Madonna

Thursday, 24 January 2013

Give Me All Your Luvin' (Feat. MIA and Nicki Minaj)

Madonna Live At Paris Olympia 2012 OFFICIAL HD Director's Cut Full Show

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Deitch Projects
Deitch Projects was a contemporary art gallery in New York City founded by Jeffrey Deitch.
Since opening with a performance by Vanessa Beecroft in February 1996, the gallery has presented nearly one hundred and eighteen solo exhibitions and projects, ten thematic exhibitions, and a few public events. It is known as a gallery where many of the most well-known artists of the past decade--Cecily Brown, Inka Essenhigh, Barry McGee, Swoon and Kristin Baker to name a few—began their careers. The gallery closed in Summer 2010.

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Mexico City
Mexico City ( /ˈmɛksɨkoʊ ˈsɪti/; Spanish: Ciudad de México [sjuˈðað ðe ˈmexiko], also known as México D.F., or simply D.F.) is the Federal District (Distrito Federal), capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole. Mexico City is the country's largest city as well as its most important political, cultural, educational and financial center.
As an "alpha" global city Mexico City is one of the most important financial centers in North America. It is located in the Valley of Mexico (Valle de México), a large valley in the high plateaus at the center of Mexico, at an altitude of 2,240 metres (7,350 ft). The city consists of sixteen boroughs.
The 2009 estimated population for the city proper was around 8.84 million people, and has a land area of 1,485 square kilometres (573 sq mi). According to the most recent definition agreed upon by the federal and state governments, the Mexico City metropolitan area population is 21.2 million people, making it the largest metropolitan area in the western hemisphere and the fifth largest agglomeration in the world.

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New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. The city is referred to as New York City or The City of New York to distinguish it from the State of New York, of which it is a part. As a global power city, New York exerts a significant impact upon commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment. The home of the United Nations Headquarters, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has been described as the cultural capital of the world.
Located on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, each of which comprises a state county. The five boroughs—The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island—were consolidated into a single city in 1898. With a Census-estimated 2011 population of 8,244,910 distributed over a land area of just 305 square miles (790 km²), New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. The New York City Metropolitan Area's population is the United States' largest, with 18.9 million people distributed over 6,720 square miles (17,400 km²), and is also part of the most populous combined statistical area in the United States, containing 22.1 million people as of the 2010 Census.

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Pacentro
Pacentro is a comune of 1279 inhabitants of the province of L'Aquila in Abruzzo, Italy. It is a well preserved historic medieval village located in the central part of Italy, several kilometers from the City of Sulmona about 170 km east of Rome. Pacentro has been nominated as one of the "Borghi più belli d'Italia" (the most beautiful villages in Italy).
Pacentro lies in the Apennine Mountain Range on a plateau consisting of small hills 2133 feet (or 650 meters) above sea level. The castle sits on one hill (Colle Castello) at one end of town and the other hill (Colle San Marco) is where the old Church of S. Marco used to sit. The town is just below Mount Morrone and just above the Peligna Valley (Conca Peligna) and the City of Sulmona. Pacentro is part of the Majella National Park (Parco Nazionale della Majella) and is renowned for its springs and fresh mountain water that comes from the snow of the Majella.
The village has documented origins back to the 9th or 10th centuries, but the area was known as a mountain retreat since Roman times.

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Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico (/ˌpɔrtə ˈriːkoʊ/ or /ˌpwɛərtə ˈriːkoʊ/), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Spanish: Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, [esˈtaðo ˈlibɾe asoˈsjaðo ðe ˈpweɾto ˈriko]—literally, "Associated Free State of Puerto Rico"), is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.
Puerto Rico (Spanish for "rich port") comprises an archipelago that includes the main island of Puerto Rico and a number of smaller islands, the largest of which are Vieques, Culebra, and Mona. The main island of Puerto Rico is the smallest by land area of the Greater Antilles. However, it ranks third in population amongst that group of four islands, which also include Cuba, Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti), and Jamaica. Due to its location, Puerto Rico enjoys a tropical climate and also experiences the Atlantic hurricane season.
Originally populated for centuries by indigenous aboriginal peoples known as Taínos, the island was claimed by Christopher Columbus for Spain during his second voyage to the Americas on November 19, 1493. Under Spanish rule, the island was colonized and the indigenous population was forced into slavery and nearly wiped out due to, among other things, European infectious diseases. The remaining population was emancipated by King Charles I in 1520. Spain possessed Puerto Rico for over 400 years, despite attempts at capture of the island by the French, Dutch, and British. The Spanish Crown, in an attempt to keep Puerto Rico from gaining its independence, revived the Royal Decree of Graces of 1815. The decree was printed in three languages — Spanish, English and French — and it fostered the immigration of hundreds of non-Spanish European families.

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Alan Parker
Sir Alan William Parker, CBE (born 14 February 1944) is an English film director, producer, writer and actor. He has been active in both the British cinema and American cinema and was a founding member of the Directors Guild of Great Britain.
Parker was born into a working class family in Islington, North London, the son of Elsie Ellen, a dressmaker, and William Leslie Parker, a house painter. He attended Dame Alice Owen's School. Parker started out as a copywriter for advertising agencies in the 1960s and 1970s and later began to write his own television commercial scripts. His most celebrated and enduring advertising work was when he worked for famed London agency Collett Dickenson Pearce where he directed many award winning commercials, including the famous Cinzano vermouth advertisement, starring Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins, shown in the UK.
His film career began through his association with producer David Puttnam, now Lord Puttnam, when he wrote the screenplay for the feature Melody (1971). Puttnam would later produce a number of Parker's films including Midnight Express (1978). This was a highly controversial film set in a Turkish prison that was lauded by critics and ended up earning a number of Oscar nominations, including Best Director for Parker. He was later nominated for Best Director with Mississippi Burning (1988).

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Alek Keshishian
Alek Keshishian (born 30 July 1964 in Beirut, Lebanon) is a Lebanese-born Armenian film director. He is best known for his 1991 film Madonna: Truth or Dare which was, at the time, the highest-grossing documentary of all time.
Alek was raised in Manchester, New Hampshire in the USA along with his sister, Aleen, a successful talent manager who represents actors such as Orlando Bloom and Natalie Portman, by their Armenian parents Dr. Kevork and Cecil Keshishian. While he was a superb student of math and sciences, and his father wished Alek would follow in his footsteps in medicine, Alek's talent and passion for music, theatre, and dance was too strong. As a youngster, both he and his sister toured with the NH Children's Theatre, American Children's Theatre, and the "I Like the U.S. of A." National Touring Company. While studying at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, he quickly became the program's lead dancer. Before graduating from Harvard University, he co-produced the then 137-year Harvard tradition of the Hasty Puddings. The Hasty Pudding Show at Harvard claims several future luminaries, including Jack Lemmon and Fred Gwynne.

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Alexis Petridis
Alexis Petridis is a British journalist, head rock and pop critic for UK newspaper The Guardian, as well as a regular and contributor to the magazine GQ.. In addition to his music writing for the paper he has written a weekly column in the fashion section of The Guardian's Weekend section, as well as contributing to it's 'Lost in Showbiz' column.
Petridis began his career writing for Varsity whilst a student at the University of Cambridge. He was the final editor of now defunct music magazine Select.
He has won the "Record Reviews Writer of the Year" category at the Record of the Day awards seven times, from 2005 to 2011, as well as winning "Artist and Music Features: Writer of the year " in 2006.

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Andrew Castle
Andrew Nicholas Castle (born 15 November 1963) is an English retired tennis professional, former British No. 1, and now television presenter.
Castle was born in Epsom, Surrey. His mother, Lavinia Pollock (born Kathleen Mary, great-grandchild of Annie Besant), was adopted shortly after her birth. She married Frank Castle in April 1953. The couple had five children: James; Richard; David; Fiona; and Andrew, who was born in 1963.
Castle's father ran the fishmongers in Westerham, Kent, where his customers included the lady of nearby Chartwell House, Winston Churchill's wife Clementine. He went on to own shops in North Cheam; Norbury; Stoneleigh, Surrey; and owned a fish and chip shop in Taunton, Somerset (Kingston Road).^{[citation needed]}
At the age of nine, Andrew was asked by a friend to come and play tennis: "I can remember every detail about the day, from the feel of the ball to how it sounded when coming off the net. I insisted we played for eight hours non-stop." His parents supported him, but ran out of money, and his father was declared bankrupt, so both of them became taxi drivers. After winning the UK under-12 national tennis championships, Castle was given a full tennis scholarship to Millfield School. When Castle was 15, his parents separated, and he had to leave Millfield, taking his A-levels at a local grammar school.

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Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American artist who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture and advertisement that flourished by the 1960s. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became a renowned and sometimes controversial artist. The Andy Warhol Museum in his native city, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives. It is the largest museum in the United States of America dedicated to a single artist.
Andy Warhol's artwork ranged in many forms of media that include hand drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, silk screening, sculpture, film, and music. He was a pioneer in computer-generated art using Amiga computers that were introduced in 1985, just before his death in 1987. He founded Interview Magazine and was the author of numerous books, including The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism: The Warhol Sixties. Andy Warhol is also notable as a gay man who lived openly as such before the gay liberation movement. His studio, The Factory, was a famous gathering place that brought together distinguished intellectuals, drag queens, playwrights, Bohemian street people, Hollywood celebrities, and wealthy patrons. Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame". Many of his creations are very collectible and highly valuable. The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$100 million for a 1963 canvas titled Eight Elvises. The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article in The Economist, which described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market". Warhol's works include some of the most expensive paintings ever sold.

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Angela Bassett
Angela Evelyn Bassett (born August 16, 1958) is an American actress and comedienne. She has become well known for her biographical film roles portraying real life women in African American culture, including Tina Turner in What's Love Got to Do with It, as well as Betty Shabazz in Malcolm X and Panther, Rosa Parks in The Rosa Parks Story, Katherine Jackson in The Jacksons: An American Dream,and Voletta Wallace in Notorious.

Bassett was born Angela Evelyn Bassett in Harlem, New York on August 16, 1958, the daughter of Betty Jane and Daniel Benjamin Bassett. After her parents' separation, she relocated to St. Petersburg, Florida, where she and her sister D'nette were raised by their social worker/civil servant mother. As her interest in entertainment developed, Angela and her sister would often put on shows, reading poems or performing popular music for their family. At Boca Ciega High School, Bassett was a cheerleader and a member of the debate team, student government, drama club and choir.

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Anne Sexton
Anne Sexton (November 9, 1928, Newton, Massachusetts – October 4, 1974, Weston, Massachusetts) was an American poet, known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967. Themes of her poetry include her suicidal tendencies, long battle against depression and various intimate details from her private life, including her relationships with her husband and children.
Anne Sexton was born Anne Gray Harvey in Newton, Massachusetts to Mary Gray Staples and Ralph Harvey. She spent most of her childhood in Boston. In 1945 she enrolled at Rogers Hall boarding school, Lowell, Massachusetts, later spending a year at Garland School. For a time she modeled for Boston's Hart Agency. On August 16, 1948, she married Alfred Sexton and they remained together until 1973. She had two children named Linda Gray and Joyce Ladd.
Sexton suffered from severe mental illness for much of her life, her first manic episode taking place in 1954. After a second episode in 1955 she met Dr Martin Orne, who became her long-term therapist at the Glenside Hospital, and encouraged her to take up poetry.

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Aretha Franklin
Aretha Louise Franklin (born March 25, 1942) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and pianist. In a recording career that has spanned over half a century, Franklin's repertoire has included gospel, jazz, blues, R&B, pop, rock and funk. Franklin is known as one of the most important popularizers of the soul music genre and is referred to as the Queen of Soul, a title she was given early in her career. Franklin, the daughter of prominent Baptist minister and activist C. L. Franklin, began her singing career singing in her father's church at the age of ten and started recording four years later. After several years in the gospel circuit and with her father's blessing, she formed a secular pop music career at the age of eighteen, signing with Columbia Records, where she was branded by its CEO John Hammond as his most important act since Billie Holiday. Franklin's Columbia period wasn't as successful as hoped and in late 1966, Franklin switched over to Atlantic Records, where she began recording a string of popular hits including "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)", "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman", "Think", "Chain of Fools" and what later became her signature song, "Respect".

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Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand (/ˈstraɪsænd/; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, writer, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, five Emmy Awards including one Daytime Emmy, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.
She is one of the most commercially and critically successful entertainers in modern entertainment history, with more than 71.5 million albums shipped in the United States and 140 million albums sold worldwide. She is the best-selling female artist on the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Top Selling Artists list, the only female recording artist in the top ten, and the only artist outside of the rock and roll genre. Along with Frank Sinatra, Cher, and Shirley Jones, she shares the distinction of being awarded an acting Oscar and also recording a number-one single on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.

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Benny Benassi
Marco Benassi (born July 13, 1967), better known as Benny Benassi, is an Italian disc jockey (DJ) and record producer of tech house music. He is best known for his 2002 summer club hit "Satisfaction". On October 28, 2009, DJ Magazine announced the results of their annual Top 100 DJ Poll, with Ultra Records artist Benny Benassi placed #26, 13 spots higher than the previous year.
A native of Reggio Emilia, DJ/producer Benassi, started DJing alongside cousin Alle Benassi in the late 1980s in their hometown, before moving to Larry Pignagnoli's Off Limits production studio in the mid 1990s, creating music for various acts, including Whigfield, J.K. and Ally & Jo.
Benassi first hit the dance floors with projects of his own, in 2001, with the single "I Feel So Fine", released under the name KMC with vocals by Dhany. The track first climbed the charts in Benassi's native Italy, and soon became a #1 hit in the UK club charts.
Moving from house to electro, "Satisfaction" took Benassi's success worldwide a year later with high-profile DJs like Carl Cox, Darren Emerson, and Roger Sanchez offering praises. The track reached #2 in the UK Singles Chart after the Ministry of Sound record company replaced the original video (an almost still picture of the band, overlayed with graphics) with a video of models using power tools.

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Bernadette Peters
Bernadette Peters (born Bernadette Lazzara; February 28, 1948) is an American actress, singer and children's book author from Ozone Park, Queens, New York. Over the course of a career that has spanned five decades, she has starred in musical theatre, films and television, as well as performing in solo concerts and recordings. She is one of the most critically acclaimed Broadway performers, having received nominations for seven Tony Awards, winning two, and nine Drama Desk Awards, winning three. Four of the Broadway cast albums on which she has starred have won Grammy Awards.
Regarded by many as the foremost interpreter of the works of Stephen Sondheim, Peters is particularly noted for her roles on the Broadway stage, including Mack and Mabel, Sunday in the Park with George, Song and Dance, Into the Woods and Annie Get Your Gun.
Peters first performed on the stage as a child and then a teenage actor in the 1960s, and in film and television in the 1970s. She was praised for this early work and for appearances on The Muppet Show, The Carol Burnett Show and in other television work, and for her roles in films like Silent Movie, The Jerk, Pennies from Heaven and Annie. In the 1980s, she returned to the theatre, where she became one of the best-known Broadway stars over the next three decades. She also has recorded six solo albums and several singles, as well as many cast albums, and performs regularly in her own solo concert act. Peters also continues to act in films and on television, where she has been nominated for three Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards, winning once.

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Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, although her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas.
After appearing in Broadway plays, Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930, but her early films for Universal Studios were unsuccessful. She joined Warner Bros. in 1932 and established her career with several critically acclaimed performances. In 1937, she attempted to free herself from her contract and although she lost a well-publicized legal case, it marked the beginning of the most successful period of her career. Until the late 1940s, she was one of American cinema's most celebrated leading ladies, known for her forceful and intense style. Davis gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative, and confrontations with studio executives, film directors and costars were often reported. Her forthright manner, clipped vocal style and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona which has often been imitated and satirized.

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Bette Midler
Bette Midler (born December 1, 1945) is an American singer, actress, and comedian, also known by her informal stage name, The Divine Miss M. She became famous as a cabaret and concert headliner, and went on to star in successful and acclaimed films such as The Rose, Ruthless People, Beaches, and For The Boys. During her more than forty-year career, Midler has been nominated for two Academy Awards, and won three Grammy Awards, four Golden Globes, three Emmy Awards, and a special Tony Award. She has sold over 30 million albums worldwide. Her voice type is categorized as deep mezzo soprano.
Midler was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Her parents moved from Paterson, New Jersey to Honolulu before she was born, and hers was one of the few Jewish families in a mostly Asian neighborhood. Her mother, Ruth (née Schindel), was a seamstress and housewife, and her father, Fred Midler, worked at a Navy base in Hawaii as a painter. She was named after actress Bette Davis, though Davis pronounced her first name in two syllables, and Midler uses one, /ˈbɛt/. She was raised in Aiea and attended Radford High School, in Honolulu. She was voted "Most Talkative" in the 1961 school Hoss Election, and in her Senior Year (Class of 1963), "Most Dramatic". Midler majored in drama at the University of Hawaii, but left after three semesters. She earned money in the 1966 film Hawaii as an extra, playing an uncredited seasick passenger named Miss David Buff.

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Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan ( /ˈdɪlən/), born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, is an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist. He has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly reluctant figurehead of social unrest. A number of Dylan's early songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", became anthems for the US civil rights and anti-war movements. Leaving his initial base in the culture of folk music behind, Dylan's six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" has been described as radically altering the parameters of popular music in 1965. However, his recordings employing electric instruments attracted denunciation and criticism from others in the folk movement.
Dylan's lyrics incorporated a variety of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed hugely to the then burgeoning counterculture. Initially inspired by the songs of Woody Guthrie,Robert Johnson, and Hank Williams, as well as the music and performance styles of Buddy Holly and Little Richard, Dylan has both amplified and personalized musical genres. His recording career, spanning fifty years, has explored numerous distinct traditions in American song—from folk, blues and country to gospel, rock and roll, and rockabilly to English, Scottish, and Irish folk music, embracing even jazz and swing.

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Britney Spears
Britney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981) is an American recording artist and entertainer. Born in McComb, Mississippi, and raised in Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears began performing as a child, landing acting roles in stage productions and television shows. She signed with Jive Records in 1997 and released her debut album ...Baby One More Time in 1999, which became the best-selling album by a teenage solo artist. During her first decade in the music industry, she became a prominent figure in mainstream popular music and popular culture, followed by a much-publicized personal life. Her first two albums established her as a pop icon and broke sales records, while title tracks "...Baby One More Time" and "Oops!... I Did It Again" became international number-one hits. Spears was credited with influencing the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s, and became the 'best-selling teen aged artist of all time' before she turned 20, garnering her the honorific title of "Princess of Pop".

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Camille Paglia
Camille Anna Paglia (English pronunciation: /ˈpɑːliə/), (born April 2, 1947) is an American author, teacher, and social critic. Paglia, a self-described dissident feminist, has been a Professor at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania since 1984. She is the author of the best-selling 1990 work of literary criticism Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, and four other books, including essay collections, a study of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, and Break, Blow, Burn on poetry. She writes articles on art, popular culture, feminism, and politics for mainstream newspapers and magazines. Paglia has celebrated Madonna and taken radical libertarian positions on controversial social issues such as abortion, homosexuality and drug use. She is known as a critic of American feminism, and is also strongly critical of the influence of French writers such as Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault.

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Carlos Leon
Carlos Manuel Leon is a Cuban personal trainer, comedian and actor and is most famous for his former relationship with singer Madonna, who gave birth to their daughter, Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon, on October 14, 1996.
Leon is known for his acting work in the television show Oz, three episodes of Law & Order, and as the struggling addict in Anne B. Real. Leon made his Broadway debut playing the role of Charles Filch in Wallace Shawn's adaptation of Brecht & Weill's The Threepenny Opera, with Alan Cumming, Cyndi Lauper, and Ana Gasteyer. He is also been a guest on the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour.

