Madonna

In 1976 she won a four-year dance scholarship and moved to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, but in 1978 she dropped out of college and moved to New York, where she endured extreme poverty (and a rape) but managed to attend Martha Graham's dance school. She also played in some low-budget movies and modeled for male magazines.

A typical "animal" of Soho’s punk Bohemia, she was selected by farsighted record executives to represent the generation of young drifters who frequented the off-scene discos. The first single, Everybody (1982), became a cult hit in Manhattan, both for its rhythm-and-blues grit and for its equally compelling video clip.

Madonna (Sire, 1983) did not have much else to rely on, musically speaking, but with Lucky Star (1983) the punkette began to sing about the moral and material miseries of New York’s garrets in a long series of songs (Reggie Lucas’ Borderline, 1984; Holiday, 1984; Physical Attraction, 1984), which displayed her sexuality with brazen candor, managing for the first time to fuse the hedonism of Mick Jagger with that of Donna Summer—that is, the rocker’s and the disco-lady’s.

Like A Virgin (Sire, 1984) signaled a change of mood toward a more intimate style, underscored by Material Girl, Like A Virgin (premiered at a Keith Haring art show), and especially Jon Lind’s Crazy For You.Personaggio tipico della Boheme punk di Soho, venne selezionata da discografici lungimiranti per rappresentare la generazione di giovani sbandati che frequentava le discoteche off. Il primo singolo, Everybody (1982), divenne un cult hit di Manhattan, sia per la grinta rhythm and blues sia per l'altrettanto trascinante video-clip.

Madonna (Sire, 1983) non aveva molto altro a cui affidarsi, musicalmente parlando, ma con Lucky Star (1983) la punkette prese a cantare le miserie morali e materiali delle soffitte newyorkesi in una lunga serie di canzoni (Reggie Lucas' Borderline, 1984; Holiday, 1984; Physical Attraction, 1984; che esibivano con franca spavalderia la sua sessualita`, riuscendo a fondere per la prima volta l'edonismo di Mick Jagger e quello di Donna Summer, ovvero quello del rocker e quello della disco-lady.

Like A Virgin (Sire, 1984) segnalo` un cambiamento d'umore, verso uno stile piu` intimista, sottolineato da Material Girl, Like A Virgin (premiered at a Keith Haring art show) e soprattutto Jon Lind's Crazy For You.

Her image as a "fake" virgin was enhanced by fashion photographer Steven Meisel. In 1984 Madonna performed at the first ever MTV Video Music Award wearing a wedding dress costume and dancing around a massive wedding cake.

From this point on, Madonna established herself as a “ballad singer” capable of updating typical adolescent themes for a more adult generation, eliminating the romantic rhetoric of the girl groups in favor of a far more risqué public autobiography, which culminated in the album True Blue (Sire, 1986). Into The Groove, Stephen Bray’s True Blue, Pat Leonard’s Live To Tell, and Brian Elliot’s Papa Don’t Preach were the hits of that year.

In this way Madonna defined a dramatic personality that is cynical and detached according to new youth customs, grounded in a background of sexual promiscuity and early independence. Born at the intersection of punk culture and disco culture, and a witness to the revolution in adolescent mores, the Madonna myth is essentially an update of the figure of the romantic, fatalistic heroine.

Madonna was nonetheless part of a process of revision of the pop song that radically changed the style, melody, rhythm, arrangement, and atmosphere of existential singing, becoming a milestone in the evolution that led from the Parisian chansonniers to Berlin cabaret and from folksingers to singer-songwriters.

Her songs are rhythm and blues numbers modernized by synthetic, polyrhythmic beats, enlivened by eccentric electronic arrangements (mainly thanks to Stephen Bray or Pat Leonard), and sung with a shrill, girlish voice that could not be farther from the hoarse roars of great Black vocalists and at the same time has little in common with the androgynous androids of disco music. Her Latin hip-hop evolved over time (Open Your Heart, 1986; Where’s The Party, 1986; Who’s That Girl, 1987; Commotion, 1987; Isla Bonita, 1987, again with Patrick Leonard; Dear Jessie, 1989), reaching its sublimation in the chanteuse of Vogue (1990).

