. The absence of these age factors, in his opinion, indicates that Madonna was carried out. However, Richards admits that the singer did without plastic surgery - a similar result can be obtained after several hardware lifting procedures in combination with or.
Another eminent specialist, Apostolos Gaitanis, drew attention to the jaw of the star. “Her jaw line has a very clear contour, which clearly confirms the hypothesis of plastic surgery. This effect is achieved by a slight tightening, during which excess skin is eliminated,” he explained.
However, the hypothesis about a combination of cosmetic procedures seems more likely, especially considering Madonna’s busy touring schedule, which excludes the possibility of long-term post-operative rehabilitation.
Madonna, Botox and “beauty injections”
If the question of Madonna’s plastic surgery is still open, then neither fans nor experts have any doubts that the star regularly undergoes cosmetic injections: just look at how her wrinkles were miraculously smoothed out in the same 2006-2008 years nasolabial folds.
According to the American expert on “star plastic surgery” Anthony Youn, the singer underwent a whole range of anti-aging injections: to eliminate eyebrow wrinkles and fillers based on filling the nasolabial folds and cheekbones. “I think that her plump lips, which do not become thinner with age is the result (of injections of one's own fat cells from the abdomen or buttocks),” he added.
“Madonna has found the perfect balance between her body and face. Given the low percentage of subcutaneous fat, it was easy to overdo it with fillers, which would completely disrupt the overall proportions,” American plastic surgeon Terry Dubrow admired the star. Unfortunately, this joy was a little premature.
It is known that the star visited the clinic of the modern “Botox guru” and, most likely, it was thanks to him that the first injections were so successful. Other sources indicate that the singer was a regular client of the famous "Dr. Hollywood". However, the results of further transformations turned out to be extremely far from perfect (perhaps, having decided to refuse the services of eminent masters, she miscalculated in choosing a new one).
As a result, like some other fans of injections, such as and, Madonna slightly overdid it with fillers - as a result, her face began to look swollen and wrinkled. Getting rid of this effect, called “pillow face,” will not be so easy, and whether the star will be able to find the strength to refuse new “pillow faces” is a big question.
Madonna and her hands
Despite the fact that Madonna's face still makes her look much younger than her age, the singer's hands give away her age. Thin skin and prominent large veins are not the most aesthetically pleasing sight, but for unknown reasons the star is in no hurry to see a cosmetologist, preferring to hide her hands from photo lenses with the help of gloves, which have become an almost integral part of her image.
Meanwhile, it is not difficult to get rid of this problem with the help of the much-loved Madonna. Another, no less effective option is lipofilling. Of course, it will not be possible to completely eliminate age-related changes, but at a minimum, the imbalance between the face and hands can be eliminated literally in one session.
Did Madonna get breast augmentation?
In 2008, the same Anthony Yun noticed that Madonna’s breasts had noticeably increased in size: “It seems that instead of a second one, she now has at least a third one, and quite possibly - thanks to the operation. For women of her constitution, the third size is uncharacteristic.”
The singer’s press attache hastened to refute this assumption, emphasizing that the star had not performed any operations or other rejuvenating procedures, except for harmless ozone therapy. Madonna herself spoke at greater length. "If I do plastic surgery“I will not hold a press conference on this matter,” she said. “In addition, like other women, I sometimes think about plastic surgery and do not exclude this possibility for myself.”