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Carrie Fisher
Carrie Frances Fisher (born October 21, 1956) is an American actress, novelist, screenwriter, and performance artist. She is best known for her portrayal of Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy, her bestselling novel Postcards from the Edge and screenplay for a film of the same name, and her autobiographical one-woman play, Wishful Drinking.
Fisher was born in Beverly Hills, California, the daughter of singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds. Her father was Jewish, the son of immigrants from Russia, and her mother was Protestant. Her younger brother is producer and actor Todd Fisher, and her half-sisters are actresses Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher. Joely and Tricia's mother is the singer/actress Connie Stevens.
When Carrie Fisher was two, her parents divorced after her father left Debbie for her best friend, actress Elizabeth Taylor, the widow of Eddie's best friend Mike Todd. The following year, her mother married shoe store chain owner Harry Karl, who secretly spent her life savings. It was assumed from an early age that Carrie would go into the family show business, and she began appearing with her mother in Las Vegas, Nevada at the age of 12. She attended Beverly Hills High School, but she left to join her mother on the road. She appeared as a debutante and singer in the hit Broadway revival Irene (1973), starring her mother.

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Cee Lo Green
Thomas DeCarlo Callaway (born May 30, 1974), better known by his stage name Cee Lo Green, is an American singer-songwriter, rapper, record producer and actor. Originally came to prominence as a member of the southern hip hop group Goodie Mob, later launching a critically acclaimed solo career and forming Gnarls Barkley with DJ Danger Mouse.
Internationally, Cee Lo is best known for his hip hop work, his most popular was Gnarls Barkley's 2006 worldwide hit "Crazy", which reached number one in various singles charts worldwide, including the UK. In the United States, "Crazy" reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100. Parent album St. Elsewhere was also a hit, reaching number one on the UK Albums Chart and number four on the US Billboard 200 album charts. Gnarls Barkley's second album, The Odd Couple (2008), was less successful and missed the top ten in both the UK and U.S., where it charted at number 12 in the U.S. and 18 in the UK.
In 2010, Cee Lo took a break from recording with Gnarls Barkley and released the single "F**k You!" on August 19 as a solo recording artist. The song was an instant hit, with the radio-edit version "Forget You" reaching the top spot in the UK and the Netherlands and charted at number two on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. The parent album, The Lady Killer (2010) saw similar success, peaking within the top five of the UK Albums Chart and debuting within the top ten on the Billboard 200 album charts, and received a Gold certification from the BPI in the UK shortly after its release. His second single "It's OK" was a hit in Europe and the third single, "Bright Lights Bigger City" has also seen similar charting success. Cee Lo is also currently a vocal coach on the NBC reality talent show The Voice with Adam Levine, Christina Aguilera, and Blake Shelton.

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Chaka Khan
Chaka Khan (born Yvette Marie Stevens; March 23, 1953), frequently known as the "Queen of Funk", is a 10-time Grammy Award winning American singer-songwriter who gained fame in the 1970s as the frontwoman and focal point of the funk band Rufus.
While still a member of the group in 1978, Khan embarked on a successful solo career. Her signature hits, both with Rufus and as a solo performer, include "Tell Me Something Good", "Sweet Thing" which she wrote for her then husband Richard Holland, "Ain't Nobody", "I'm Every Woman", "I Feel for You" and "Through the Fire".

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Cher
Cher ( /ˈʃɛər/) (born Cherilyn Sarkisian; May 20, 1946) is an American recording artist, television personality, actress, director, record producer, and philanthropist. Referred to as the Goddess of Pop, she has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, three Golden Globes, and a Cannes Film Festival Award for her work in film, music, and television. She is the only person in history to receive all five awards. She began her career as a backup singer and came to prominence in 1965 as one-half of the pop rock duo Sonny & Cher with the success of their song "I Got You Babe". She subsequently established herself as a solo recording artist and became a television star in 1971 with The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, a variety show for which she won a Golden Globe. A well-received performance in the film Silkwood earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress of 1983. In the following years, she starred in a string of hit films including Mask, The Witches of Eastwick, and Moonstruck, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress of 1987.

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Christina Aguilera
Christina María Aguilera (born December 18, 1980) is an American recording artist and actress. Aguilera first appeared on national television in 1990 as a contestant on the Star Search program, and went on to star in Disney Channel's television series The Mickey Mouse Club from 1993 to 1994. Aguilera signed to RCA Records after recording "Reflection", the theme song for the animated film Mulan (1998).
In 1999, Aguilera came to prominence following her debut album Christina Aguilera, which was a commercial success spawning three number one singles on the Billboard Hot 100—"Genie in a Bottle", "What a Girl Wants", and "Come On Over Baby (All I Want Is You)." Her sophomore and her debut Latin-pop album, Mi Reflejo (2000), a Christmas third studio album, My Kind of Christmas (2000), and several collaborations followed which garnered Aguilera worldwide success, though she was displeased with her lack of input in her music and image. After parting from her management, Aguilera took creative control over her fourth studio album, Stripped (2002). The album's second single, "Beautiful", was a commercial success and helped the album's commercial performance amidst controversy over Aguilera's image. Aguilera followed up Stripped with the soul, jazz and blues inspired, Back to Basics (2006), released to positive critical acclaim. The album produced three singles "Ain't No Other Man", "Hurt" and "Candyman". Four years later Aguilera released her sixth studio album, Bionic (2010), which incorporated aspects of R&B, electropop, and synthpop and was met with mixed reviews and low sales. Aguilera's seventh studio album is set to be released in 2012.

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Christopher Ciccone
Christopher G. Ciccone (born November 22, 1960 in Bay City, Michigan) is an American artist, film director, artistic director, dancer, best selling author, and interior and furniture designer. He is the younger brother of Madonna, and began his career working as Madonna's assistant, dresser, backup dancer, stylist, and artistic director. His first public appearance was alongside his sister in her 1982 debut music video "Everybody". After involvement in a promo tour for her debut album, he appeared in her 1984 "Lucky Star" video. He has decorated Madonna's various former residences in New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami. He has also designed the stage for her 1990 Blond Ambition concert tour, and directed her 1993 Girlie Show concert tour.
Ciccone released his New York Times Bestselling memoirs Life With My Sister Madonna in 2008, debuting at #2 on the New York Times Best Seller List, and reached #8 on Amazon.com's bestseller list, and #5 on Barnes & Noble's bestseller list.
Directed Tony Bennets Billboard award winning music video of "God Bless the Child"

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David Rabe
David William Rabe (born March 10, 1940) is an American playwright and screenwriter. He won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1972 (Sticks and Bones) and also received Tony award nominations for Best Play in 1974 (In the Boom Boom Room), 1977 (Streamers) and 1985 (Hurlyburly).
Rabe was born in Dubuque, Iowa, the son of Ruth (née McCormick), a department store worker, and William Rabe, a teacher and meat packer. He attended Roman Catholic schools in Dubuque, and graduated from Loras College, a Catholic liberal-arts college.
He began graduate studies in theater at Villanova University, but dropped out and was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1965. He served until 1967, spending his last eleven months of service in Vietnam.
Rabe was married to actress Jill Clayburgh from 1978 until her death November 5, 2010. He has two children with Clayburgh, actress Lily Rabe and Michael Rabe. He has one son, Jason Rabe, from his first marriage.
After leaving the service, Rabe returned to Villanova, studying writing and earning an M.A. in 1968. During this time, he began work on the play Sticks and Bones, in which the family represents the ugly underbelly of the Nelson family when they are faced with their hopeless son David returning home from Vietnam as a blinded vet.

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Debbie Gibson
Deborah Ann "Debbie" Gibson (born August 31, 1970) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and actress. In 1988 she was pronounced the youngest artist to write, produce, and perform a #1 single on the Billboard Hot 100, with her song "Foolish Beat" and she remains the youngest female to write, record, and perform a #1 single. She has gone on to starring roles on Broadway and touring musicals, as well as independent film and television work. She continues to record, and reached the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart as high as #24 during 2006 in a duet with Jordan Knight titled "Say Goodbye". In 2010, the album Ms. Vocalist, from Sony Japan was Top 10 on the Japanese Billboard chart and the first single from the album, “I Love You”, hit #1.
Debbie Gibson was born in Brooklyn, New York, the third daughter of four for Diane and Joseph Gibson. She grew up in the Long Island suburb of Merrick and was raised Catholic. At the age of five, she began performing in community theater with her sisters Karen, Michele, and Denise, and cousin T.J Normandin and wrote her first song, "Make Sure You Know Your Classroom". At age eight, she sang in the children's chorus at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. She began playing the ukulele and taking piano lessons soon after, including with American pianist Morton Estrin. She said that her household was probably the only one where bystanders would hear kids fighting over piano playing time.

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Diane Warren
Diane Eve Warren (born September 7, 1956), is an American songwriter. Her songs have received six Academy Award nominations, five Golden Globe nominations, including one win, and seven Grammy Award nominations, including one win. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001. Her success in the US has been paralleled in the UK, where she has been rated the third most successful female artist. Peter Reichardt, former Chairman of EMI Music Publishing UK, commented; "She's the most important songwriter in the world."
She was the first songwriter in the history of Billboard to have seven hits, all by different artists, on the singles chart at the same time. Warren owns a publishing company, Realsongs, which gives her control over her compositions. Meanwhile, her songs have been featured in more than 70 films or television shows.
Warren was born in Van Nuys, California, where she said she felt misunderstood and "alien" as a Jewish kid growing up. She says she was rebellious as a child and told NPR's Scott Simon that she got into trouble and ran away as a teen but returned because she missed her cat. She began writing music when she was 14. "Music saved me", she said. Warren also has said that her mother asked her to give up her dream of a songwriting career and take a secretarial job. However, her father continued to believe in her and encouraged her. She wrote the song "Because You Loved Me" as a tribute to her father for his encouragement.

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Don McLean
Donald "Don" McLean (born October 2, 1945, New Rochelle, New York) is an American singer-songwriter. He is most famous for the 1971 album American Pie, containing the renowned songs "American Pie" and "Vincent".
Both McLean's grandfather and father were also named Donald McLean. The Buccis, the family of McLean's mother, Elizabeth, came from Abruzzo in central Italy. They left Italy and settled in Port Chester, New York, at the end of the 19th century. He has other extended family in Los Angeles and Boston.
As a teenager, McLean became interested in folk music, particularly the Weavers' 1955 recording At Carnegie Hall. Childhood asthma meant that McLean missed long periods of school, particularly music lessons, and although he slipped back in his studies, his love of music was allowed to flourish. He often performed shows for family and friends. By age 16 he had bought his first guitar (a Harmony acoustic archtop with a sunburst finish) and begun making contacts in the music business, becoming friends with folk singer Erik Darling, a latter-day member of the Weavers. McLean recorded his first studio sessions (with singer Lisa Kindred) while still in prep school.

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Douglas Kellner
Douglas Kellner (born 1943) is a “third generation” critical theorist in the tradition of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School. Kellner was an early theorist of the field of critical media literacy and has been a leading theorist of media culture generally^{[citation needed]}. In his recent work, he has increasingly argued that media culture has become dominated by the forms of spectacle and mega-spectacle. He also has contributed important studies of alter-globalization processes, and has always been concerned with counter-hegemonic movements and alternative cultural expressions in the name of a more radically democratic society
Kellner has written with a number of authors, including (with Steven Best) an award-winning trilogy of books on postmodern turns in philosophy, the arts, and in science and technology. More recently, he is known for his work exploring the politically oppositional potentials of new media and attempted to delineate what they term "multiple technoliteracies" as a movement away from the present attempt to standardize a corporatist form of computer literacy. Previously, Kellner served as the literary executor of the famed documentary film maker Emile de Antonio and is presently overseeing the publication of six volumes of the collected papers of the critical theorist Herbert Marcuse. At present, Kellner is the George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996), also known as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella", was an American jazz and song vocalist. With a vocal range spanning three octaves (D♭3 to D♭6), she was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.
Fitzgerald was a notable interpreter of the Great American Songbook. Over the course of her 59-year recording career, she was the winner of 13 Grammy Awards and was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Ronald Reagan and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H. W. Bush.
Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, the child of a common-law marriage between William and Temperance "Tempie" Fitzgerald. The pair separated soon after her birth and she and her mother went to Yonkers, New York, where they eventually moved in with Tempie's longtime boyfriend, Joseph Da Silva. Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born in 1923. She and her family were Methodists and were active in the Bethany African Methodist Episcopal Church and she regularly attended worship services, Bible study, and Sunday School.

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Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March 1947) is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor. He has worked with lyricist Bernie Taupin as his songwriter partner since 1967; they have collaborated on more than 30 albums to date.
In his four-decade career John has sold more than 250 million records, making him one of the most successful artists of all time. His single "Candle in the Wind 1997" has sold over 33 million copies worldwide, and is the best selling single in Billboard history. He has more than 50 Top 40 hits, including seven consecutive No. 1 US albums, 56 Top 40 singles, 16 Top 10, four No. 2 hits, and nine No. 1 hits. He has won six Grammy Awards, four Brit Awards, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Tony Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him Number 49 on its list of the 100 greatest artists of all time.
John was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. Having been named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1996, John received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for "services to music and charitable services" in 1998.

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Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King".
Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, Presley moved to Memphis, Tennessee, with his family at the age of 13. He began his career there in 1954, working with Sun Records owner Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African American music to a wider audience. Accompanied by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, Presley was the most important popularizer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country and rhythm and blues. RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who would manage the singer for over two decades. Presley's first RCA single, "Heartbreak Hotel", released in January 1956, was a number one hit. He became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll with a series of network television appearances and chart-topping records. His energized interpretations of songs, many from African American sources, and his uninhibited performance style made him enormously popular—and controversial. In November 1956, he made his film debut in Love Me Tender.

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Eva Perón
María Eva Duarte de Perón (Spanish: [maˈɾi.a ˈeβa ˈðwarte ðe peˈɾon]; 7 May 1919 – 26 July 1952) was the second wife of President Juan Perón (1895–1974) and served as the First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952. She is usually referred to as Eva Perón, or by the affectionate Spanish language diminutive Evita.
She was born in the village of Los Toldos in rural Argentina in 1919, the youngest of five children. In 1934, at the age of 15, she went to the nation's capital of Buenos Aires, where she pursued a career as a stage, radio, and film actress. Eva met Colonel Juan Perón on 22 January 1944, in Buenos Aires during a charity event at the Luna Park Stadium to benefit the victims of an earthquake in San Juan, Argentina. The two were married the following year. In 1946, Juan Perón was elected President of Argentina. Over the course of the next six years, Eva Perón became powerful within the pro-Peronist trade unions, primarily for speaking on behalf of labor rights. She also ran the Ministries of Labor and Health, founded and ran the charitable Eva Perón Foundation, championed women's suffrage in Argentina, and founded and ran the nation's first large-scale female political party, the Female Peronist Party.

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Fred Bronson
Fredric M. Bronson (born January 10, 1949) is an American journalist, author and writer. He is best known for his appearances on American Idol, the weekly "Chart Beat" column in Billboard magazine, and as the author of books related to Billboard charts.
Born to Irving and Mildred Bronson and raised in Culver City, California, Bronson showed an early aptitude for gauging the popularity of artists and songs. At age 11, Bronson won a contest in the Los Angeles Mirror-News requiring him to select favorites in several music categories. His prize was a lunch with actress Connie Stevens. As Bronson later wrote, "I realized that keeping track of records and artists wasn't such a bad idea." That wasn't the first brush with show business for Bronson. When he was five, he was selected to portray actor/writer/producer Jack Webb as a child in a series of photographs in the May 1954 issue of Cosmopolitan.
One of Bronson's earliest published works was in the first letters column of The Amazing Spider-Man, in issue 3 published in 1962. A follow-up letter was printed in The Amazing Spider-Man No. 608, published 47 years later. His letters were also published on a regular basis in issues of Superman, Action Comics, Adventure Comics, The Flash and other DC Comics publications.

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French Canadian
French Canadian or Francophone Canadian (also Canadien in Canadian English or in French) generally refers to the descendents of French colonists who arrived in New France (Canada) in the 17th and 18th centuries. Today, French Canadians constitute the main French-speaking population of Canada.
During the mid-18th century, Canadian colonists born in French Canada expanded across North America and colonized various regions, cities, and towns. Today, the majority of French Canadians live across North America, including the United States and Canada. The province of Quebec has the largest population of French Canadian descent, although smaller communities of French Canadians exist throughout Canada and in the American region of New England, where between 1840 and 1930, roughly 900,000 French Canadians emigrated to the United States and New England, in particular.
Other terms for French Canadians that continue to reside in the province of Quebec, are Quebeckers or Québécois. French Canadians constitute the second largest ethnic group in Canada, after English Canadians and before Scottish Canadians and Irish Canadians.

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Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo de Rivera (July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954; born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón) was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán, and is perhaps best known for her self-portraits.
Kahlo's life began and ended in Mexico City, in her home known as the Blue House. She gave her birth date as July 7, 1910, but her birth certificate shows July 6, 1907. Kahlo had allegedly wanted the year of her birth to coincide with the year of the beginning of the Mexican revolution so that her life would begin with the birth of modern Mexico. At the age of six, Frida developed polio, which caused her right leg to appear much thinner than the other. It was to remain that way permanently. Her work has been celebrated in Mexico as emblematic of national and indigenous tradition, and by feminists for its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.
Mexican culture and Amerindian cultural tradition are important in her work, which has been sometimes characterized as Naïve art or folk art. Her work has also been described as "surrealist", and in 1938 André Breton, principal initiator of the surrealist movement, described Kahlo's art as a "ribbon around a bomb".

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Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang (December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976) was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute. His most famous films are the groundbreaking Metropolis (the world's most expensive silent film at the time of its release) and M, made before he moved to the United States, his iconic precursor to the film noir genre.
Lang was born in Vienna as the second son of Anton Lang (1860–1940), an architect and construction company manager, and his wife Pauline "Paula" Lang née Schlesinger (1864–1920). Fritz Lang himself was baptized on 28 December 1890 at the Schottenkirche in Vienna.
Lang's parents were of Moravian^{[citation needed]} descent and practicing Roman Catholics. His mother was born Jewish, but had converted to Catholicism when Fritz was ten. His mother took this conversion seriously and was dedicated to raising Fritz as a Catholic. Lang never had an interest in his Jewish heritage and identified himself as Catholic. Although he was not a particularly devout Catholic, he "regularly used Catholic images and themes [in] his films".

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Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin ( /ˈʃoʊpæn/; French pronunciation: [fʁe.de.ʁik ʃɔ.pɛ̃]; Polish: Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin, also phonetically Szopen; 22 February or 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of French-Polish parentage. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music. Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola, a village in the Duchy of Warsaw. A renowned child-prodigy pianist and composer, Chopin grew up in Warsaw and completed his music education there; he composed many mature works in Warsaw before leaving Poland in 1830 at age 20, shortly before the November 1830 Uprising.
Following the Russian suppression of the Uprising, he settled in Paris as part of Poland's Great Emigration. During the remaining 19 years of his life, Chopin gave only some 30 public performances, preferring the more intimate atmosphere of the salon; he supported himself by sales of his compositions and as a piano teacher. After some romantic dalliances with Polish women, including an abortive engagement, from 1837 to 1847 he carried on a relationship with the French writer Amantine Dupin (pen name "George Sand"). For most of his life, Chopin suffered from poor health; he died in Paris in 1849 at age 39.

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Gary Barlow
Gary Barlow (born 20 January 1971) is an English singer-songwriter, pianist and record producer. He is frontman and lead vocalist of pop group Take That and the head judge on the The X Factor. Barlow is one of Britain's most successful songwriters. He has had two Number 1 singles and a Number 1 album as a solo artist, and has had sixteen top 5 hits, eleven Number 1 singles and seven Number 1 albums with Take That. He is also a six-time recipient of the Ivor Novello Award and has sold over 45 million records worldwide with Take That.
In Barlow's autobiography, he relates that his love of music began at an early age.
"I was one of those kids that's forever dancing in front of the TV looking at my reflection."
He said he enjoyed watching Top of the Pops on television, and when he was ten years old, he watched an episode of the programme in which Depeche Mode were performing their new single "Just Can't Get Enough". Barlow was mesmerised by the sound and decided he wanted a keyboard for Christmas. For the next few years, he spent most of his spare time teaching himself to play his favourite songs.