Her eccentric and scandalous poses have earned her no small trouble with moralist associations and with rock critics themselves. In fact, Madonna represents one of the last great performers in whom art and life merge and blur. The sarcastic, nihilistic edge of her rhythm and blues, though paired with technological arrangements and million-dollar productions, reflects the casual and amoral attitude of much of the “burned-out” youth of intellectual ghettos—equally at ease with street life and the glamour of success.

Madonna can in fact claim to have addressed, sharply if crudely, thorny themes such as child abuse (Live To Tell), abortion (Papa), and sexual desire (Crazy), building dramatic atmospheres around them.

Not least, Madonna is the queen of multi-media publicity: she adapts the stereotype of the Hollywood star to the information and image society and builds her own myth through video clips, short commercials, and off-beat cinema. Choreographer and fashion designer of the lingerie era, Madonna adapts above all the “total” musicals of Busby Berkeley (in the role once held by Fred Astaire) and the fatal melodramas of Josef von Sternberg (in the role once held by Marlene Dietrich) to the information age.

For better or worse, the 1980s were Madonna’s decade in terms of cultural trends. Each of her album-events filled page after page of magazines—and, uniquely, both women’s magazines and underground fanzines. No one more than her can be considered a truly “universal” diva, in the sense that her myth (whether interpreted positively or negatively) embraces all social strata and all ages.

She married actor Sean Penn on her 27th birthday but their marriage ended in 1988.

Like A Prayer (Sire, 1989), her “divorce album,” continues the sophistication of the dance song and the assimilation of 1950s stylistic elements with Like a Prayer (a collaboration with Patrick Leonard), Express Yourself and Cherish (again Leonard); but at the same time Madonna pursues a more devious path, one that often escapes the masses, in which she mirrors her private life, as if exorcising her own (numerous and boisterous) inner demons. The formal perfection of the dance tracks contrasts with the insecurity, self-pity, and (worse) self-mockery that pervades many lyrics. An archetypal pop icon, an archetypal post-modern product, Madonna is also and above all the archetypal post-feminist woman; indeed, her universe expresses the icy cynicism of her generation. Like them, Madonna is increasingly a woman without a man, a woman without feelings, a woman without emotions; whereas songwriters of the past had expressed above all a romantic spirit toward the opposite sex, Madonna is an androgynous figure forced to look elsewhere for the utopia that keeps her alive.

The aura of the femme fatale (played in her films), of the erotic bombshell (embodied in the many imitations of Marilyn Monroe’s look), and of the Broadway diva (displayed in the colossal choreographies of her tours) actually originates in the private fantasies of Madonna Ciccone the woman, which then become a morbid desire to appropriate the myths of others. Vogue, taken from I’m Breathless (Sire, 1990), is the quintessence of her narcissism: it elevates the “pose” to a synonym for self-realization, and the poseur to the epitome of inner balance, harmony with the outside world, and the end of worries. It is no coincidence that Madonna is always reluctant to let herself be seen as she is; she prefers to communicate through films and videos, which she can manipulate artificially. It is no coincidence that “her” autobiographical film “Truth or Dare” recalls the circus-like atmospheres of Fellini’s autobiographical films.
And if Vogue is nothing more than the structure of a song without the song, that is the very foundation of Madonna’s art. It is an art of fantasies, not of content; of chameleonic transformations, not psychological depth; a fashion gala, not a sociological essay. Justify My Love, if anything, will be a track made only of sensual whispers, in which the music itself has become superfluous (the video is an anthem to voyeurism, sadomasochism, and bisexuality).

But Madonna’s behavior—like Dylan’s and that of many other mythomaniacs—arises mainly from a combination of the need to attract attention and the inability to control her instincts: both the radical-feminist posturing and the pornographic exhibitionism, far from belonging to a strategic design or ideological logic, are the result of these weaknesses. As with many other cultural geniuses (from Genet to Warhol, from Cage to Dylan), the main instinct is not so much to express oneself as to react against the stupidity and conformity of one’s audience, even to the point of mocking its taboos and offending its most sacred values.

This does not prevent Madonna from being a great manager of herself (as shown by the sixty-million-dollar contract she signed with Time Warner in 1992 to form her own company, Maverick) and a great genius of mass communications (as shown by the publication of the book of photographs *Sex*, also in 1992, so heavily publicized that several bookstores charged one dollar to the crowds of curious onlookers who only wanted to leaf through it). Madonna understood that whoever controls the image controls power.

