Madonna (born Madonna Louise Ciccone on August 16, 1958) is an American recording artist, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, and raised in Rochester Hills, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977, for a career in modern dance. After performing as a member of the pop musical groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her self-titled debut album Madonna in 1983 on Sire Records.

A series of hit singles from her studio albums Like a Virgin (1984) and True Blue (1986) gained her global recognition, establishing her as a pop icon for pushing the boundaries of lyrical content in mainstream popular music and imagery in her music videos, which became a fixture on MTV. Her recognition was augmented by the film Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) which widely became seen as a Madonna vehicle, despite her not playing the lead. Expanding on the use of religious imagery with Like a Prayer (1989), Madonna received positive critical reception for her diverse musical productions, while at the same time receiving criticism from religious conservatives and the Vatican. In 1992, Madonna founded the Maverick corporation, a joint venture between herself and Time Warner. The same year, she expanded the use of sexually explicit material in her work, beginning the release of the studio album Erotica, followed by the publishing of the coffee table book Sex, and starring in the erotic thriller Body of Evidence, all of which received negative responses from conservatives and liberals alike.



In 1996, Madonna played the starring role in the film Evita, for which she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. Madonna's seventh studio album Ray of Light (1998) became one of her most critically acclaimed, recognized for its lyrical depth. During the 2000s, Madonna released five studio albums, all of which reached top position on the Billboard 200 cdt. Departing from Warner Bros. Records, Madonna signed an unprecedented $120 million dollar contract with Live Nation in 2008.

Madonna is ranked by the Recording Industry Association of America as the best-selling female rock artist of the 20th century and the second top-selling female artist in the United States with 63 million RIAA-certified albums; she has sold over 200 million albums worldwide. In 2007, Guinness World Records listed her as the world's most successful female recording artist of all time and she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the following year. Considered to be one of the most influential women in contemporary music, Madonna has been known for continually reinventing her music and image and for retaining a standard of autonomy within the recording industry; she is recognized as an influence among numerous music artists.



Madonna was born in Bay City, Michigan at 7:05 AM on August 16, 1958 to Madonna Louise (née Fortin), who was of French Canadian descent, and Silvio Ciccone, who was a first-generation Italian American Chrysler/General Motors design engineer, originating from Pacentro, Abruzzo, Italy. Madonna is the third of six children; her siblings are Martin, Anthony, Paula, Christopher, and Melanie.

Madonna was raised in the Detroit suburbs of Pontiac and Avon Township (now Rochester Hills). Her mother died of breast cancer at age 30 on December 1, 1963. Then her father married the family's housekeeper, Joan Gustafson, and they had two children; Jennifer and Mario Ciccone. Madonna commented on her father's second marriage: "I didn't accept my stepmother when I was growing up ... In retrospect, I think I was really hard on her." She attended St. Frederick's and St. Andrew's Elementary Schools (the latter is now known as Holy Family Regional School), and after that West Middle School. There she became known for her high GPA - and for her "unusual" behavior, particularly a kind of an underwear fetish: Madonna performed cartwheels and handstands in the hallways between classes, dangled by her knees from the monkey bars during recess, and thought nothing of tugging her skirt up over her desk during class so that all the boys could see her briefs.



Later, she went to Rochester Adams High School, becoming a straight-A student and a member of the cheerleading squad. Madonna received a dance scholarship to the University of Michigan after graduating from high school. She wanted to take ballet lessons and convinced her father to allow her to partake the classes. Her ballet teacher persuaded her to pursue a career in dance, so she left the college at the end of 1977 and relocated to New York City. Madonna had little money at that time and hence lived in squalor, working as a waitress in Dunkin' Donuts and with modern dance troupes. Of her move to New York, Madonna said, "It was the first time I'd ever taken a plane, the first time I'd ever gotten a taxi cab. I came here with $35 in my pocket. It was the bravest thing I'd ever done." While performing as a dancer for the French disco artist Patrick Hernandez on his 1979 world tour, Madonna became romantically involved with the musician Dan Gilroy, with whom she later formed her first rock band, the Breakfast Club, in New York. She sang and played drums and guitar for the band and lived in a converted synagogue in Corona, Queens.[20] However, she departed from them and formed another band called Emmy in 1980, with drummer and former boyfriend Stephen Bray. She and Bray wrote and produced dance songs that brought her to local attention in the New York dance clubs. DJ and record producer Mark Kamins was impressed by her demo recordings, so he brought her to the attention of Sire Records founder Seymour Stein.