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Geordie Greig
Geordie Greig (born 1960 London) is a British journalist and newspaper editor. He is the editor of the Mail on Sunday newspaper. He attended Eton College and St Peter's College, Oxford.
Greig worked for the Kentish Mercury newspaper, the Daily Mail and Sunday Today, before joining the Sunday Times in 1987. He became the editor of Tatler magazine in 1999.
He was appointed editor for the Evening Standard in February 2009. This announcement followed the announcement on 21 January 2009 by the Daily Mail group that its newspaper division, Associated Newspapers Ltd, had agreed the sale of a majority interest in the Evening Standard for a nominal sum to Evening Press Ltd, a company formed by Alexander Lebedev and his son Evgeny Lebedev and owned by Lebedev Holdings Ltd. His first step as Evening Standard editor was to launch a series of "Sorry" advertisements across London, after market research showed the paper was deemed too negative and complacent about London under former editor Veronica Wadley's leadership, a move considered to be extremely daring.

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Guy Bourdin
Guy Louis Bourdin (December 2, 1928 in Paris – March 29, 1991 in Paris), born Guy Louis Banarès, was a French fashion photographer.
Guy Louis Banarès was born December 2, 1928, at 7 Rue Popincourt, Paris. He was abandoned by his mother the following year, and was adopted by Maurice Désiré Bourdin, who brought him up with the help of his mother Marguerite Legay.
During his military service in Dakar (1948–1949), he received his first photography training as a cadet in the French Air Force.
In 1950 he returned to Paris, where he met Man Ray, and became his protégé. Bourdin made his first exhibition of drawings and paintings at Galerie, Rue de la Bourgogne, Paris. His first photographic exhibition was in 1953. Bourdin exhibited under the pseudonym Edwin Hallan in his early career.
His first fashion shots were published in the February issue of Vogue Paris in 1955. He continued to work for the magazine until 1987.
Bourdin married Solange Marie Louise Gèze in 1961, who gave birth to his only child, Samuel in 1967. His wife died of a heart condition in Normandy in 1971.

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Guy Oseary
Guy Oseary (Hebrew: גיא עוזרי‎; born 1972) is an Israeli-American businessman who began his career in entertainment at 17 at what was to become Maverick Records. He is Madonna's manager.
He quickly rose through the ranks to chairman of the label, developing a roster of artists that included Prodigy, Alanis Morissette, Deftones, The Wreckers, Paul Oakenfold, Michelle Branch, Summercamp and soundtracks including The Wedding Singer, The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, Austin Powers I & II, as well as releasing soundtracks on Quentin Tarantino’s films including Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2. Oseary guided Maverick to sell over 100 million albums worldwide and secured its spot as one of the industry's leading boutique record labels.
As part of Maverick Films, Oseary executive produced Twilight, The Twilight Saga: New Moon and Rob Zombie’s first two ventures into feature filmmaking (House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects). He also serves as executive producer on Last Call With Carson Daly, which is currently in its 10th season, as well as on NBC's New Year's Eve which is also hosted by Carson.

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Guy Ritchie
Guy Stuart Ritchie (born 10 September 1968) is an English screenwriter and film maker best known for directing Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, Revolver, RocknRolla and Sherlock Holmes and its sequel.
Ritchie was born in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, the second of two children born to Amber (née Parkinson) and Captain John Vivian Ritchie (b. 1928), former Seaforth Highlanders serviceman and advertising executive. John Vivian's father was Major Stewart Ritchie, who died in France, in 1940, during World War Two. John Ritchie's mother was Doris Margaretta McLaughlin (b. 1896), daughter of Vivian Guy McLaughlin (b. 1865) and Edith Martineau (b. 1866). Most of Ritchie's family on the McLaughlin and Martineau lines were appointed Reverends, Barons or Knighted at some point. The peerage started with the Very Rev. Hubert McLaughlin (b. 1805), father of famous nurse Louisa McLaughlin, and ancestor of Patrick McLaughlin, who was the first in his direct family to be given the according title, as he was born into a blue collar family and worked hard to find nobility. Ritchie's mother, Amber, would later go on to marry a baronet herself. His father's second marriage was to Shireen Ritchie, Baroness Ritchie of Brompton, a former model and later Conservative politician and life peer.

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Gwen Stefani
Gwen Renée Stefani ( /stɛˈfɑːni/; born October 3, 1969) is an American singer-songwriter and fashion designer. Stefani is the lead vocalist for the rock and ska band No Doubt. Stefani recorded Love. Angel. Music. Baby., her first solo album, in 2004. The album was inspired by music of the 1980s and was a success with sales of over seven million copies. The album's third single, "Hollaback Girl", was the first US digital download to sell one million copies. Stefani's second solo album, The Sweet Escape (2006), yielded "Wind It Up", "4 in the Morning", and the highest-selling single "The Sweet Escape". Including her work with No Doubt, Stefani has sold more than forty million albums worldwide. She won the World's Best-Selling New Female Artist at the World Music Awards 2005.
In 2003, she debuted her clothing line L.A.M.B. and expanded her collection with the 2005 Harajuku Lovers line, drawing inspiration from Japanese culture and fashion. Stefani performs and makes public appearances with four back-up dancers known as the Harajuku Girls dancers. She married British grunge musician Gavin Rossdale in 2002 and they have two sons: Kingston James McGregor Rossdale, born May 26, 2006, and Zuma Nesta Rock Rossdale, born August 20, 2008. Billboard magazine named Stefani the fifty-fourth artist and thirty-seventh Hot 100 artist of the 2000–09 decade.

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Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Kate Paltrow ( /ˈɡwɪnɨθ ˈpæltroʊ/; born September 27, 1972) is an American actress and singer. She made her acting debut on stage in 1990 and started appearing in films in 1991. After appearing in several films throughout the decade, Paltrow gained early notice for her work in films such as Seven (1995) and Emma (1996) (in which she played the title role). Following the films Sliding Doors (1998) and A Perfect Murder (1998), Paltrow garnered worldwide recognition through her performance in Shakespeare in Love (1998), for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress, a Golden Globe Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, for Outstanding Lead Actress and as a member of the Outstanding Cast. She also won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2011 for her role as Holly Holliday on the Fox hit TV show Glee in the episode "The Substitute".
Paltrow has portrayed supporting as well as lead roles in films such as The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Shallow Hal (2001), and Proof (2005), for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress in Motion Picture Drama. Since 2008, she has portrayed Pepper Potts in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, starring in Iron Man and its sequel, Iron Man 2 (2010), and also appearing in The Avengers (2012). Paltrow has been the face of Estée Lauder's Pleasures perfume since 2005. She is married to Chris Martin, the lead vocalist of Coldplay. They have two children together, Apple and Moses. She is also the face of American fashion brand Coach, owner of the lifestyle company Goop.com and author of the cookbook My Father's Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family & Togetherness.

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Helen Hunt
Helen Elizabeth Hunt (born June 15, 1963) is an American actress, film director, and screenwriter. She starred in the sitcom, Mad About You, for seven years before being cast in the 1997 romantic comedy film, As Good as It Gets for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Some of her other Hollywood credits include Twister, Cast Away, What Women Want, Pay It Forward, and Soul Surfer. She made her directorial debut in 2007 with Then She Found Me.
Hunt was born in Culver City, California. Her mother, Jane Elizabeth (née Novis), worked as a photographer; and her father, Gordon E. Hunt, is a film director and acting coach. Her uncle, Peter H. Hunt, also is a director. Her paternal grandmother was from a German Jewish family, and her maternal grandfather was born in England. Her Iowa-born maternal grandmother, Dorothy Fries (née Anderson), was a voice coach. When she was three, Hunt's family moved to New York City, where her father directed theatre (Hunt attended plays as a child several times a week). Hunt studied ballet, and attended UCLA.

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Italian American
An Italian American (Italian: Italoamericano singular, Italian: Italoamericani plural), is an American of Italian ancestry. The designation may also refer to someone possessing Italian and American dual citizenship. Italian Americans are the fourth largest European ethnic group in the United States (not including American ethnicity, an ethnonym used by many in the United States; overall, Italian Americans rank seventh, behind German, Irish, African American, English, American and Mexican).
About 5.5 million Italians immigrated to the U.S. from 1820 to 2004. The greatest surge of immigration, which occurred in the period between 1880 and 1920, alone brought more than 4 million Italians to America. About 80% of the Italian immigrants came from Southern Italy, especially from Sicily, Campania, Abruzzo and Calabria. This was a largely agricultural and overpopulated region, where much of the populace had been impoverished by centuries of foreign misrule, and the economic measures imposed on the South after Italian unification in 1861 . After unification the Italian government initially encouraged emigration of landless peasants to relieve economic pressures in the South. In the U.S., most Italians began their new lives as unskilled, manual workers in Eastern cities, mining camps and in agriculture. Italian Americans gradually moved from the lower rungs of the economic scale in 1890-1910 to a level comparable to the national average by 1970. By 1990, more than 65% of Italian Americans were managerial, professional, or white-collar workers. The Italian-American communities have often been characterized by strong ties with family, the Catholic Church, fraternal organizations and political parties. Today, over 17.8 million Americans claim Italian ancestry.

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Jamie King
Jamie King (born in 1972) is a creative director and choreographer whose work directing concert tours for pop stars has grossed over two billion dollars. King started his career in entertainment as a dancer. He went on tour with Michael Jackson on his Dangerous World Tour in 1992. Afterward he worked as a director and choreographer in Prince's Glam Slam West nightclub in Los Angeles, CA. While at Grand Slam West, King created a new show every week using songs that Prince was unable to commercially release due to legal obligations to Warner Bros. Records. It was during this time that King learned staging. After seeing a performance by Prince at the 1993 American Music Awards that King directed and choreographed, Madonna called him to talk about the two of them working together. The first time they worked together was when he choreographed her 1995 video "Human Nature".
In 2004 King teamed up with Nike to create the Nike Rockstar Workout for use in Crunch Fitness gyms across the United States. In 2007 he released his Rock Your Body fintess DVD which sold 100,000 copies. King will produce the Latin themed entertainment show Q'Viva! The Chosen with Simon Fuller, Marc Anthony, and Jennifer Lopez. The show will be King's first experience working in television rather than stage. It is scheduled to premiere in 2012. King recently directed and choreographed Madonna's performance during the Super Bowl XLVI halftime show.

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Jamie Lee Curtis
Jamie Lee Curtis (born November 22, 1958) is an American actress and author. Although she was initially known as a "scream queen" because of her starring roles in several horror films early in her career, such as Halloween, The Fog, Prom Night, and Terror Train, Curtis has since compiled a body of work that spans many genres, and has won BAFTA and Golden Globe awards. Her 1998 book, Today I Feel Silly, and Other Moods That Make My Day, made the best-seller list in The New York Times. Curtis has appeared in advertisements, and is a blogger for The Huffington Post online newspaper. She is married to actor, screenwriter, and director Christopher Guest.
Curtis was born in Santa Monica, California, to actor Tony Curtis and actress Janet Leigh. Her paternal grandparents were Hungarian Jewish immigrants and two of her maternal great-grandparents were Danish. Curtis's parents divorced in 1962, after which her mother married Robert Brandt. Curtis has an older sister, Kelly Curtis, who is also an actress, and several half-siblings (all from her father's remarriages), Alexandra, Allegra, Ben, and Nicholas Curtis (who died in 1994 of a drug overdose). Curtis attended Westlake School in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills High School, and graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall. Returning to California in 1976, she attended the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. She considered majoring in social work, but quit after one semester to pursue an acting career.

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Janet Jackson
Janet Damita Jo Jackson (born May 16, 1966) is an American recording artist and actress. Known for a series of sonically innovative, socially conscious and sexually provocative records, as well as elaborate stage shows, television and film roles, she has been a prominent figure in popular culture for over 25 years. The youngest child of the Jackson family, she began her career with the variety television series The Jacksons in 1976 and went on to appear in other television shows throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, including Good Times and Fame.
After signing a recording contract with A&M in 1982, she came to prominence following the release of her third studio album Control (1986). Her collaborations with record producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis incorporated elements of rhythm and blues, funk, disco, rap, and industrial beats, which led to crossover appeal in popular music. In addition to receiving recognition for the innovation in her records, choreography, music videos, and prominence on radio airplay and MTV, she was acknowledged as a role model for her socially conscious lyrics.

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Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin (born 1949) is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as the Times' film critic from 1977–1999.
Maslin graduated from the University of Rochester in 1970, with a B.A. degree and a major in mathematics. She began her career as a rock music critic for The Boston Phoenix and Rolling Stone.
Maslin was the long-time film critic for The New York Times, serving from 1977–1999. Her film criticism career, including her embrace of American independent cinema, is discussed in the 2009 documentary film For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism. In the film Entertainment Weekly critic Lisa Schwarzbaum recalls the excitement of having a woman as the lead reviewer at The New York Times.
Maslin currently^[when?] reviews books for The New York Times.
She was once^[when?] married to record producer Jon Landau. She is now^[when?] married to writer Benjamin Cheever, and lives with their two sons in Pleasantville, New York, where she serves as president of the board of the Jacob Burns Film Center.

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Janet McTeer
Janet McTeer, OBE (born 5 August 1961)^{Dubious: Discuss} is an English actress.
McTeer was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, the daughter of Jean (née Morris) and Alan McTeer, and spent her childhood in York. She attended the now defunct Queen Anne Grammar School for Girls, and worked at the Old Starre Inn, at York Minster and at the Theatre Royal. She then trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, beginning a successful theatrical career with the Royal Exchange Theatre after graduating.
McTeer's television work includes the BBC production of Nigel Nicolson's book Portrait of a Marriage in which she played Vita Sackville-West and the popular ITV series The Governor written by Lynda La Plante. She made her screen debut in Half Moon Street, a 1986 film based on a novel by Paul Theroux. In 1991, she appeared in Catherine Cookson's The Black Velvet Gown, with Bob Peck and Geraldine Somerville; this won the International Emmy award for best drama. She appeared in the 1992 film version of Wuthering Heights (co-starring Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes) and the 1995 film Carrington (which starred Emma Thompson and Jonathan Pryce).

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Jann Wenner
Jann Simon Wenner (born January 7, 1946) is the co-founder and publisher of the music and politics biweekly Rolling Stone, as well as the owner of Men's Journal and Us Weekly magazines.
Wenner was born in New York City and grew up in a secular Jewish family.^{[citation needed]} His parents divorced in 1958, and he and his sisters, Kate and Merlyn, were sent to boarding schools to live. He graduated from high school at Chadwick School in 1963 and went on to attend the University of California, Berkeley. Before dropping out of Berkeley in 1966, Wenner was active in the Free Speech Movement and produced the column "Something's Happening" in the student-run newspaper, The Daily Californian. With the help of his mentor, San Francisco Chronicle jazz critic Ralph J. Gleason, Wenner landed a job at Ramparts, a high-circulation muckraker, where Gleason was a contributing editor and Wenner worked on the magazine's spinoff newspaper.
In 1967, Wenner and Gleason founded Rolling Stone in San Francisco. To get the magazine off the ground, Wenner borrowed $7,500 from family members and from the family of his soon-to-be wife, Jane Schindelheim. In the summer following the start of the magazine, Wenner and Schindelheim were married in a small Jewish ceremony.

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Jason Donovan
Jason Donovan (born 1 June 1968) is an Australian actor and singer. He initially achieved fame in the Australian soap opera Neighbours, before beginning a career in music in 1988. In the UK he has sold over 3 million records, and his début album Ten Good Reasons was one of the highest-selling albums of 1989 with UK sales of over 1.5 million copies. He has had four UK No. 1 singles, one of which was "Especially for You", his 1988 duet with Kylie Minogue. In more recent years, he has returned to acting on television and in stage musicals.
Jason Donovan was born in Malvern, Melbourne, is the son of actor Terence Donovan, who also appeared in Neighbours as Doug Willis, and Sue McIntosh. His half-sister is former Neighbours star Stephanie McIntosh. Donovan attended De La Salle College, Malvern. His partner since 1998 is Angela Malloch, a former stage manager, with whom he has three children; a daughter, Jemma (born 28 March 2000) a son, Zac (born 22 March 2001), and daughter, Molly (born 9 March 2011). Donovan and Malloch were married in Bali in 2008.

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Jennifer Lopez
Jennifer Lynn Lopez (born July 24, 1969) is an American actress, businesswoman, dancer and recording artist. Often referred to as J.Lo, she is reportedly the highest earning actress of Latin descent. Born and raised in The Bronx, New York, she enrolled in singing and dancing classes as a child and grew up in a musically influenced household. She started her career as a fly girl on the television comedy program In Living Color and a back-up dancer for Janet Jackson. Lopez gained recognition in the action-thriller Money Train (1995). Her first leading role was in the biographical film Selena (1997), which was her breakthrough role, earning her an ALMA Award for Outstanding Actress and Golden Globe nomination. She earned her second ALMA Award for her performance in Out of Sight (1998), which made her the highest-paid Latin actress. She has since appeared in various films including The Cell (2000), The Wedding Planner (2001), Maid in Manhattan (2002), Shall We Dance? (2004), Monster-in-Law (2005), The Back-up Plan (2010) and What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012).

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Jennifer Lynch
Jennifer Chambers Lynch (born April 7, 1968) is an American film director and screenwriter, best known for writing the book The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer and for being Hollywood's youngest female writer and director with her 1993 feature film Boxing Helena.
Lynch was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of artist and filmmaker David Lynch and painter Peggy Reavey. She began practicing Transcendental Meditation when she was six years old.
Lynch was educated in Los Angeles and Michigan (at the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy) and, as a teen, played the role of a little girl in her father's movie Eraserhead. After that she worked as a production assistant on her father's Blue Velvet (1986). She authored The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer to accompany the television show Twin Peaks (created by her father and Mark Frost). She also wrote an episode of Friday the 13th: The Series.
Her commissioned screenplay for Boxing Helena, which she would later go on to direct, attracted many actresses, including Madonna.Sherilyn Fenn, who was one of the stars of her father's Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart, ultimately was cast for the part of Helena. Kim Basinger was also attached and was famously sued after walking away. The controversy surrounding that case, as well as feminist outcry over Helena's sadistic subject matter and accusations of nepotism, accompanied the movie's critical drubbing upon its release in 1993.

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Jessica Tandy
Jessie Alice "Jessica" Tandy (June 7, 1909 - September 11, 1994) was an English-American stage and film actress.
She first appeared on the London stage in 1926 at the age of 16, playing, among other roles, Katherine opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V, and Cordelia opposite John Gielgud's King Lear. She also worked in British films. Following the end of her marriage to the British actor Jack Hawkins, she moved to New York, where she met Canadian actor Hume Cronyn. He became her second husband and frequent partner on stage and screen.
She won the Tony Award for her performance as Blanche Dubois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948, sharing the prize with Katherine Cornell (who won for the female lead in Antony and Cleopatra) and Judith Anderson (for the latter's portrayal of Medea). Over the following three decades, her career continued sporadically and included a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's horror film, The Birds (1963), and a Tony Award-winning performance in The Gin Game (1977, playing in the two-hander play opposite Hume Cronyn). Along with Cronyn, she was a member of the original acting company of the Guthrie Theater.