The victim and the executioner are the two “egos” battling for control of Madonna’s life: the fiercely emancipated and independent woman and the unscrupulous capitalist who perpetuates male stereotypes; the artist who helps champion the heroic causes of her time and the speculator who cynically appropriates the symbols of the suffering of the marginalized (from AIDS patients to homosexuals, from Black people to young girls).

As a cultural barometer of her time, Madonna has few rivals, her art being the epitome of the post-modern: to control her own myth, Madonna must continually reinvent her personality, borrowing each time a new myth from the collective imagination. Ultimately, Madonna’s myth is the myth of myth—the “meta-myth.” Her songs are therefore epigrams to be deciphered in order to understand the power of songs. More than a “material girl,” Madonna is a “metatextual girl.”

Erotica (Maverick, 1992), masked as an apology for sex, is perhaps the most sincere confession of the crisis the woman is going through: far from being the female counterpart to the macho lewdness of rappers (although it *is* rap, and uses rap’s double-entendre techniques, and indulges in rap’s brash and provocative attitude), the songs have a more dramatic feeling, thanks to harmonic frameworks (designed by producer and co-author Shep Pettibone) that are minimal and linear (exemplified by Deeper And Deeper); and the singer’s grandiose declamation (the opposite of the petulant girl of her beginnings) collapses into desperate accents, favoring a melancholic register that would be more suited to singing the romantic disappointments of menopause (up to the classic “noir” atmosphere of the title track).
In the end, even the transformation from “boy toy,” the male’s sexual plaything, to man-eater seems to bring her no joy, and the tirades against former lovers (Thief Of Hearts and Words) even sound like regret for having lost them. Erotica is a woman alone looking at herself in the mirror. Janis Joplin said she felt as if she had made love to a million people; Madonna masturbates in front of many more.
Whatever the real theme of the album, once again Madonna confirms her underlying strategy: to invent the ethos that her music epitomizes. Madonna succeeds because, unlike others, she is a diva who easily identifies with her audience, having once been part of it. In fact, what is unusual in Madonna’s case is not so much her brazen and defiant attitude (mainly the product of a more angry social climate) as her ability to propose avant-garde politics (normally restricted to an intellectual elite) to a mass market.
Rain once again climbs the charts.

Bedtime Stories (Maverick, 1994) is perhaps her most underrated album. If nothing else, it is the first one whose theme is music itself rather than some risqué subject. For the first time, Madonna is acting as a musician, not as a provocateur. Secondly, she abandons the digital techniques that had made the previous album a perfect clockwork mechanism, and she rediscovers the physicality of music. The result is that Madonna sacrifices some of her melodicism in favor of “groove,” of pure danceability. This is a very “Black” Madonna (soul, gospel, funk, disco, even jazz). Take A Bow, I’d Rather Be Your Lover, and especially Don’t Stop are concentrated doses of dance music. Bedtime Stories and Forbidden Love display sophisticated arrangements. Secret is perhaps the most “songlike” of the songs. Madonna resumes her role as risqué confidante only in Survival and Human Nature.

The boom of electronic dance music brings her back to the surface as well. Something To Remember (Maverick, 1995), a collection of her most famous ballads, completes her transformation from “bad girl” to an improbable blend of diva, intellectual, and priestess.