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Jimmy Harry

Jimmy Harry is a Golden Globe winning songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist who currently resides in Los Angeles, CA. Harry has worked with artists such as Madonna, Pink, Weezer, Kylie Minogue, Kelly Clarkson, Fisher Spooner, Oh Land, and Santana. Recognized at the 2012 Golden Globes by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, he won "Best Original Song" with Madonna and Julie Frost for the song "Masterpiece". In 2010 his production of Pink's "Sober" was nominated for a Grammy for "Best Female Pop Vocal Performance", and he also wrote and produced "Funhouse", the title track of her release nominated in the category "Best Pop Album".

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John Benitez
John Benitez, better known as "Jellybean Benitez" (born November 7, 1957) is an American drummer, guitarist, songwriter, DJ, remixer and music producer of Puerto Rican descent. Benitez has produced and remixed for artists such as Madonna, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, and the Pointer Sisters.
Benitez's mother moved from Puerto Rico in the early 1950s to the South Bronx section of New York. She raised two children as a single mother, Benitez being the first child. Born in New York City, he grew up enjoying listening to music, usually playing his sister's record collection. His sister, Debbie, nicknamed him Jellybean as his initials are J.B. and from the saying "Do you know what I mean, Jellybean?" Benitez attended De Witt Clinton and John F. Kennedy High Schools but dropped out before graduating.
When he relocated to Manhattan in 1975, Benitez was exposed to disco nightclubs, which sparked his interest in DJing. He was soon performing at a nightclub called Experiment 4 & Electric Circus and in 1980 Benitez enrolled and attended Bronx Community College, where he studied Marketing and Sales Promotions. Benitez was soon an in-demand DJ, which led to work at Electric Circus, Hurrah, Xenon, Paradise Garage and Studio 54. In 1981, he was hired as the resident DJ of the club, Funhouse. Benitez also hosted a weekend dance radio show at WKTU.

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John Lennon
John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founder members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Together with Paul McCartney, he formed one of the most celebrated songwriting partnerships of the 20th century.
Born and raised in Liverpool, Lennon became involved as a teenager in the skiffle craze; his first band, The Quarrymen, evolved into The Beatles in 1960. As the group disintegrated towards the end of the decade, Lennon embarked on a solo career that produced the critically acclaimed albums John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, and iconic songs such as "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine". After his marriage to Yoko Ono in 1969, he changed his name to John Ono Lennon. Lennon disengaged himself from the music business in 1975 to devote time to raising his infant son Sean, but re-emerged with Ono in 1980 with the new album Double Fantasy. He was murdered three weeks after its release.

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Jon Pareles
Jon Pareles is an American journalist who is the chief popular music critic in the arts section of the New York Times. He played jazz flute and piano, and graduated from Yale University with a degree in music. In the 1970s he was an associate editor of Crawdaddy!, and in the 1980s an associate editor at Rolling Stone and the music editor at The Village Voice. He started contributing to the Times in 1982. He currently reviews popular music in the arts section of the New York Times.

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Julia Roberts
Julia Fiona Roberts (born October 28, 1967) is an American actress. She became a Hollywood star after headlining the romantic comedy Pretty Woman (1990), which grossed $464 million worldwide. After receiving Golden Globe Awards and Academy Award nominations for Steel Magnolias (1989) and Pretty Woman, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Erin Brockovich (2000). Her films My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), Mystic Pizza (1988), Notting Hill (1999), Runaway Bride (1999), Valentine's Day (2010), The Pelican Brief (1993), Ocean's Eleven (2001), and Ocean's Twelve (2004) have collectively brought box office receipts of over $2.4 billion, making her one of the most successful actresses in terms of box office receipts.
Roberts had become one of the highest-paid actresses in the world, topping the Hollywood Reporter's annual "power list" of top-earning female stars from 2005 to 2006. Her fee for 1990's Pretty Woman was $300,000; in 2003, she was paid an unprecedented $25 million for her role in Mona Lisa Smile (2003). As of 2010, Roberts's net worth was estimated to be $140 million.

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Julie Andrews
Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE (née Wells; born 1 October 1935) is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honours.
Andrews is a former child actress and singer who made her Broadway debut in a 1954 production of The Boy Friend, and rose to prominence starring in musicals such as My Fair Lady and Camelot, both of which earned her Tony Award nominations. In 1957, she made her television debut with the title role in Cinderella, which was seen by over 100 million viewers.
Andrews made her feature film debut in Mary Poppins (1964), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She received her second Academy Award nomination for The Sound of Music (1965). Adjusted for inflation, these two films are the 25th and 3rd highest grossing films of all time, respectively. From 1964 to 1967, Andrews was the biggest film star in the world, with the additional box office successes of her films The Americanization of Emily, Hawaii, Torn Curtain, and Thoroughly Modern Millie.

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Julie Frost
Julie Frost is a Golden Globe winner and an internationally known award winning American songwriter, singer, guitar player and music producer. She is the second American songwriter to win the Eurovision Song Contest, as co-writer of the song "Satellite", which won the contest in 2010 for Germany. Most recently, Frost is the composer of the Black Eyed Peas' single "Just Can't Get Enough", which is one of the top ten Billboard singles of 2011. She also contributed to the composition of Beyonce's single "Countdown", and Madonna's song "Masterpiece", from the sound track of her movie W.E., recently won a Golden Globe award for best original song in a soundtrack, 2011.
Julie Frost grew up in rural Vermont and began to perform publicly in 1992 in Chicago. Her first solo album The Wave (2002) was received positively by various music critics;... Of her writing style, Music Critic Johny Luftus wrote "Chicago singer/songwriter Julie Frost likes to place pleading heartache, clever wordplay, and determined pluck over nuanced arrangements". Later on Frost founded her own studio "Happy Child Studios", which produces songs for families and children, and published her album Happy Child Music (2006).

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Julie Walters
Julie Walters, CBE (born 22 February 1950 in Smethwick (near Birmingham), Staffordshire) is an English actress and novelist. She came to international prominence in 1983 for Educating Rita, performing in the title role opposite Michael Caine. It was a role she had created on the West End stage and it won her BAFTA and Golden Globe awards for Best Actress. She is best known internationally for her on-screen characterisation of Molly Weasley in seven of the eight Harry Potter films. In 2006, she came fourth in ITV's poll of the public's 50 Greatest Stars in the UK. She is also well known for her collaborations with Victoria Wood, such as appearing in and co-writing with her the award-winning sitcoms Victoria Wood As Seen On TV and Dinnerladies.
Julia Mary Walters was born in Smethwick, West Midlands, very close to Birmingham, to parents Mary Bridget (née O'Brien), a postal clerk of Irish Catholic extraction, and Thomas Walters, a builder and decorator. The youngest of three children and only girl, Walters had an early education at a convent school and later at Holly Lodge Grammar School for Girls on Holly Lane in Smethwick, although she was asked to leave at the end of her lower sixth due to her "high jinks". In an interview with Alison Oddey, Walters said about her early schooling: "I was never going to be academic, so [my mother] suggested that I try teaching or nursing [...] I'd been asked to leave school, so I thought I'd better do it."

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Justin Timberlake
Justin Randall Timberlake (born January 31, 1981) is an American singer, actor, and businessman. He achieved early fame when he appeared as a contestant on Star Search, and went on to star in the Disney Channel television series The New Mickey Mouse Club, where he met future bandmate JC Chasez. Timberlake became famous in the late 1990s as the lead singer and youngest member of the boy band 'N Sync, whose launch was financed by Lou Pearlman.
In 2002, he released his debut solo album, Justified, which sold more than seven million copies worldwide. The album was a commercial success, spawning the hits "Cry Me a River" and "Rock Your Body". Timberlake continued his success with his second solo album, FutureSex/LoveSounds (2006), debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, and produced the US number-one hit singles "SexyBack", "My Love", and "What Goes Around... Comes Around".
Timberlake has won six Grammy Awards and four Emmy Awards. His first two albums made him one of the most commercially successful singers in the world, each selling in excess of 7 million copies. He also has an acting career, having starred in films such as The Social Network, Bad Teacher and Friends with Benefits. His other ventures include record label Tennman Records, fashion label William Rast, and the restaurants Destino and Southern Hospitality.

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Karen Carpenter
Karen Anne Carpenter (March 2, 1950 – February 4, 1983) was an American singer and drummer. She and her brother, Richard, formed the 1970s duo Carpenters, commonly called The Carpenters. She was a drummer whose skills earned her admiration from her peers, although she is most well known for her vocal performances of idealistic romantic ballads.
Carpenter suffered from anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder of extreme weight loss dieting, which was a little-known illness at the time. She died at the age of 32 from heart failure, caused by complications related to her illness which caused her to believe mistakenly that she needed to lose weight.
Carpenter was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to Agnes Reuwer Tatum and Harold Bertram Carpenter. When she was young, she enjoyed playing baseball with other children on the street. On the TV program This Is Your Life, she stated that she liked pitching. In the early 1970s, she went on to play as the pitcher on the Carpenters' official softball team. Karen's brother, Richard, had developed an interest in music at an early age, becoming a piano prodigy. Karen showed less interest in music as a young child. The family moved in June 1963 to the Los Angeles suburb of Downey.

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Kathleen Turner
Mary Kathleen Turner (born June 19, 1954) is an American actress. She came to fame during the 1980s, after roles in the Hollywood films Body Heat, Peggy Sue Got Married, Romancing the Stone, The War of the Roses, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Serial Mom and Prizzi's Honor. More recently, she guest starred on the third season of Showtime's Californication as Sue Collini, a jaded sex-crazed public relations company owner.
Turner was born in Springfield, Missouri, the daughter of Patsy (née Magee) and Allen Richard Turner, a U.S. Foreign Service officer who grew up in China^{[citation needed]} (where Turner's great-grandfather had been a Methodist Christian missionary). Her father, a diplomat, had been imprisoned by the Japanese Empire for four years during the World War II.^{[citation needed]} As a girl, Turner lived in Canada, Venezuela, and England, and she was living in Cuba at the time that Fidel Castro took over the government. When the United States soon after broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba, it forced the staff members of the American embassy in Havana to leave the country. Turner has two brothers and one sister. While attending high school in England, she was a gymnast, and she also took classes at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

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Kelly Osbourne
Kelly Michelle Lee Osbourne (born 27 October 1984) is an English media personality, television personality, host, fashion designer, singer and actress, best known for being the daughter of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne. She was thrust into the limelight after appearing on the reality series The Osbournes with her family, for which they won a 2002 Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality Programme. She has also appeared on Dancing with the Stars, in which she and professional dance partner Louis van Amstel took third place, and has made forays into music, acting, theatre, writing, columnist and broadcast presenting.
Osbourne was born in Westminster, London. She has an elder sister, Aimee, and a younger brother, Jack. She has two half-siblings: Jessica Hobbs and Louis John Osbourne from Ozzy's first marriage. She had an unofficially "adopted" brother, Robert Marcato, whom Sharon and Ozzy took in after Marcato's mother died. Kelly grew up travelling with her father as he went on tour, and lived in more than 20 homes between the UK and the US.

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Kylie Minogue
Kylie Ann Minogue, OBE ( /ˈkaɪliː mɨˈnoʊɡ/; born 28 May 1968) — often known simply as Kylie — is an Australian singer, recording artist, songwriter, showgirl, and actress. After beginning her career as a child actress on Australian television, she achieved recognition through her role in the television soap opera Neighbours, before commencing her career as a recording artist in 1987. Her first single, "Locomotion", spent seven weeks at number one on the Australian singles chart and became the highest selling single of the decade. This led to a contract with songwriters and producers Stock, Aitken & Waterman. Her debut album, Kylie (1988), and the single "I Should Be So Lucky", each reached number one in the United Kingdom, and over the next two years, her first 13 singles reached the British top ten. Her debut film, The Delinquents (1989) was a box-office hit in Australia and the UK, and received generally positive reviews.
Initially presented as a "girl next door", Minogue attempted to convey a more mature style in her music and public image. Her singles were well received, but after four albums her record sales were declining, and she left Stock, Aitken & Waterman in 1992 to establish herself as an independent performer. Her next single, "Confide in Me", reached number one in Australia and was a hit in several European countries in 1994, and a duet with Nick Cave, "Where the Wild Roses Grow", brought Minogue a greater degree of artistic credibility. Drawing inspiration from a range of musical styles and artists, Minogue took creative control over the songwriting for her next album, Impossible Princess (1997). It failed to attract strong reviews or sales in the UK, but was successful in Australia.

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Larry King
Larry King (born November 19, 1933) is an American television and radio host whose work has been recognized with awards including two Peabodys and ten Cable ACE Awards. He began as a local Florida journalist and radio interviewer in the 1950s and 1960s and became prominent as an all-night national radio broadcaster starting in 1978. From 1985-2010, he hosted the nightly interview TV program Larry King Live on CNN.
King was born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger in Brooklyn, New York City, to an Austrian immigrant Edward Zeiger, a restaurant owner and defense plant worker, and his wife Jennie Gitlitz, a garment worker, who emigrated from Belarus. King grew up in a religiously observant Jewish home, but in adulthood became an agnostic.
King's father died at 44 of heart disease, and his mother had to go on welfare to support her two sons. His father's death greatly affected King, and he lost interest in school. After graduating from high school, he worked to help support his mother. From an early age, however, he had wanted to go into radio. King is a fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

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Lionel Richie
Lionel Brockman Richie, Jr. (born June 20, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, record producer and actor. From 1968, he was a member of the musical group Commodores signed to Motown Records. Richie made his solo debut in 1982 with the album Lionel Richie and number-one hit "Truly".
Richie was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, the son of Alberta R. (Foster) and Lionel Brockman Richie. Richie grew up on the campus of Tuskegee Institute. His grandfather's house was across the street from the home of the president of the college. His family moved to Joliet, Illinois, where he graduated from Joliet Township High School, East Campus. A star tennis player in Joliet, he accepted a tennis scholarship to attend Tuskegee Institute, and graduated with a major in economics. After receiving his undergraduate degree from Tuskegee, Richie briefly attended graduate school at Auburn University. He is a member of Kappa Kappa Psi and Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity.
As a student in Tuskegee, Richie formed a succession of R&B groups in the mid-1960s. In 1968 he became a singer and saxophonist with the Commodores. They signed a recording contract with Atlantic Records in 1968 for one record before moving on to Motown Records initially as a support act to The Jackson 5. The Commodores then became established as a popular soul group. Their first several albums had a danceable, funky sound, as in such tracks as "Machine Gun" and "Brick House." Over time, Richie wrote and sang more romantic, easy-listening ballads such as "Easy," "Three Times a Lady," "Still," and the tragic breakup ballad "Sail On."

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Madonna filmography
American entertainer Madonna started her film career in 1979 in the low budget feature A Certain Sacrifice. Since then she has starred in numerous independent and Hollywood motion pictures, the majority of which have been box office failures. She has also appeared in three starring theatre roles, numerous television commercials and directed her debut motion picture Filth and Wisdom in 2008. In 1997 she won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical for her role in Evita. In 2012, she won the Golden Globe for Best Original Song for "Masterpiece".
In 1979, Madonna starred in low-budget feature A Certain Sacrifice. Its release in 1985 coincided with the success of her Like a Virgin album, and Madonna tried to prevent its release. That same year, Madonna made a small cameo appearance as a club singer in the film Vision Quest singing Crazy for You; then garnered commercial and critical success in Susan Seidelman's Desperately Seeking Susan, a story of a housewife who is fascinated with a woman she only knows by reading messages in the personals section of a New York City tabloid. It was a commercial success and grossed $27 million in the United States alone.

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Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists (a type of microorganism) of the genus Plasmodium. The protists act as parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases progressing to coma or death. The disease is widespread in tropical and subtropical regions in a broad band around the equator, including much of Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
Five species of Plasmodium can infect and be transmitted by humans. Severe disease is largely caused by P. falciparum while the disease caused by P. vivax, P. ovale, and P. malariae is generally a milder form that is rarely fatal. The zoonotic species P. knowlesi, prevalent in Southeast Asia, causes malaria in macaques but can also cause severe infections in humans. Malaria is prevalent in tropical regions because of the significant amounts of rainfall, consistently high temperatures and high humidity, along with stagnant waters in which mosquito larvae readily mature, provide them with the environment they need for continuous breeding. Disease transmission can be reduced by preventing mosquito bites by distribution of mosquito nets and insect repellents, or with mosquito-control measures such as spraying insecticides and draining standing water.

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Marilyn Monroe
Norma Jeane Mortensen Baker (June 1, 1926 – August 5, 1962), professionally recognized as Marilyn Monroe, was an American actress, model, and singer, who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s and early 1960s.
After spending much of her childhood in foster homes, Monroe began a career as a model, which led to a film contract in 1946 with Twentieth Century-Fox. Her early film appearances were minor, but her performances in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve (both 1950) drew attention to her. By 1953, Monroe had progressed to a leading role in Niagara (1953), a melodramatic film noir that dwelt on her seductiveness. Her "dumb blonde" persona was used to comic effect in subsequent films such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and The Seven Year Itch (1955). Limited by typecasting, Monroe studied at the Actors Studio to broaden her range. Her dramatic performance in Bus Stop (1956) was hailed by critics and garnered a Golden Globe nomination. Her production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, released The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), for which she received a BAFTA Award nomination and won a David di Donatello award. She received a Golden Globe Award for her performance in Some Like It Hot (1959). Monroe's last completed film was The Misfits, co-starring Clark Gable with screenplay by her then-husband, Arthur Miller.

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Maripol
Maripol was brought up in France before moving to New York, USA in 1976. She is an artist, film producer, fashion designer and stylist who has had an influence on the looks of many influential artists, including Grace Jones, Deborah Harry, and Madonna. Maripol is also a Polaroid artist photographer who has exhibited her photos in art galleries all over the world. Her photographic work is being collected by museums. In 2006, Maripol had a new book of her life's photography published.
Maripol is best known for designing for and styling pop singer Madonna during the Madonna and Like a Virgin albums in the mid-1980s. Maripol's trademark black rubber bracelets, jewellery and crucifixes became as iconic as Madonna herself in these early years.
In the early 1980s, Maripol was the art director for hip Italian boutique Fiorucci. By the mid-80s, Maripol had achieved some success with her own shop, Maripolitan, in the NoHo area of New York. She also made a line of official Madonna jewellery and accessories for the Like a Virgin tour.

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Mark Bego
Mark Bego (b. Pontiac, Michigan, 23 September 1952) is a best selling author of top performers in the rock & roll and show business genres. By having more than 10 million books in print, Mark Bego has been acknowledged as "the prince of pop bios" - the best selling biographer in the rock and pop field. Bego has written 59 books, two of which have been New York Times Best Sellers. Bego has written biographers about some of entertainment's biggest stars, including: Linda Ronstadt, Elton John, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Billy Joel, Patsy Cline, Leonardo DiCaprio and many more.
Bego is the first author to report the entire life story of Whitney Houston in his new 2012 book: Whitney Houston: The Spectacular Rise and Tragic Fall of the Woman Whose Voice Inspired a Generation (Skyhorse Publishing). Released both in print and on Kindle, this book is the culmination of Bego's following Houston's musical career since the diva's days as a background singer in her mother's act in Manhattan nightclubs. Bego had updated his 1986 Whitney! book in 2009 for Hannibal Books in the German language as Whitney Houston: Die Biografie, so when news of Whitney's death spread publicly, Bego sprang to action, to update and create this new telling of the Houston story. The book is also released in Great Britain by Plexus simply as Whitney Houston, and will be released in French-speaking Canada, and China as well. It will also be available as an audio book in the German language.

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Mark Ellen
Mark Ellen is an award winning magazine editor, journalist and broadcaster who lives in West London.
Whilst at Oxford University in the 1970s, he briefly played bass in the band Ugly Rumours alongside Tony Blair. A band, which according to Ellen existed primarily to meet "exciting girls in floral print dresses"
After graduating, he wrote for Record Mirror, NME and Time Out before signing up as Features Editor of Smash Hits in 1981, where he became the editor in 1983. He was the launch editor of Q, the re-launch editor of Select, and the launch managing editor of Mojo. He later became the Editor-in-chief of EMAP Metro overseeing 14 consumer magazines but he left Emap after 16 years to join the independent publishing company; Development Hell in 2002.
He also has a long broadcasting career which includes contributions to BBC Radio 1 as stand-ins for David "Kid" Jensen and John Peel. He presented the BBC's Whistle Test from 1982-1987. He also co-presented the Live Aid TV broadcast in 1985.
Ellen is currently editor of The Word, a UK music magazine which he started with long-time colleague, business partner and Whistle Test co-presenter David Hepworth. The first issue was published in February 2003 and the magazine celebrated its 50th issue in March 2007.

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Mark Kamins
Mark Kamins is a New York club DJ.
He is best known for helping launch the career of one-time girlfriend Madonna by presenting a demo to Seymour Stein of Sire Records. He also produced her first single "Everybody" in 1982. Kamins had bugged Stein about becoming a producer, but Stein said he had to find his own artists first; when he heard the demo of "Everybody", Stein had Madonna brought to the hospital where he was admitted to sign her.
Kamins worked closely with controversial performance artist Karen Finley on her obscenity-laden disco tracks, two of which - "Tales of Taboo" and "Lick It" - became underground dance hits. Subsequent work included projects for Tommy Page, David Byrne of the Talking Heads, Ofra Haza, the Beastie Boys, Sinéad O'Connor and UB40.
More recent work includes production work for the trance/opera dance fusion artist Sasha Lazard, who performed for 8,000 people in Ibiza, Spain in 1999 to choreography by former Madonna Blonde Ambition Tour dancer "Slam".

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Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich (German pronunciation: [maɐˈleːnə ˈdiːtʁɪç]; 27 December 1901 – 6 May 1992) was a German-American actress and singer.
Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films. Her performance as "Lola-Lola" in The Blue Angel, directed by Josef von Sternberg, brought her international fame and provided her a contract with Paramount Pictures in the US. Hollywood films such as Shanghai Express and Desire capitalised on her glamour and exotic looks, cementing her stardom and making her one of the highest-paid actresses of the era. Dietrich became a US citizen in 1939, and throughout World War II she was a high-profile frontline entertainer. Although she still made occasional films in the post-war years, Dietrich spent most of the 1950s to the 1970s touring the world as a successful show performer.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Dietrich the ninth-greatest female star of all time.

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Martha Graham
Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts,Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.
She danced and choreographed for over seventy years. Graham was the first dancer ever to perform at the White House, travel abroad as a cultural ambassador, and receive the highest civilian award of the USA: the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In her lifetime she received honors ranging from the Key to the City of Paris to Japan's Imperial Order of the Precious Crown. She said, "I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It's permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable."^{[citation needed]}
Graham was born in Allegheny City, which today is part of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1894. Her father George Graham was what in the Victorian era was known as an "alienist", a practitioner of an early form of psychiatry. The Grahams were strict Presbyterians. Dr. Graham was a third generation American of Irish descent and her mother Jane Beers was a tenth generation descendant of Puritan Miles Standish.

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Martin Solveig
Martin Laurent Picandet (French pronunciation: [maʁtɛ̃ pikɑ̃dɛ]) (born 22 September 1976), better known under his stage name Martin Solveig, is a French electronic music DJ and producer from Paris. He also hosts a weekly radio show called "C'est La Vie" on stations worldwide including FG DJ Radio in his homeland. His label is called Mixture Stereophonic. Martin Solveig had been ranked 29^th in the 2011 DJ Mag Top 100 DJs popularity poll. He has collaborated with Dragonette, Kele of Bloc Party, and Madonna.
As a child, Martin Solveig joined the choir of the Petits Chanteurs de Sainte-Croix de Neuilly, where he had a classical music training and became soprano soloist under the direction of François Polgár. At the age of 18, he became a DJ and then started to work in famous Parisian nightclubs : L'Enfer, Le Queen, Les Bains Douches.
Solveig chose his pseudonym as an homage to the French actress Solveig Dommartin.
In 2011, Solveig was officially named as one of the producers for Madonna's new studio album, MDNA.

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Marvin Gaye
Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr. (April 2, 1939 – April 1, 1984), better known by his stage name Marvin Gaye (he added the 'e' as a young man), was an acclaimed American singer-songwriter and musician with a three-octave vocal range, who achieved major success in the 1960s and 1970s as an artist for the Motown Records label. He was shot dead by his father on April 1, 1984.
Starting his career as a member of the doo-wop group The Moonglows in the late 1950s, he ventured into a solo career after the group disbanded in 1960, signing with Motown Records subsidiary, Tamla. He started off as a session drummer, but later ranked as the label's top-selling solo artist during the 1960s. He was crowned "The Prince of Motown" and "The Prince of Soul". because of solo hits such as "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)", "Ain't That Peculiar", "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," and his duet singles with singers such as Mary Wells and Tammi Terrell.
His work in the early- and mid-1970s included the albums, What's Going On, Let's Get It On, and I Want You, which helped influence the quiet storm, urban adult contemporary, and slow jam genres. After a self-imposed European exile in the early 1980s, Gaye returned on the 1982 Grammy-Award winning hit, "Sexual Healing" and the Midnight Love album before his death.

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Matthew Rettenmund
Matthew Rettenmund (born December 25, 1968) is the author of the novels Boy Culture and Blind Items: A (Love) Story, as well as the non-fiction books Encyclopedia Madonnica, Totally Awesome '80s, and Hilary Duff: All Access. He is currently the Editor in Chief of Popstar! Magazine.
He grew up in Flushing, Michigan and after he graduated from the University of Chicago, he moved to New York City, where he still lives. His novel Boy Culture was adapted into an award-winning movie in 2006.

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Matthew Todd
Matthew Todd is a playwright, stand up comedian and award winning journalist. He is the author of the critically acclaimed play Blowing Whistles and is currently the editor of the UK gay magazine Attitude and was nominated by the British Society of Magazine Editors as Best Editor of the year 2009, 2010 and 2011 in the 'Men's magazines' category alongside the editors of GQ, Mens Health and Esquire amongst others.
He appears on the Kate Silverton Show on BBC Radio Five Live as a monthly debate panelist and appears regularly on TV and radio including on BBC News 24, The Truth About Take That (Channel 4), Out To School (Channel 4), The Most Annoying Celebrities of 2009 (Sky One) and Take The Mike (ITV1) amongst many others.
He has written for The Guardian, The Sun, Heat!, 'The Evening Standard,What's On in London, Top of the Pops, and Time Out.
For Attitude he has interviewed celebrities including Madonna, Daniel Radcliffe, Adam Lambert, Gareth Thomas, Armistead Maupin, Stephen Gately, Boy George, Bette Milder, Kathleen Turner, Harvey Fierstein, David Furnish, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Victoria Wood, Alan Carr, Stephen Fry, Graham Norton, Anthony Sher, Sir Ian McKellen, Peter Tatchell, Paul O'Grady, Ricky Gervais, Russell Brand and the Pet Shop Boys. He conducted Madonna's only UK gay press interview, Daniel Radcliffe's first and only gay press interview in the world, gay rugby player Gareth Thomas's first gay press interview, Boy George's first national magazine interview after he came out of prison and Stephen Gately's first interview after he came out in The Sun.

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Melanie Griffith
Melanie Richards Griffith (born August 9, 1957) is an American actress. She is an Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner for her performance in the 1988 film Working Girl. She is the daughter of actress Tippi Hedren, and is married to actor Antonio Banderas.
Griffith was born in New York City to actress Tippi Hedren and producer, former actor, and advertising executive Peter Griffith. Her parents divorced when she was four years old, after which her father married model/actress Nanita Greene and had two more children: actress Tracy Griffith and set designer Clay A. Griffith. Her mother married agent and producer Noel Marshall, and Griffith grew up with three stepbrothers. During her childhood and adolescent years, she divided her time between living in New York with her father and in Antelope Valley, California, where her mother formed the animal preserve Shambala. She also skipped a grade and graduated from Hollywood Professional School when she was 16 years old.
Griffith began work at just nine months old in a commercial^{[citation needed]} and later became an extra on Smith! (1969) and The Harrad Experiment (1973). In 1975, she played her first major roles in Smile, The Drowning Pool, and Night Moves, in which she did racy nude scenes at age 17.

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Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Often referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records. His contribution to music, dance, and fashion, along with a much-publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture for over four decades. The seventh child of the Jackson family, he debuted on the professional music scene along with his brothers as a member of The Jackson 5 in 1964, and began his solo career in 1971.
In the early 1980s, Jackson became a dominant figure in popular music. The music videos for his songs, including those of "Beat It", "Billie Jean", and "Thriller", were credited with transforming the medium into an art form and a promotional tool, and the popularity of these videos helped to bring the relatively new television channel MTV to fame. Videos such as "Black or White" and "Scream" made him a staple on MTV in the 1990s. Through stage performances and music videos, Jackson popularized a number of complicated dance techniques, such as the robot and the moonwalk, to which he gave the name. His distinctive musical sound and vocal style influenced numerous hip hop, post-disco, contemporary R&B, pop and rock artists.

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Miranda Richardson
Miranda Jane Richardson (born 3 March 1958) is an English stage, film and television actor. She has been nominated for two Academy Awards, and has won two Golden Globes (with seven nominations) and a BAFTA (with seven nominations) during her career.
Richardson was born in Southport, Lancashire, to Marian Georgina (née Townsend), a housewife, and William Alan Richardson, a marketing executive. The second daughter of a middle class family, she revealed a talent for acting as a girl.
Richardson enrolled at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, where she studied alongside Daniel Day-Lewis, having started out with juvenile performances in Cinderella and Lord Arthur Savile's Crime at the Southport Dramatic Club. Richardson enjoyed a successful and extensive theatre career, making her stage debut in Moving at the Queen's Theatre in 1981. Soon afterwards, she appeared in repertory theatre, until she found recognition in the West End for a series of stage performances, ultimately receiving an Olivier Award nomination for her performance in A Lie of the Mind, and in 1996, she is cited as "the greatest actress of our time in any medium" by one critic after she appeared in Orlando at the Edinburgh Festival. She returned to the London stage in May 2009 to play the lead role in Wallace Shawn's new play, Grasses of a Thousand Colours at the Royal Court Theatre.

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Mirwais Ahmadzaï
Mirwais Ahmadzaï, more commonly known as Mirwais, (born 1960) is a Paris based record producer and songwriter. He was born in Switzerland to an Afghan father and an Italian mother. He is a leader in the French style of progressive electronic dance music and progressive electronica. A former member of the defunct 1980s group Taxi Girl, he was re-discovered by Madonna in the late 1990s, when he submitted a demo to her then record label, Maverick Records.
Known in France for the better part of two decades, Mirwais was a guitarist in the punk group Taxi Girl for eight years, before forming the acoustic outfit Juliette et les Independents with his girlfriend Juliette. Taxi Girl's first EP, "(S.O.S Mannequin)", was released in early 1980 on Pathé Marconi/EMI.
"For a teenager, the late 70s were a strange mixture of disco music and punk, and it was okay to like them all," he says. Taxi Girl captured the punk rock power of The Stooges, the techno futurism of Kraftwerk and the disco euphoria of Giorgio Moroder and molded the diametrically opposed styles into an electrifying new-wave sound that entertained and inspired a generation of listeners bored by the complacency of 80s French pop. Even the current darlings of the French electronic music scene, such as Daft Punk and Air, continue to namecheck Taxi Girl as a major influence on their artistic directions.</ref> "Mirwais online". </ref>

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Missy Elliott
Melissa Arnette "Missy" Elliott (born July 1, 1971) is an American rapper, singer-songwriter, record producer, dancer and actress. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Elliott, with record sales of over seven million in the United States, is the only female rapper to have six albums certified platinum by the RIAA, including one double platinum for her 2002 album Under Construction. Elliott is known for a series of hits and diverse music videos, including "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)", "Hot Boyz", "Get Ur Freak On", "One Minute Man", "4 My People", "Work It", "Pass That Dutch", and "Lose Control". In addition, she has worked extensively as a songwriter and producer for other artists, both alone and with her fellow producer and childhood friend Timbaland, with whom she received her first production credit on R&B singer Ginuwine's 1996's album Ginuwine...the Bachelor.
Elliott was born on July 1, 1971, in Portsmouth, Virginia. She is the only child of mother Patricia, a power-company coordinator, and father Ronnie, a Marine. At the age of four in 1975, she wanted to be a performer, though she knew no one took her seriously, as she was always the class clown. While her father was a Marine, the family lived in Jacksonville, North Carolina, in a mobile home. Elliott enjoyed school for the friendships she formed and had little interest in school work, though an IQ test classified her above average and she was able to jump two years ahead of her class. This made her feel increasingly isolated, so she purposely failed all her classes, eventually returning to her age-appropriate class. When her father returned from the Marines, they moved back to Virginia, where they lived in a vermin-infested shack.

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Nancy Sinatra
Nancy Sandra Sinatra (born June 8, 1940) is an American singer and actress. She is the daughter of singer/actor Frank Sinatra, and remains best known for her 1966 signature hit "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'".
Other defining recordings include "Sugar Town", the 1967 number one "Somethin' Stupid" (a duet with her father), the title song from the James Bond film You Only Live Twice, several collaborations with Lee Hazlewood such as "Jackson", and her cover of Cher's "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)", which features during the opening sequence of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill.
Sinatra began her career as a singer and actress in the early 1960s, but initially achieved success only in Europe and Japan. In early 1966 she had a transatlantic number-one hit with "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'", which showed her provocative but good-natured style, and which popularized and made her synonymous with go-go boots. The promo clip featured a big-haired Sinatra and six young women in tight tops, go-go boots and mini-skirts. The song was written by Lee Hazlewood, who wrote and produced most of her hits and sang with her on several duets, including the critical and cult favorite "Some Velvet Morning". In 1966 and 1967, Sinatra charted with 13 titles, all of which featured Billy Strange as arranger and conductor.

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Nathan Brackett
Nathan Brackett is a Senior Editor at Rolling Stone magazine. Brackett joined Rolling Stone in 1997 as a record reviewer. Six months after that he began editing the Reviews section. Brackett grew up in a small town north of Boston and later attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He succeeded David Fricke as Music Editor in 1998.

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Nelly Furtado
Nelly Kim Furtado (born December 2, 1978) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer and actress. Furtado first gained fame with her debut album, Whoa, Nelly!, and its single "I'm Like a Bird", which won a 2001 Juno Award for Single of the Year and a 2002 Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Her second studio album, Folklore, was released. It was less commercially successful in the US but produced three international singles: "Powerless (Say What You Want)", "Try", and "Força" (the theme of the 2004 European Football Championship). Her third studio album, Loose was her biggest success worldwide. It produced the number-one hits "Promiscuous", "Maneater", "Say It Right" and "All Good Things (Come to an End)". After a three-year break, she released her first full-length Spanish album, Mi Plan. For Mi Plan, Furtado received the Latin Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Album. Furtado's fourth English-language studio album, The Spirit Indestructible, is set for release on September 18, 2012.

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Nick Kamen
Nick Kamen (born Ivor Neville Kamen, 15 April 1962, Harlow, Essex, England) is an English male model, songwriter and musician, and brother of session guitarist Chester Kamen and artist Barry Kamen.
Nick attended St Marks RC Comprehensive School in Harlow along with his brother Chester. Kamen was first brought to the public’s attention in 1984 when Ray Petri featured him on the front cover of The Face. The cover showed him wearing a ski-hat, orange roll-neck sweater and aviator sunglasses.
He is most remembered, in the UK, for his 1985 beefcake performance in Levi's "Launderette" television commercial, where he strips down in order to stone-wash his blue jeans in a 1950s style public laundromat while he waits clad only in his boxer shorts, which was one of a series of Bartle Bogle Hegarty advertisements that dramatically increased the popularity of Levi 501s. It was selected for, and came fourth in, The 100 Greatest TV Ads in 2000.
His first single was the 1986 UK number five hit "Each Time You Break My Heart" from his eponymous début album.Written and produced by Madonna and Stephen Bray, it also cracked both the U.S. dance chart (remix by Shep Pettibone) and the Top 50 in Canada. Madonna also sang the backing vocals. Her original demo remains one of many unreleased Madonna songs. Kamen also had a #16 follow-up in the UK with the second single, Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever, although his later singles were less-commercially successful in the UK but more so in the rest of Europe, particularly Italy, France, Germany and Spain.

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Nicki Minaj
Onika Tanya Maraj (born December 8, 1982), known by her stage name Nicki Minaj ( /mɪˈnɑːʒ/), is a Trinidadian-born American rapper and singer-songwriter. She was born in Saint James, Trinidad and Tobago and when she was 5 years of age she moved to the New York City borough of Queens, where she grew up.
After releasing three mixtapes between 2007 and 2009 and being signed to Young Money Entertainment in August 2009, Minaj released her debut album, Pink Friday, in November 2010. It quickly became a commercial success, peaking at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 and being certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) a month after its release. She became the first female solo artist to have seven singles on the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time. Her second single, "Your Love", reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot Rap Songs chart, making Minaj the first female artist to top the chart unaccompanied since 2002. She also became the first female artist to be included on MTV's Annual Hottest MC List. Minaj was named the 2011 Rising Star by Billboard. Her second studio album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded was released on April 3, 2012.

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Nicole Kidman
Nicole Mary Kidman, AC (born 20 June 1967) is an Australian actress, singer, film producer, and humanitarian. Kidman began her career in 1983, starring in various Australian film and television productions until her breakthrough in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm. Following several films over the early 1990s, she came to worldwide recognition for her performances in Days of Thunder (1990), Far and Away (1992), and Batman Forever (1995). Kidman followed this with other successful films in the late 1990s. It was her performance in the musical, Moulin Rouge! (2001) which earned Kidman her second Golden Globe Award and first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Her performance as Virginia Woolf the following year in the drama film The Hours (2002) received critical acclaim and earned Kidman the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Kidman's other notable films include To Die For (1995), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Cold Mountain (2003), The Interpreter (2005), and Australia (2008). Her performance in 2010's Rabbit Hole (which she also produced) earned Kidman further accolades including a subsequent Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Kidman has been a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF since 1994 and for UNIFEM since 2006. Kidman's work has earned her a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, three Golden Globe Awards, one BAFTA, and an Academy Award. In 2006, Kidman was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, Australia's highest civilian honor, and was also the highest-paid actress in the motion picture industry. As a result of being born to Australian parents in Hawaii, Kidman has dual citizenship in Australia and the United States.

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Patrick Hernandez
Patrick Hernandez (born 6 April 1949, Le Blanc-Mesnil, Seine-Saint-Denis) is a French singer who had a worldwide hit with "Born to Be Alive" in 1979.
Born to a Spanish father and a half-Italian/half-Austrian mother, Hernandez grew up in the 1960s and was interested in music. He toured dancehalls and ballrooms of southern France with a number of groups over the next decade. Hernandez met his music partner Hervé Tholance, an arranger, guitarist, and vocalist, during that period. The two formed a duo and started achieving local success backing French musicians such as Francis Cabrel, Laurent Voulzy, and the French group Gold.
In 1978, Hernandez met the producer Jean Vanloo with disco music at its peak, and signed a recording contract. Hernandez went to Waterloo, Belgium to work on songs.
After working for about a year, the songs were released on the Aariana sub-label Aquarius Records (in France) in November 1978. The first single that was released was the disco song "Born to Be Alive". Its success was immediate, and in January 1979, Hernandez received his first gold record from Italy. The song spread throughout Europe, where it hit #1 in France in April and remained there until July. By then, the United States had caught on, and after some remixing, the record was signed to the A-Tom-Mik label. The remixed version was released on a commercial 12" single, and it peaked in the US Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart at #1 and crossed over to the Billboard Hot 100 peaking at #16. It sold over one million copies in the US. The track reached #10 in the UK Singles Chart. By year's end, Hernandez had racked up fifty two gold and platinum record awards from more than fifty different countries.^{[citation needed]}

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Patrick Leonard
Patrick Raymond Leonard (born 1955) is an American songwriter, keyboardist and music producer, known for his longtime collaboration with Madonna on many different recordings.
He gained his entry into the music business with late 1970s Chicago-based pomp rock band Trillion, which also featured future Toto singer Dennis "Fergie" Frederiksen on lead vocals.
Leonard has worked with a wide variety of artists, including late-period Pink Floyd and solo Roger Waters, as well as Boz Scaggs, Deborah Blando, Peter Cetera, Bryan Ferry, Elton John, Anna Vissi, Jody Watley, Rod Stewart, Madonna, Jewel, Blue October, and up and coming artist Rachel Loy. He also was half of the art-pop group Toy Matinee with the late Kevin Gilbert and Third Matinee with Richard Page.
In 1997 Leonard released the new age album Rivers on his own record label, Unitone.
Leonard has three children: a daughter named Jessie (for whom Madonna's song "Dear Jessie" was written), and two sons, Sean, who plays keyboards, and Jordan, who plays bass.