On Ray Of Light (Maverick, 1998) the singer seems dangerously poised between New Age spirituality and high technology, but, as always, she pulls it off with her chameleonic agility. Drowned World – Substitute For Love, Swim, and The Power Of Goodbye translate Eastern philosophy (indeed, they are not songs but trance states) and dive into the post-industrial subconscious through a reckless fusion of femininity, motherhood, reflections on art, and Zen. In a more documentary manner, Shanti adopts Indian percussion and scales, and Frozen, almost unintentionally, establishes itself as a world-music classic for all time, thanks to a striking blend of fatalistic melody, gusts of electronics, Arabic percussion, and apocalyptic symphonism. Hidden in these magical atmospheres are some of the most captivating melodies of her career.
At the same time, the songs rely on delicate electronic music: the arrangement of one of the most melodic ballads, Nothing Really Matters, is a small electronic poem; Candy Perfume Girl makes creative, almost industrial use of electronics; Little Star floats in fairy-tale harmonies (similar to Björk’s Hyper-Ballad).
Finally, there is Madonna the club diva: the soft, dreamlike techno of Skin, the driving drum-and-bass train of Sky Fits Heaven, always with an existential tone and exotic arrangement; and above all there is Ray Of Light, another of her masterpieces, even though it is essentially a blazing revision of Donna Summer’s classic I Feel Love. The fusion of these facets creates a unique style.
Ever brilliant at absorbing every new musical trend, thanks also to the help of producers such as William Orbit, Marius DeVries, Craig Armstrong, and Patrick Leonard, Madonna—naturally—once again perfectly meets the needs of her audience: mature women, past their punk phase, who are discovering the problems of motherhood and eternity. The album begins with the line “I traded fame for love.” There could hardly be a more dishonest line, but this might truly be the most “naked” album of her career. Had it not been signed by Madonna, many critics would have considered this an avant-garde work.

Without almost letting anyone notice, Madonna was breaking every sales record for female performers (more than one hundred million albums by the end of 1998), and was brushing up against the records of Elvis Presley, Paul McCartney, and Michael Jackson—without ever having stooped to their level.

Madonna was still the best-selling female recording artist of all time at the turn of the 21st century. A mediocre singer, she was better understood as a performance artist than as a pop star, a descendant of Carolee Schneemann rather than of Joni Mitchell. Her genius for controversy and provocation (Martin Amis called her a “scandal addict”) overshadowed her calculated determination to be a star. the social value of her "performance". She worked hard, she didn’t smoke or drink or do drugs. Whatever her routine might be worth in artistic terms, she threw herself into making it work. Her message was always confused: that a virgin is a whore, that the line between bad girl and good girl is blurred, that Marlene Dietrich's cabaret spleen becomes ecstatic self-fulfillment in the age of free sex. She didn't need a message: she was both the medium and the message.

The terrible music on Music (Maverick, 2000) has nothing to do with Madonna growing up or searching for a new style. It is simply a outdated revision of her roots (the best ballad, What It Feels Like For A Girl, sounds like Into The Groove Part Two). Other than the hit Music, that follows in the footsteps of the previous album, very little escapes the early-Madonna routine. The electronic machines of Mirwais Ahmadzai (Impressive Instant) and William Orbit (Runaway Lover) can't rescue what are fundamentally uninspired songs.

American Life (Warner, 2003) manages to be even worse (more trivial, incoherent, incohesive, amateurish) than its predecessor, an almost impossible feat. The bouncy techno of Nobody Knows Me and Hollywood is pure wishful thinking, and Madonna's adult persona, the one displayed in an endless sequence of lullaby-ballads (Intervention, Love Profusion, X-Static Process), as well as in the pathetic gospel of Nothing Fails, is a garbage can of cliches.

At the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, Madonna French-kissed both teen-idols Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.

Madonna, now a British resident (with, suddenly, a strong English accent), converted to studies of the Jewish Kabbala.

Confessions On A Dance Floor (Warner, 2005) sounds like a tribute to the 1980s club scene and to the 1970s disco hits that she grew up with. In a word, it's a tribute of sort to herself. The hit, Hung Up (2005), samples Abba and reinvents Madonna the disco queen one more time. I Love New York homages the town whose ludic soul she embodies. The countless references to hits of the past (Sorry, Future Lovers, Push, ...) do not amount to a postmodernist analysis but simply to nostalgia and cult of (her) personality.

Hard Candy (2008), yet another terrible album, used an impressive cast of producers (Nate "Danja" Hills, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Pharrell Williams) to craft predictable and trivial dance numbers such as Four Minutes. About to turn 50, Madonna is turning into one ugly dumb middle-age woman who is still desperate for sex, perhaps because her private life was such a failure.

Filth and Wisdom (2008) was the first film she directed, followed by W.E. (2012).

Celebration (2009) is a double-disc career retrospective.

Divorced at 53 and the mother of four children, Madonna reenacted her old fantasies on MDNA (2012), but both the veteran producers and the new upstarts had trouble rescuing her inept songwriting. William Orbit came close in the tribal Gang Bang.