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Paul Clinton
Paul Clinton (1953 – January 30, 2006) was an American film critic. He served as CNN.com film critic for 20 years. He was the co-founder of the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA).
Clinton was born in Columbus, Ohio and attended Ohio State University and then moved to New York, where he became a page at NBC. He produced for The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder and then moved to Los Angeles to work on The Merv Griffin Show. Later he moved to KCBS^{[disambiguation needed ]} as an entertainment news producer.
In 1988, Paul Clinton began working on the Turner Entertainment Report and other media in the CNN family, where he started reviewing films. In addition to being a critic for CNN.com, his radio reviews and "Paul's Picks" pieces aired on more than 100 stations domestically and internationally.
Clinton and film historian James Ursini did audio commentary on the 2005 DVD release of Dark Victory (1939) starring Bette Davis.
Clinton died aged 53 on January 30, 2006 at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.

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Paula Abdul
Paula Julie Abdul ( /ˈæbduːl/; born June 19, 1962) is an American singer-songwriter, dancer, choreographer, actress and television personality.
In the 1980s, Abdul rose from cheerleader for the Los Angeles Lakers to highly sought-after choreographer at the height of the music video era before scoring a string of pop music-R&B hits in the late-1980s and early-1990s. Her six number one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 tie her for fifth among the female solo performers who have reached #1 there. She won a Grammy for "Best Music Video – Short Form" for "Opposites Attract" and twice won the "Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Choreography".
After her initial period of success, she suffered a series of setbacks in her professional and personal life, until she found renewed fame and success in the early years of the 21st century as a judge on the television series, American Idol, for eight years, before departing from the show. Abdul had moved on to another television series, CBS's Live to Dance, which debuted in January 2011. The series has since been canceled. Following her judging role in Live to Dance, Abdul moved to the first season of American version of The X Factor with her former American Idol co-judge Simon Cowell which premiered on September 21, 2011.

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Paula Rodriguez Rust
Paula Claire Rodriguez Rust (born 1959) is an American sociologist who studies sexual orientation, especially bisexuality. Rust is author of Bisexuality in the United States and Bisexuality and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics: Sex, Loyalty, and Revolution.
Rust earned a Ph.D. in Sociology from University of Michigan in 1989. She has taught at Hamilton College and State University of New York at Geneseo. Rust is a member of the International Academy of Sex Research. She has been critical of 2005 work by J. Michael Bailey that did not detect a distinctly bisexual male genital arousal pattern (although in 2011 Bailey's lab did report finding it) and has advocated for more sophisticated models of sex, gender, and sexual orientation.
She and her partner Lorna Rodriguez Rust have three children. Rust serves on the New Jersey Special Task Force on Bullying, Cyberbullying Awareness and Prevention.

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Pharrell Williams
Pharrell Williams (born April 5, 1973), commonly known simply as Pharrell, is an American rapper, singer, record producer, composer, and fashion designer. Williams and Chad Hugo make up the record production duo The Neptunes, producing hip hop and R&B music. He is also the lead vocalist and drummer of hip-hop band N.E.R.D, which he formed with Hugo and childhood friend Shay Haley. He released his first single "Frontin'" in 2003 and followed up with his first album In My Mind in 2006.
As part of The Neptunes, Williams has produced numerous hit singles for various musicians. The two have earned three Grammy Awards amongst ten nominations. He is also the co-founder of the clothing brands Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream Clothing. He is a member of the supergroup V.A. Playaz with Fam-Lay, Clipse, Skillz, Missy Elliott, and Timbaland & Magoo.
Pharrell Williams was born on April 5, 1973, in Virginia Beach, Virginia, the eldest of three sons of Carolyn, a teacher, and Pharaoh Williams, a handyman. He met Chad Hugo in a seventh-grade summer band camp where Williams played the keyboards and drums and Hugo played tenor saxophone. They were also both members of a marching band; Williams played the snare drum while Chad was student conductor. With Hugo, Williams attended Princess Anne High School where they played in the school band; there he got the name Skateboard P.

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Reggie Lucas
Reginald "Reggie" Lucas is an American musician, songwriter and record producer. Lucas is most famous for his production work with percussionist Mtume and for producing the majority of Madonna's 1983 self-titled debut album.
Early in his career, Lucas was a jazz guitarist, playing with Norman Connors in the early 1970s and then with Miles Davis from 1972-1976. It was in Davis' electric band (one that included Pete Cosey, Michael Henderson and Al Foster) that Lucas met percussionist Mtume, who would later become his production partner.
Following his stint as a touring jazz guitarist, Lucas shifted his focus to songwriting and producing, where he gained both fame and critical praise, at first working as part of a production team with percussionist James Mtume – the two would later go on to write and produce hits for a number of artists, including Stephanie Mills, Phyllis Hyman, Jennifer Holliday and Roberta Flack.
In 1980, Lucas and Mtume won a Grammy Award for Best R&B song for their composition "Never Knew Love Like This Before", which was performed by Stephanie Mills.

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Remedios Varo
Remedios Varo Uranga (December 16, 1908 – October 8, 1963) was a Spanish-Mexican, para-surrealist painter and anarchist. She was born María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga in Anglès, a small town in the province of Girona, Spain in 1908. In 1924 she studied at the Academia de San Fernando de Madrid. During the Spanish Civil War she fled to Paris where she was greatly influenced by the surrealist movement. She met her second husband (the first was the painter Gerardo Lizarraga, whom, as was discovered after her death, she never divorced), the French surrealist poet Benjamin Péret in Barcelona. There she was a member of the art group Logicophobiste. They were introduced through a mutual friendship with the Surrealist artist Oscar Dominguez.
Due to her Republican ties, her 1937 move to Paris with Péret ensured that she would never be able to return to Franco's Spain. She was forced into exile from Paris during the Nazi occupation of France and moved to Mexico City at the end of 1941. She initially considered Mexico a temporary haven, but would remain in Latin America for the rest of her life.

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Renée Zellweger
Renée Kathleen Zellweger (born April 25, 1969) is an American actress and producer. Zellweger first gained widespread attention for her role in the film Jerry Maguire (1996), and subsequently received two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her roles as Bridget Jones in the comedy Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) (which she reprised in its sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004)), and as Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago (2002). She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the drama Cold Mountain (2003).
She has won an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards and a BAFTA Award, was named Hasty Pudding's Woman of the Year in 2009, and established herself as one of the highest-paid Hollywood actresses as of 2007.
Zellweger was born in Katy, Texas. Her father, Emil Erich Zellweger, is from Au in the canton of St. Gallen,Switzerland, and is a mechanical and electrical engineer who worked in the oil refining business. Her mother, Kjellfrid Irene (née Andreassen), is Norwegian; of part Sámi and Kven (Finnish) descent, Kjellfrid grew up in Kirkenes and Ekkerøy, and is a nurse and midwife who moved to the United States to work as a governess for a Norwegian family in Texas. Zellweger has described herself as being raised in a family of "lazy Catholics and Episcopalians".

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Rita Hayworth
Rita Hayworth (born Margarita Carmen Cansino; October 17, 1918 – May 14, 1987) was an American dancer and film actress who garnered fame during the 1940s as one of the era's top stars. Appearing first as Rita Cansino, she agreed to change her name to Rita Hayworth and her hair color to dark red to attract a greater range in roles. Her appeal led to her being featured on the cover of Life magazine five times, beginning in 1940.
The first dancer featured on film as a partner of both the stars Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, Hayworth appeared in a total of 61 films over 37 years. She is listed by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 Greatest Stars of All Time.
Hayworth was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1918 as Margarita Carmen Cansino, the oldest child of two dancers, Eduardo Cansino, Sr., from Castilleja de la Cuesta, a little town near Seville, Spain, and Volga Hayworth, an American of Irish-English descent who had performed with the Ziegfeld Follies. The Catholic couple had married in 1917. They also had two sons: Eduardo, Jr. and Vernon.

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Robert McQueen Grant
Robert M. Grant is a professor and US economic strategy academic who challenged Michael Porter's views on the basis for competitive advantage. He suggested that competitive advantage was more frequently to be discovered in access to distinctive or unique internal resources, rather than a choice between the different forms of generic strategies externally.
Grant is best known for his suggestion that insights into competitive positioning were more likely to come from understanding a company's resource base rather than from its generic strategies. He particularly focused on the extent to which organizations had non-imitable resources. Grant's work has close links to Gary Hamel and Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad – in the form of 'core competencies'. In many ways Grant's 'resources' and Hamel and Prahalad's 'core competencies' overlap to a considerable extent. His concepts have also been taken further by Bowman.^[vague]

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Rudolf Nureyev
Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev (Bashkir: Рудольф Хәмит улы Нуриев, Tatar: Rudolf Xämit ulı Nuriev, Russian: Рудо́льф Хаме́тович Нуре́ев) (17 March 1938 – 6 January 1993) was a ballet dancer, one of the most celebrated of the 20th century. Nureyev's artistic skills explored expressive areas of the dance, providing a new role to the male ballet dancer who once served only as support to the women.
Originally a Soviet citizen, Nureyev defected to the West in 1961, despite KGB efforts to stop him. According to KGB archives studied by Peter Watson, Nikita Khrushchev personally signed an order to have Nureyev killed.
Nureyev was born on a Trans-Siberian train near Irkutsk, Siberia, Soviet Union, while his mother Feride was travelling to Vladivostok, where his father Hamit, a Red Army political commissar, was stationed. He was raised as the only son in a Bashkir-Tatar family in a village near Ufa in Soviet republic of Bashkortostan. When his mother took him and his sisters into a performance of the ballet "Song of the Cranes", he fell in love with dance. As a child he was encouraged to dance in Bashkir folk performances and his precocity was soon noticed by teachers who encouraged him to train in Leningrad. On a tour stop in Moscow with a local ballet company, Nureyev auditioned for the Bolshoi ballet company and was accepted. However, he felt that the Kirov Ballet school was the best, so he left the local touring company and bought a ticket to Leningrad.

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Saint Veronica
Saint Veronica or Berenice, according to the "Acta Sanctorum" published by the Bollandists (under February 4), was a pious woman of Jerusalem who, moved with pity as Jesus carried his cross to Golgotha, gave him her veil that he might wipe his forehead. Jesus accepted the offering and after using it handed it back to her, the image of his face miraculously impressed upon it.
The name "Veronica" itself is a Latinisation of Berenice (Greek: Βερενίκη), a Macedonian name, meaning "bearer of victory". Folk etymology has attributed its origin to the words for true (Latin: vera) and image (Greek: εικόνα). The Encyclopædia Britannica says this about the legend:
Eusebius in his Historia Ecclesiastica (vii 18) tells how at Caesarea Philippi lived the woman whom Christ healed of an issue of blood (Matt ix 20). Legend was not long in providing the woman of the Gospel with a name. In the West she was identified with Martha of Bethany; in the East she was called Berenike, or Beronike, the name appearing in as early a work as the "Acta Pilati", the most ancient form of which goes back to the fourth century. It is interesting to note that the fanciful derivation of the name Veronica from the words Vera Icon (eikon) "true image" dates back to the "Otia Imperialia" (iii 25) of Gervase of Tilbury (fl. 1211), who says: "Est ergo Veronica pictura Domini vera."

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Sandra Bernhard
Sandra Bernhard (born June 6, 1955) is an American comedian, singer, actress and author. She first gained attention in the late 1970s with her stand-up comedy in which she often bitterly critiques celebrity culture and political figures. Bernhard is number 97 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 greatest standups of all time.
Bernhard has often addressed her childhood in interviews and within the context of her stand-up comedy. She was born in Flint, Michigan, the daughter of Jeanette and Jerome Bernhard. She has three older brothers. Her family moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, when she was 10.
Of her Jewish family, Bernhard stated in her show Without You I'm Nothing: "My father was a proctologist and my mother was an abstract artist, so that's how I view the world." In the documentary program Girls Who Do: Comedy, she discusses being a funny teenager. After graduating from Saguaro High School in Scottsdale, Arizona, she went to live on a kibbutz in Israel. She moved to Los Angeles at the age of 19. During that time she made ends meet working as a manicurist in a high-end salon.

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Sean Penn
Sean Justin Penn (born August 17, 1960) is an American actor, screenwriter and film director, also known for his left-wing political and social activism (including humanitarian work). He is a two-time Academy Award winner for his roles in Mystic River (2003) and Milk (2008), as well as the recipient of a Golden Globe Award for the former and a Screen Actors Guild Award for the latter.
Penn began his acting career in television with a brief appearance in a 1974 episode of Little House on the Prairie, directed by his father Leo Penn. Following his film debut in 1981's Taps and a diverse range of film roles in the 1980s, Penn emerged as a prominent leading actor with the 1995 drama film Dead Man Walking, for which he earned his first Academy Award nomination and the Best Actor Award at the Berlin Film Festival. Penn received another two Oscar nominations for Sweet and Lowdown (1999) and I Am Sam (2001), before winning his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 2003 for Mystic River and a second one in 2008 for Milk. He has also won a Best Actor Award of the Cannes Film Festival for She's So Lovely (1997), and two Best Actor Awards at the Venice Film Festival for Hurlyburly (1998) and 21 Grams (2003).

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Seymour Stein
Seymour Stein (born 1942 in Brooklyn, New York) is an entrepreneur in the music industry who has been a part of the business since getting his first job as a clerk for Billboard magazine in 1958. Stein is a vice president of Warner Bros. Records and a co-founder of Sire Records.
In 1966 Stein and record producer Richard Gottehrer founded Sire Productions, which led to the formation of Sire Records, the label under which he signed pioneer artists such as the Ramones and Talking Heads in 1975, the Pretenders in 1980 and Madonna in 1982. Other acts signed by Sire include Depeche Mode, The Smiths, Ice-T, The Undertones and Echo & the Bunnymen.
Such was Stein's influence in signing and promoting the "New Wave" genre of music that he is sometimes credited with coming up with the name as an alternative to the term "punk", which he found derogative. The term had previously been used to refer to the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s.
To date, Stein remains the President of Sire Records and is also Vice President of Warner Bros. Records with which he has had a marketing and distribution deal from 1976 to 1994 and again since April 2003. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 14, 2005, under the lifetime-achievement category.

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Shakira
Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll ( /ʃəˈkɪərə/,Spanish: [t͡ʃaˈkiɾa]; born February 2, 1977),known mononymously as Shakira, is a Colombian singer-songwriter who emerged in the music scene of Colombia and Latin America in the early 1990s. Born and raised in Barranquilla, Colombia, Shakira began performing in school, demonstrating her vocal ability with rock and roll, Latin and Arabic influences with her own original twist on belly dancing. Shakira is a native Spanish speaker and also speaks fluent English and Portuguese as well as some Italian, French, Catalan and Arabic.
After a poor commercial reception with local producers on her first two albums, and being little-known outside Colombia, Shakira decided to produce her own brand of music. In 1995 she released Pies Descalzos, which brought her great fame in Latin America and Spain, and her 1998 album Dónde Están los Ladrones? was a critical success selling over 7 million copies worldwide. In 2001, aided by the worldwide success of her first English single "Whenever, Wherever" that became the best selling single of 2002, she broke through into the English-speaking world with the release of Laundry Service, which sold over 13 million copies worldwide. Four years later, Shakira released two album projects called Fijación Oral Vol. 1 and Oral Fixation Vol. 2. Both reinforced her success, particularly with the best selling song of the 2000s, "Hips Don't Lie". In 1997, Shakira founded the Pies Descalzos Foundation. It is a Colombian charity with special schools for poor children all around Colombia. During her career, Shakira has performed at a large number of benefit concerts. Among the most famous are the Live 8 benefit concert in July 2005, the Live Earth concert, Hamburg where she headlined the show, as well as the "Clinton Global Initiative" created by former US President Bill Clinton. She was also invited to the Oval Office by President Barack Obama in February 2010 to discuss early childhood development.

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Sissy Spacek
Sissy Spacek (born Mary Elizabeth Spacek; December 25, 1949) is an American actress and singer. She came to international prominence for her role as Carrie White in Brian De Palma's 1976 horror film Carrie (based on the first novel by Stephen King) for which she earned her first Academy Award nomination. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as country star Loretta Lynn in the 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter. She has been nominated for an Oscar a total of six times, and is also known for her role as Holly Sargis in Terrence Malick's 1973 film Badlands.
Spacek is mainly a dramatic actress, but also has made comedies. The films that Spacek has starred in have earned more than $1 billion worldwide.
Spacek was born on Christmas Day, 1949, in Quitman, Texas. She is the daughter of Virginia Frances (née Spilman) and Edwin Arnold Spacek, Sr., a county agricultural agent. Spacek's paternal grandparents, Mary Červenka and Arnold A. Špaček (who served as Mayor of Granger, Texas in Williamson County), were of Czech (Moravian) and German ancestry. Her mother, of English and Irish descent, was from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

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Stephen Bray
Stephen Bray is an American songwriter, drummer, and record producer from Detroit. Bray is best known for his collaboration with Madonna.
Bray began studying music through private instruction in Detroit, and continued his education at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
Bray owns and operates Saturn Sound recording studios and the Soultone Records record label. He is married to movie producer Stephanie Allain, who produced Hustle & Flow and Black Snake Moan.
Bray met Madonna during her pre-stardom when she attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for dance. He moved to New York after receiving a call from Madonna years later, who at that time, was a member of the band The Breakfast Club in New York City. Madonna wanted to form a new band and invited Bray to play the drums. Together they formed the band Emmy and the Emmys.
Madonna obtained her recording contract with Gotham Management, with Camille Barbone. The music she was producing with them was more rock oriented and Madonna had her eyes set on dance music. She and Stephen Bray continued working on a parallel project, more club oriented. After being signed to Sire Records, Madonna continued collaborating with Bray.

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Stephen Holden
Stephen Holden (born July 18, 1941) is an American writer, music critic, film critic, and poet.
Holden earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University in 1963. He worked as a photo editor, staff writer, and eventually became an A&R executive for RCA Records before turning to writing pop music reviews and related articles for Rolling Stone, Blender, The Village Voice, The Atlantic, and Vanity Fair, among other publications. He first achieved prominence with his 1970s Rolling Stone work, where he tended to cover singer songwriter and traditional pop artists. He joined the staff of the New York Times in 1981, and subsequently became one of the newspaper's leading theatre and film critics.
Holden's experiences as a journalist and executive with RCA led him to write the satirical novel Triple Platinum, which was published by Dell Books in 1980. He is the recipient of the 1986 Grammy Award for Best Album Notes for The Voice: The Columbia Years, a Frank Sinatra anthology. His poetry has been featured in The New Yorker and is included in the anthology The New Yorker Book of Poems.

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Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim ( /ˈsɒnd.haɪm/) (born March 22, 1930) is an American composer and lyricist known for his contributions to musical theatre. He is the winner of an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards (more than any other composer) including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award. Described by Frank Rich of the New York Times as "the greatest, and perhaps best-known artist working in musical theatre", his most famous works include (as composer/lyricist) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods. He also wrote the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy.
Sondheim has also written material for movies, including the 1981 Warren Beatty film Reds, contributing the song "Goodbye For Now". He also wrote five songs for the 1990 movie Dick Tracy, including "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)", which won the Academy Award for Best Song.

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Steven Meisel
Steven Meisel (born 1954) is an American photographer, who obtained popular acclaim with his work in US and Italian Vogue and his photographs of friend Madonna in her 1992 book Sex. He is now considered one of the most successful fashion photographers in the industry, shooting regularly for both US and Italian Vogue, and lately W (also published by Condé Nast).
He was born in 1954. His fascination for beauty and models started at a young age. At that time Meisel would not play with toys, but would instead draw women all the time. He used to turn to magazines like Vogue and Harper's Bazaar as sources of inspiration for his drawings. Meisel dreamt of women from the high society like Gloria Guinness and Babe Paley, who personified to his eyes the ideas of beauty and high society. Other icons were his mother and his sister.
As he became obsessed with models such as Twiggy, Veruschka, and Jean Shrimpton, at 12 years old he asked some girlfriends to call model agencies and, by pretending to be secretaries of Richard Avedon, to get pictures of the models. To meet famous model Twiggy, the 12-year-old Meisel stood outside waiting for her at Melvin Sokolsky's studio.

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Stuart Price
Stuart Price (born 9 September 1977) is a three-time Grammy-winning British electronic musician, songwriter, and record producer whose remixing and production skills are in demand by artists including New Order, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Kylie Minogue, Take That, Missy Elliott, Scissor Sisters, The Killers, Pet Shop Boys, Brandon Flowers, Gwen Stefani, Seal, Keane, Frankmusik and Hard-Fi. His acts include British electronic pop/rock band Zoot Woman (with Adam Blake and Johnny Blake), Les Rythmes Digitales, Paper Faces, Man With Guitar, Thin White Duke, and the parodic French moniker Jacques Lu Cont, though he actually grew up in Reading, England.
Price's use of the names Jacques Lu Cont and Les Rythmes Digitales was initially a reference to the explosion in demand for French house in the United Kingdom during the 1980s and 1990s; artists such as Daft Punk, Etienne de Crécy, Dimitri from Paris and Air were all experiencing surges in popularity. Price even went as far as to conduct interviews with British journalists in French via an interpreter. In interviews from around this time, Price also claimed that he had grown up listening exclusively to classical music, until one day encountering the album Dare by the Human League. He also claimed to be a huge Pet Shop Boys fan, since he got his first synthesiser making him able to play songs such as "West End Girls". Certainly, Price was heavily influenced by music from the 1980s, and all his records and sideprojects bear a heavy debt to the 80s sounds of synthpop bands.

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Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer. She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956 and they lived together first in the United States and then England, having two children together: Frieda and Nicholas. Following a long struggle with depression and a marital separation, Plath committed suicide in 1963. Controversy continues to surround the events of her life and death, as well as her writing and legacy.
Plath is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for her two published collections: The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel. In 1982, she became the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize posthumously, for The Collected Poems. She also wrote The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her death.
Plath was born during the Great Depression on October 27, 1932 at the Massachusetts Memorial Hospital in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood. Her mother, Aurelia Schober Plath (1906-1994), was a first-generation American of Austrian descent, and her father Otto Plath (1885-1940), was from Grabow, Germany. Plath's father was an entomologist and was professor of biology and German at Boston University; he also authored a book about bumblebees. Plath's mother was approximately twenty-one years younger than her husband. They met while she was earning her master's degree in teaching and took one of his courses. Otto had become alienated from his family after choosing not to become a Lutheran minister, as his grandparents had intended him to be.

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Tamara de Lempicka
Tamara de Lempicka (Łempicka) (16 May 1898 – 18 March 1980), born Maria Górska in Warsaw, Poland, was a Polish Art Deco painter and "the first woman artist to be a glamour star".
Born into a wealthy and prominent family, her father was Boris Gurwik-Górski, a Polish lawyer, and her mother, the former Malvina Decler, a Polish socialite. Maria was the middle child with two siblings. She attended boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland, and spent the winter of 1911 with her grandmother in Italy and on the French Riviera, where she was treated to her first taste of the Great Masters of Italian painting. In 1912, her parents divorced and Maria went to live with her wealthy Aunt Stefa in St. Petersburg, Russia. When her mother remarried, she became determined to break away to a life of her own. In 1913, at the age of fifteen, while attending the opera, Maria spotted the man she became determined to marry. She promoted her campaign through her well-connected uncle and in 1916 she married Tadeusz Łempicki (1888–1951) in St. Petersburg—a well-known ladies' man, gadabout, and lawyer by title, who was tempted by the significant dowry.

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Taylor Dayne
Taylor Dayne is the stage name of Leslie Wunderman (born March 7, 1962), an American pop singer-songwriter and actress. She had a string of hits in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including "Tell It to My Heart" and the #1 Billboard hit "Love Will Lead You Back". Overall, she has had eighteen individual hit songs reach the top ten in Billboard magazine. These include most recently, the 2011 American and international hit "Floor on Fire" and the 2008 song "Beautiful", which reached the top spot in Billboard's Hot Dance Club Play Chart. She has also topped the U.S. Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart three times.^{[citation needed]}
Taylor Dayne began singing professionally after graduating from high school in Baldwin, Nassau County, New York, singing in little-known rock bands such as Felony and Next. She began singing solo after finishing college and released two dance singles under the name Les Lee called "I'm The One You Want" (1985) and "Tell Me Can You Love Me" (1986).
Signed to Arista Records, her first song to crack the top ten was the dance-pop hit "Tell It to My Heart" in late 1987. The song was an instant smash worldwide, peaking in the top five of most major markets worldwide, and achieving a peak of number one in many countries, including Germany. The hit songs that followed included "Prove Your Love", "I'll Always Love You", "Don't Rush Me", "With Every Beat of My Heart", "Love Will Lead You Back", "I'll Be Your Shelter", "Heart of Stone", "Send Me a Lover", "Naked Without You", and "Whatever You Want".

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Taylor Momsen
Taylor Michel Momsen (born July 26, 1993) is an American actress, musician and model who portrayed the character of Jenny Humphrey on the CW television series Gossip Girl and Cindy Lou Who in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. She fronts the rock band The Pretty Reckless.
Taylor Momsen was born on July 26, 1993 in St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents are Michael and Collette Momsen and she has a younger sister, Sloane Momsen, who is also an actress. She attended Our Lady of Lourdes School and was raised Roman Catholic. She began acting professionally at three years of age with a national commercial for Shake 'N' Bake. She was then cast in The Prophet's Game. In 2000, Momsen played the role of Cindy Lou Who in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Two years later she was cast in the motion picture: Hansel and Gretel, in which she played Gretel.
Momsen's career came to a halt for over three years until she received the lead role in the never-aired WB series Misconceptions. Momsen appeared in the 2006 film Saving Shiloh. She auditioned for the title role in Hannah Montana, and was in the top three, but the role was instead awarded to Miley Cyrus. In 2007, she starred in the Walt Disney Pictures film Underdog, as Molly and as Jennifer in the movie Paranoid Park, directed by Gus Van Sant.

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The Carpenters
The Carpenters were an American vocal and instrumental duo, consisting of siblings Karen and Richard Carpenter. Though often referred to by the public as The Carpenters, the duo's official name on authorized recordings and press materials is simply "Carpenters". During a period in the 1970s when louder and wilder rock was in great demand, Richard and Karen produced a distinctively soft musical style that made them among the best-selling music artists of all time.
Carpenters' melodic pop produced a record-breaking run of hit recordings on the American Top 40 and Adult Contemporary charts, and they became leading sellers in the soft rock, easy listening and adult contemporary genres. Carpenters had three #1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and fifteen #1 hits on the Adult Contemporary chart (see The Carpenters discography). In addition, they had twelve top 10 singles (including their #1 hits). To date, Carpenters' album and single sales total more than 100 million units.^{[citation needed]}
During their 14-year career, the Carpenters recorded 11 albums, thirty-one singles, five television specials, and a short-lived television series. They toured in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, the Netherlands and Belgium. Their recording career ended with Karen's death in 1983 from cardiac arrest following complications of anorexia nervosa. Extensive news coverage of the circumstances surrounding her death increased public awareness of the consequences of eating disorders.

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Timbaland
Timothy Zachery Mosley (born March 10, 1972) better known by his stage name Timbaland, is an American record producer, songwriter and rapper. Timbaland's first full credit production work was in 1996 on Ginuwine...the Bachelor for R&B singer Ginuwine. After further work on Aaliyah's 1996 album One in a Million and Missy Elliott's 1997 album Supa Dupa Fly, Timbaland became a prominent producer for R&B and hip-hop artists. As a rapper he initially released several albums with fellow rapper Magoo, but later released his debut solo album Tim's Bio in 1998. In 2007, Timbaland released the first album in his Shock Value series, Timbaland Presents: Shock Value. Then In 2009 Timbaland Presents: Shock Value II. It is expected that Timbaland will release Timbaland Presents: Shock Value III in June 2012.
Timothy Zachery Mosley was born on March 10, 1972 in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he was raised. He graduated from Salem High School. During his time as a DJ, he was known as "DJ Tim" or "DJ Timmy Tim". His brother, Sebastian, is nine years younger. Timbaland began making hip hop backing tracks on a Casio keyboard. While attending high school, he began a long-term collaboration with rapper Melvin Barcliff, who performed under the name of Magoo. The teenaged Mosley also joined the production ensemble S.B.I. (which stood for surrounded by idiots) which also featured Neptunes producer Pharrell. Mosley was also high school friends with Terrence and Gene Thorton, who would go on to be known as Pusha T and Malice of the rap group Clipse. In 1986, when Timbaland was 15 years old, he was shot while working a part time job at his local Red Lobster and was partially paralyzed for nine months. During this time, he began to learn how to DJ using his left hand.

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Trudie Styler
Trudie Styler (born 6 January 1954) is an English actress and producer. She is the second wife of the musician Sting.
Styler was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England. She attended North Bromsgrove High School, where one of her teachers was Clifford T. Ward.^{[citation needed]} She went on to train at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, and starred in various period BBC productions, including a small part in Poldark in 1977.^{[citation needed]}
Styler lived with Sting for about ten years before marrying him on 20 August 1992.^{[citation needed]} They have four children: Bridget Michael (a.k.a. "Mickey," born 1984), Jake (born 1985), Eliot Paulina Sumner (nicknamed "Coco," born 1990,) and Giacomo Luke (born 1995). Her daughter Eliot is the lead singer and frontman for the band I Blame Coco, and her son Jake is a model.^{[citation needed]}
In 1989, the couple founded the Rainforest Foundation, which has raised more than $25 million to support indigenous rainforest peoples and help them protect their ancestral lands.^{[citation needed]} Styler is also an Ambassador for Unicef, for which she has raised more than $5.5million.^{[citation needed]}

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Vanilla Ice
Robert Matthew Van Winkle (born October 31, 1967), best known by his stage name Vanilla Ice, is an American rapper. Born in South Dallas, and raised in Texas and South Florida, Van Winkle released his debut album, Hooked, in 1989 through Ichiban Records, before signing a contract with SBK Records, a record label of the EMI Group which released a reformatted version of the album under the title To the Extreme. Van Winkle's single "Ice Ice Baby" was the first hip hop single to top the Billboard charts.
Although Van Winkle was successful, he later regretted his business arrangements with SBK, which had paid him to adopt a more commercial appearance to appeal to a mass audience and published fabricated biographical information without his knowledge. After surviving a suicide attempt, Van Winkle was inspired to change his musical style and lifestyle. While later albums by Van Winkle haven't charted or featured much radio airplay because of their less mainstream, rock-oriented sound, Vanilla Ice has had a loyal underground following. In 2009, Van Winkle began hosting The Vanilla Ice Project on DIY Network. His latest album WTF – Wisdom, Tenacity & Focus was released in August 2011. Van Winkle is currently signed to Psychopathic Records.

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Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.
Canby was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Katharine Anne (née Vincent) and Lloyd Canby. He attended a boarding school with the novelist William Styron, and the two became friends. He introduced Styron to the works of E.B. White and Ernest Hemingway, and the pair hitchhiked from their Christ Church, Virginia boarding school to Richmond, Virginia to buy Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. After war service in the Pacific he attended the Dartmouth College and then was employed as a film critic by Variety for six years.
Canby was an enthusiastic supporter of many filmmakers, notably Woody Allen, who credited Canby's rave review of Take The Money and Run as a crucial point in his career. He was also heavily critical of some otherwise acclaimed films, such as Rocky, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Jaws, Patton, Night of the Living Dead, Once Upon a Time in America, Chinatown, After Hours, Blazing Saddles, A Christmas Story, Witness, Mask, The Natural, Rain Man, The Exorcist, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,Deliverance, The Godfather Part II and Alien. In the early 1990s, Canby switched his attention from film to theatre; he was named the chief theatre critic in 1994.

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Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty ( /ˈbeɪti/ BAY-tee; born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has been nominated for 15 Academy Awards, including winning the Best Director Award and its highest honor, the Irving G. Thalberg Award. He has been nominated for 16 Golden Globe Awards and won six, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award, which he received in 2007. Only Beatty and Orson Welles have been nominated for producer, director, writer and actor in the same film. Welles did it once (for Citizen Kane), Beatty did it twice (for Heaven Can Wait and Reds).
Beatty was born Henry Warren Beaty in Richmond, Virginia. His mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a Nova Scotia-born teacher, and his father, Ira Owens Beaty, was a Ph.D. of educational psychology, a public school administrator, and dealt in real estate. Beatty's grandparents were also educators. The family was Baptist. In 1945, the family moved from Richmond to Arlington, Virginia. Beatty's sister is the multi-award winning actress and writer Shirley MacLaine.

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Wes Craven
Wesley Earl "Wes" Craven (born August 2, 1939) is an American film director, writer, producer, actor, perhaps best known as the director of many horror films, particularly slasher films, including the famed A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven's New Nightmare, and he also co-wrote A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors with Bruce Wagner, featuring the iconic Freddy Krueger character and has directed the entire Scream series, featuring Ghostface. Some of his other films include, The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left, The Serpent and the Rainbow, The People Under the Stairs, Vampire in Brooklyn, Red Eye, and My Soul to Take.
Craven was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Caroline (née Miller) and Paul Craven. He had a strict Baptist upbringing. Craven earned an undergraduate degree in English and Psychology from Wheaton College in Illinois, and a masters degree in Philosophy and Writing from Johns Hopkins University. Prior to landing his first job in the film industry as a sound editor for a post-production company in New York City, Craven briefly taught English at Westminster College and was a humanities professor at Clarkson College of Technology (now Clarkson University) in Potsdam, New York. He left the academic world for the more lucrative role of pornographic film director. In the documentary Inside Deep Throat, Craven says on camera he made "many X-rated films" under pseudonyms, learning his directing craft. While his role in Deep Throat is undisclosed, most of his early known work involved writing, film editing or both. In 1972 Wes Craven directed his first feature film The Last House on the Left.

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Wikipedia Persondata
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Madonna - Hung Up (video)

published: 27 Oct 2009

author: warnerbrosrecords

Madonna - Vogue (video)

published: 27 Oct 2009

author: madonna

Madonna - Girl Gone Wild

Track from Madonna's MDNA album. Download the Deluxe version from iTunes now: smarturl.it ...

published: 21 Mar 2012

author: madonna

Madonna - Frozen

published: 27 Oct 2009

author: madonna

Madonna - Like A Prayer

published: 27 Oct 2009

author: madonna

Madonna - Papa Don't Preach

From the True Blue Album - Warner Bros...

published: 30 Jun 2011

author: madonna

Give Me All Your Luvin' (Feat. MIA and Nicki Minaj)

Track from Madonna's MDNA album. Download it now on iTunes: smarturl.it Music video for Ma...

published: 03 Feb 2012

author: madonna

Madonna - Like A Virgin (video)

published: 27 Oct 2009

author: madonna

Madonna Live At Paris Olympia 2012 OFFICIAL HD Director's Cut Full Show

[Click 'Show More' for track times] Full, official HD director's cut of Madonna's intimate...

published: 06 Aug 2012

author: LoveLiveTV

Madonna - Celebration

published: 14 Oct 2009

author: madonna

Madonna Goes 'Gangnam Style' With PSY

Korean pop sensation PSY joins Madonna on stage at Madison Square Garden in New York, wher...

published: 14 Nov 2012

author: AssociatedPress

Madonna - Express Yourself

published: 27 Oct 2009

author: madonna

Madonna - Live To Tell

From the True Blue album - Warner Bros...

published: 03 Jul 2011

author: madonna

MADONNA - The Immaculate Collection (Full Remastered Album)

madonnamdnablog.blogspot.com The Immaculate Collection (Remastered) 1. Holiday 2. Lucky St...

published: 16 Jun 2012

author: TheMadonnaAlbumsCN

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photo: AP / Lee Jin-man

South Koreans watch a television broadcasting undated image a North Korea launch missile at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, July 2, 2009. North Korea test-fired two short-range missiles Thursday, South Korea's Defense Ministry said, a move that aggravates already high tensions following Pyongyang's recent nuclear test and U.N. sanctions imposed as punishment. The Korean read "North Korea test-fired two short-range missiles."

North Korea Threatens to Conduct Nuclear Test That Targets U.S.

Bloomberg

24 Jan 2013

North Korea threatened to conduct a nuclear weapons test “targeted” at the U.S. after the Obama administration pushed through new United Nations sanctions against the totalitarian state for last month’s rocket launch. “In a new phase of the anti-U.S ... The UN Security Council imposed additional restrictions on North Korea on Jan ... The U.S ... ....(size: 2.2Kb)

photo: White House / Pete Souza

A bronze bust of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is visible in the foreground as President Barack Obama meets with senior advisors, in the Oval Office, Feb. 4, 2010.

Same Bibles, Different Theologies and Histories

WorldNews.com

24 Jan 2013

Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. In the world of politics and imagination, theater usually trumps theology while history is most often vanquished by histrionics. President Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony for a second term reflects this truth, specifically as he uses two historic bibles-one belonging to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and another used only by Abraham Lincoln ... "With malice toward none; with charity for all."....(size: 7.3Kb)

photo: AP / Anis Belghoul

Algerian firemen carry a coffin containing a person killed during the gas facility hostage situation at the morgue in Ain Amenas, Algeria, Monday, Jan. 21, 2013.

Algeria-BP Is One of Many Reasons Why Al-Qaeda Won

WorldNews.com

22 Jan 2013

Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. When then-Vice President Dick Cheney stated. "If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis...it's about our response,"(1) it was clearly evident that the "war on terror" had been lost ... And when Zacarias Moussaoui shouted. "America you lost ... 11....(size: 9.1Kb)

photo: AP / Patric Schneider

A Harris Precinct 4 Constable blocks off an entrance to the Lone Star College North Harris campus after a shooting on Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013 in Houston.

Two suspects detained after shooting on Texas college campus

Reuters

23 Jan 2013

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Three people were wounded, one critically, on Tuesday when gunfire erupted during an altercation between two people on a community college campus near Houston, police said, the latest in a series of shootings on U.S. college and school campuses. Two people "of interest" in the Lone Star College shooting were detained for questioning, including one with a student identification, according to authorities....(size: 3.7Kb)

photo: AP / Burhan Ozbilici

German military trucks carrying NATO's Patriot Missile Defense System to protect Turkey in case neighboring Syria launches an attack leave the port after the parts of system were unloaded in the Mediterranean city of Iskenderun, Turkey, Monday, Jan. 21, 2013.

German Patriot missile troops arrive in Turkey

Deutsche Welle

21 Jan 2013

Germany has sent 240 soldiers to southern Turkey as part of a NATO mission using Patriot missiles to deter cross-border airstrikes from war-torn Syria. Units are also being provided by the Netherlands and the US. The main German contingent flew out of Berlin Sunday, headed for Kahramanmaras, 100 kilometers (62 miles) inside Turkey's border with Syria, where two German Patriot units are to be fully operational by early February ... DW.DE ... ....(size: 2.4Kb)

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Madonna's Hard Candy Fitness Opening Rome Location

The Hollywood Reporter

24 Jan 2013

Madonna is opening a luxury gym in Rome ... ROME – Hard Candy Fitness, the luxury fitness company founded by pop icon Madonna, announced it will make a bid to help Romans become fitter, with the opening of the first Hard Candy Fitness location in the Eternal City, just around the corner from Rome’s Coliseum.our editor recommends. Madonna Cleared by Russian Court. Madonna Keeps Concert-Goers Waiting More Than 3 Hours in Miami....(size: 4.3Kb)

Madonna MDNA tour proven more successful than originally thought

The Examiner

24 Jan 2013

This morning, Billboard released the updated final numbers for Madonna's MDNA tour, which was widely publicized to have made 296 million dollars. Apparently, all shows weren't accounted for and Madonna actually made almost 306 million dollars ... What's interesting about these numbers is the fact that Elton John and others have declared Madonna's career as "over" this past year ... This isn't to say that Madonna is perfect either....(size: 6.5Kb)

Madonna's fit body gets her through the day

NZ Herald

24 Jan 2013

Madonna's personal trainer says the star's "fit body" is the only thing that gets her through the day ... Winhoffer says that Madonna has been highly involved in all aspects of the workout DVD production, from the music, the routine and the final look of each volume in the series ... It was through pursuing her Mexico gym dream that Madonna realised her desire to release an at-home fitness DVD....(size: 2.1Kb)

3 artists featured in 'Evolving the Sacred'

Detroit Free Press

24 Jan 2013

LIVONIA. Works by local artists Scott Taylor, Lynn Galbreath and Ed Meese are on display in the "Evolving the Sacred" exhibit at Madonna University Exhibit Gallery. "Each artist seems to take a look at traditional forms of art," says curator Jeanne Moore ... 8 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 8 a.m.-7 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday through Feb. 24, Madonna University Exhibit Gallery, 36600 Schoolcraft in Livonia ... Free ... ....(size: 2.2Kb)

Regional Semifinal Pairings

Sun Sentinel

24 Jan 2013

Cardinal Newman (9-9-1) at Benjamin (21-0-1); American Heritage-Delray (21-0-1) at Chaminade-Madonna (17-3-2), 4 ......(size: 1.3Kb)

Latest Boys District Soccer Reuslts (Jan. 23)

Sun Sentinel

24 Jan 2013

District 16-3A. PEMBROKE PINES CHARTER 5, ARCHBISHOP MCCARTHY 4. Jaunchi Zera, Jordan Gillardo, and Andre Blackman scored for the Jaguars (18-4). The Mavericks are 10-4-1 ... CARDINAL GIBBONS 1, CHAMINADE-MADONNA 0 ... ....(size: 1.7Kb)

The Ten Greatest Gigs Of All Time... Have a peek at our next cover (Q320 preview)

Q Music

24 Jan 2013

... with the likes of Liam Gallagher, Morrissey, Madonna, Kurt Cobain and more appearing on the cover there's a few clues....(size: 0.7Kb)

Wayne Hernandez

Skiddle

24 Jan 2013

Hideaway, London Thu 24th January 2013. With his infectious energy & amazing soulful voice Wayne Hernandez & his tight backing band will perform a repertoire of soul & funk classics. Date ... Venue ... Location ... Wayne himself is hugely successful session singer who has worked with the likes of Blur, Tina Turner, Madonna and the Gorillaz ... ....(size: 1.6Kb)

American Heritage-Delray beats Cardinal Gibbons 3-1

Sun Sentinel

24 Jan 2013

DELRAY BEACH – It was a good night for the Coy sisters and American Heritage-Delray's girls soccer team ... Nationally-ranked Heritage (21-0-1) will play Chaminade-Madonna, which beat North Broward Prep, in the regional semis Saturday.. "I'm very happy with the performance," Heritage coach Steve Burgess said ... Heritage attacked relentlessly from the outset, firing one shot after another at Gibbons goalkeeper Tricia Solenski ... ....(size: 2.7Kb)

Shaggy rep responds to death hoax: 'He's alive and kicking'

Digital Spy

24 Jan 2013

Shaggy has become the latest celebrity victim of an online death hoax. The phrase 'RIP Shaggy' was widely posted on Twitter and other social media on Wednesday (January 23), sparking rumours that the 'It Wasn't Me' rapper had died ... (Pictured above. Madonna in concert). Eddie Murphy, Morgan Freeman, Kris Jenner and Madonna have all been victims of death hoaxes in recent months. (Pictured above. Megan Fox at the Golden Globes) ... 1 of 10 ... More ... ....(size: 8.6Kb)

National Portrait Gallery reunites Henry VIII with Catherine of Aragon

The Guardian

24 Jan 2013

Image of first wife was thought to be of Catherine Parr, the sixth spouse who survived him, and was found in Lambeth Palace ... Photograph. National Portrait Gallery ... It has already thrown up fascinating discoveries, such as the finding that a portrait of Elizabeth I's spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, had been painted on a Catholic devotional image of the Madonna and Child, quite possibly mischievously ... ....(size: 3.3Kb)

Beyoncé's Lip-Sync Scandal: Why It's So Not a Big Deal

E! Online

24 Jan 2013

People are really ripping on Beyoncé for lip-syncing. Is the world too harsh on Yoncy?. —Matt, Vermont, via Twitter. In a word, yes. Sure, technically, Beyoncé may have deceived the crowd at this week's inaugural, pretending to sing while the Marine Band was pretending to play ... Madonna is a longtime concert lip-syncer; for example, on her Blond Ambition tour, she mouthed the duet "Now I'm Following You."...(size: 6.0Kb)

Young Galaxy – “Pretty Boy”

Stereogum

24 Jan 2013

Montreal five-piece Young Galaxy have been making dreamy pop music for a while now, but their hypnotic new single, “Pretty Boy,” in its delicate way, sounds a little more charged for the dance floor. The track is the opener off their upcoming album, Ultramarine, the follow-up to 2011’s Polaris Music Prize-longlisted Shapeshifting ... Ultramarine is out 4/23 via Paper Bag Records ... Paper Bag Artists Cover Madonna True Blue ... Email....(size: 5.7Kb)

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Madonna
Madonna at the premiere of I Am Because We Are in 2008
Background information
Birth name	Madonna Louise Ciccone
Also known as	Madge Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone (Catholic Confirmation name) Esther (Kabbalah name)
Born	(1958-08-16) August 16, 1958 (age 53) Bay City, Michigan, U.S.
Origin	New York, New York, U.S.
Genres	Pop, rock, dance
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, record producer, dancer, actress, film producer, film director, fashion designer, author, entrepreneur, philanthropist
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, percussion, drums
Years active	1979–present
Labels	Sire, Maverick, Warner Bros., Live Nation, Interscope
Associated acts	Breakfast Club
Website	www.madonna.com

Madonna (born Madonna Louise Ciccone /tʃɪˈkoʊneɪ/ chi-KOH-nay; August 16, 1958) is an American singer, songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. She has sold more than 300 million records worldwide and is recognized as the world's top-selling female recording artist of all time by Guinness World Records. Considered to be one of the "25 Most Powerful Women of the Past Century" by Time for being an influential figure in contemporary music, she is known for continuously reinventing both her music and image, and for retaining a standard of autonomy within the recording industry. Critics have praised her diverse musical productions which have also served as a lightning rod for controversy.

Born in Bay City, Michigan, Madonna moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983. She followed it with a series of albums that attained immense popularity by pushing the boundaries of lyrical content in mainstream popular music and imagery in her music videos, which became a fixture on MTV. Throughout her career, many of her songs have hit number one on the record charts, including "Like a Virgin", "Papa Don't Preach", "Like a Prayer", "Vogue", "Frozen", "Music", "Hung Up", and "4 Minutes".

Although she received generally positive reviews for her role in Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), her later film appearances received mixed commentary. She received critical acclaim and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for Evita (1996), but has received harsh feedback for other performances. Her other ventures include: fashion design, writing children's books, and film directing and producing. She has been acclaimed as a businesswoman. In 1992, she founded entertainment company Maverick as a joint venture with Time Warner. In 2007, she signed an unprecedented US $120 million contract with Live Nation.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Madonna is the best-selling female rock artist of the 20th century and the second top-selling female artist in the United States, with 64 million certified albums. In 2008, Billboard magazine ranked her at number two, behind only The Beatles, on the Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists, making her the most successful solo artist in the history of the chart. She was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the same year. In 2012, she was crowned the "Greatest Woman In Music" by VH1.

Life and career [link]

1958–81: Early life and career beginnings [link]

Madonna was born in Bay City, Michigan, on August 16, 1958. Her father, Silvio Anthony Ciccone, is a first-generation Italian American (with roots in Pacentro, Italy), while her mother, Madonna Louise (née Fortin), was of French Canadian descent.^[1] Her father later worked as a design engineer for Chrysler and General Motors. As Madonna had the same name as her mother, family members called her "Little Nonni".^[2]^[3] The third of six children from her father's first marriage, her full-blood siblings are: Martin, Anthony, Paula, Christopher, and Melanie.^[3] Madonna was raised Roman Catholic. Upon receiving confirmation, she adopted Veronica as an additional confirmation name.^[4] She was raised in the Detroit suburbs of Pontiac and Avon Township (now part of Rochester Hills).

Her mother died of breast cancer at the age of 30 in 1963.^[5] Months before her mother's death, Madonna noticed changes in her behavior and personality from the attentive homemaker she was, although she did not understand the reason.^[5] Mrs. Ciccone, at a loss to explain her dire medical condition, would often begin to cry when questioned by Madonna, at which point Madonna would respond by wrapping her arms around her mother tenderly. "I remember feeling stronger than she was," Madonna recalled, "I was so little and yet I felt like she was the child."^[5] Madonna later acknowledged that she had not grasped the concept of her mother dying. "There was so much left unsaid, so many untangled and unresolved emotions, of remorse, guilt, loss, anger, confusion ... I saw my mother, looking very beautiful and lying as if she were asleep in an open casket. Then I noticed that my mother's mouth looked funny. It took me some time to realize that it had been sewn up. In that awful moment, I began to understand what I had lost forever. The final image of my mother, at once peaceful yet grotesque, haunts me today also."^[6]

Madonna turned to her grandmother in the hope of finding some solace and some form of her mother in her. The Ciccone siblings resented housekeepers and invariably rebelled against anyone brought into their home ostensibly to take the place of their beloved mother.^[5] In an interview with Vanity Fair, Madonna commented that she saw herself in her youth as a "lonely girl who was searching for something. I wasn't rebellious in a certain way. I cared about being good at something. I didn't shave my underarms and I didn't wear make-up like normal girls do. But I studied and I got good grades ... I wanted to be somebody."^[5] Terrified that her father could be taken from her as well, Madonna was often unable to sleep unless she was near him.^[5] Her father married the family's housekeeper Joan Gustafson in 1966, and they had two children: Jennifer and Mario Ciccone.^[3] At this point, Madonna began to express unresolved feelings of anger towards her father that lasted for decades, and developed a rebellious attitude.^[5] She attended St. Frederick's and St. Andrew's Catholic Elementary Schools, and then West Middle School. She was known for her high grade point average, and achieved notoriety for her unconventional behavior: she would perform cartwheels and handstands in the hallways between classes, dangle by her knees from the monkey bars during recess, and pull up her skirt during class—all so that the boys could see her underwear.^[7]

File:AdamsFront.JPG

Rochester Adams High School, where Madonna studied

Madonna later attended Rochester Adams High School where she became a straight-A student and a member of the cheerleading squad.^[8] After graduating, she received a dance scholarship to the University of Michigan.^[9] She convinced her father to allow her to take ballet lessons^[10] and was persuaded by Christopher Flynn, her ballet teacher, to pursue a career in dance.^[11] In 1978, she dropped out of college and relocated to New York City.^[12] She had little money and worked as a waitress at Dunkin' Donuts and with modern dance troupes.^[13] Madonna said of her move to New York, "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."^[14] She started to work as a backup dancer for other established artists. During a late night, Madonna was returning from a rehearsal, when she was dragged up an alleyway by a pair of men and forced to perform fellatio at knifepoint. Madonna had later commented that "the episode was a taste of my weakness, it showed me that I still could not save myself in spite of all the strong-girl show. I could never forget it."^[15] While performing as a dancer for the French disco artist Patrick Hernandez on his 1979 world tour,^[7] Madonna became romantically involved with musician Dan Gilroy. They formed her first rock band, the Breakfast Club,^[16]^[17] for which Madonna sang and played drums and guitar. In 1980^[3] or 1981^[18] she left Breakfast Club and, with her former boyfriend Stephen Bray as drummer, formed the band Emmy. Their music impressed DJ and record producer Mark Kamins who arranged a meeting between Madonna and Sire Records founder Seymour Stein.^[18]

[edit] 1982–85: Madonna, Like a Virgin and marriage to Sean Penn

After Madonna signed a singles deal with Sire, her debut single, "Everybody", was released on April 24, 1982, and became a dance hit.^[19] She started developing her debut album Madonna, which was primarily produced by Reggie Lucas, a Warner Bros. producer. However, she was not happy with the completed tracks and disagreed with Lucas' production techniques, so decided to seek additional help. Madonna moved in with boyfriend John "Jellybean" Benitez, asking his help for finishing the album's production. Benitez remixed most of the tracks and produced "Holiday", which was her third single. The overall sound of Madonna is dissonant, and is in the form of upbeat synthetic disco, utilizing some of the new technology of the time, like the Linn drum machine, Moog bass and the OB-X synthesizer.^[20]^[21] The album peaked at number eight on the Billboard 200, and yielded the hit singles "Holiday", "Borderline" and "Lucky Star".^[22]^[23]

"I was surprised by how people reacted to "Like a Virgin" because when I did that song, to me, I was singing about how something made me feel a certain way—brand-new and fresh—and everyone interpreted it as 'I don't want to be a virgin anymore. Fuck my brains out!' That's not what I sang at all. 'Like a Virgin' was always absolutely ambiguous."

—Madonna on the backlash for "Like a Virgin"^[24]^[25]

Gradually, Madonna's look and manner of dressing, her performances and her music videos started influencing young girls and women. Her style became a female fashion trend of the 1980s. It was created by stylist and jewelry designer Maripol and the look consisted of lace tops, skirts over capri pants, fishnet stockings, jewelry bearing the crucifix, bracelets, and bleached hair.^[26] She achieved global recognition after the release of her second studio album: Like a Virgin in 1984. It topped the charts in several countries and became her first number one album on the Billboard 200.^[22]^[27] The title track, "Like a Virgin", topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for six consecutive weeks.^[23] It attracted the attention of organizations who complained that the song and its accompanying video promoted premarital sex and undermined family values,^[28] and moralists sought to have the song and video banned.^[29] Madonna came under further fire when she performed the song at the first MTV Video Music Awards (VMA) where she appeared on stage atop a giant wedding cake, wearing a wedding dress and white gloves. The performance is noted by MTV as an iconic performance in VMA history.^[30] In later years, Madonna commented that she was actually terrified of the performance. She recalled, "I remember my manager Freddy shouting to me, 'Oh my God! What were you doing? You were wearing a wedding dress. Oh my God! You were rolling around on the floor!' It was the bravest, most blatant sexual thing I had ever done on television."^[31] Like a Virgin was certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America and sold more than 21 million copies worldwide.^[32]^[33]

Madonna married actor Sean Penn (above) on her birthday in 1985.

Madonna entered mainstream films in 1985, beginning with a brief appearance as a club singer in Vision Quest, a romantic drama film. Its soundtrack contained her U.S. number-one single, "Crazy for You".^[34] She also appeared in the comedy Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), a film which introduced the song "Into the Groove", her first number one single in the United Kingdom.^[35] Although not the lead actress for the film, her profile was such that the movie widely became seen (and marketed) as a Madonna vehicle.^[36] The New York Times film critic Vincent Canby named it one of the ten best films of 1985.^[37] While filming the music video for the second single from Like a Virgin—"Material Girl"—Madonna started dating actor Sean Penn and married him on her birthday in 1985.^[38]

Beginning in April 1985, Madonna embarked on her first concert tour in North America, The Virgin Tour, with the Beastie Boys as her opening act.^[39] Madonna commented: "That whole tour was crazy, because I went from playing CBGB and the Mudd Club to playing sporting arenas. I played a small theater in Seattle, and the girls had flap skirts on and the tights cut off below their knees and lace gloves and rosaries and bows in their hair and big hoop earrings ... After Seattle, all of the shows were moved to arenas."^[40] In July, Penthouse and Playboy magazines published a number of nude photos of Madonna, taken in New York in 1978. She had posed for the photographs as she needed money at the time, and was paid as little as $25 a session.^[41] The publication of the photos caused a media uproar, but Madonna remained defiant and unapologetic. The photographs were ultimately sold for up to $100,000.^[41] She referred to the whole experience at the 1985 outdoor Live Aid charity concert saying that she would not take her jacket off because "[the media] might hold it against me ten years from now."^[42]^[43]

[edit] 1986–91: True Blue, Like a Prayer and the Blond Ambition Tour

The image of a young blond woman. She is wearing a black coat. Her hair is short, straight and parted from the left to the right. She has bright red lips and appears to be speaking to someone on her left while looking down.

Madonna during the Blond Ambition World Tour

In June 1986, Madonna released her third studio album, True Blue, which was inspired by and dedicated to Sean Penn.^[44] Rolling Stone magazine was generally impressed with the effort, writing that the album "sound[s] as if it comes from the heart".^[45] It spawned three number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100: "Live to Tell", "Papa Don't Preach" and "Open Your Heart", and two more top-five singles: "True Blue" and "La Isla Bonita".^[23]^[34] The album topped the charts in over 28 countries worldwide, an unprecedented achievement at the time.^[46] She also starred in the critically panned film Shanghai Surprise, and made her theatrical debut in a production of David Rabe's Goose and Tom-Tom, both co-starring Penn.^[47] The next year, Madonna's second feature film Who's That Girl was released. She contributed four songs to its soundtrack, including the title track and "Causing a Commotion".^[23] In July 1987, she embarked on the Who's That Girl World Tour which continued until September.^[48] Regarding the tour, Madonna commented "I realized that I could go from being unmolded clay, and over time and with the help of people, I could turn myself into something else. This tour is the reflection of that belief and it's as if saying to me 'Who are you girl?' Hence the name, it's the new me."^[49] Later that year, she released a remix album of past hits, entitled You Can Dance, which reached 14 on the Billboard 200.^[50]^[22] Madonna and Penn filed for divorce in December 1987, citing irreconcilable differences, with Madonna's lawyer pointing to Penn's drinking problem and his abusive nature. The divorce was finalized in January 1989.^[51] Of her marriage to Penn, Madonna later said, "I was completely obsessed with my career and not ready to be generous in any shape or form."^[38]

"In Like a Prayer I've been dealing with more specific issues that mean a lot to me. They're about an assimilation of experiences I've had in my life and in relationships. They're about my mother, my father and my bonds with my family about the pain of dying, or growing up and letting go. [The album] was a real coming-of-age record for me emotionally ... I had to do a lot of soul-searching and I think it is a reflection of that."

—Madonna talking about the inspiration behind Like a Prayer.^[52]^[53]

In January 1989, Madonna signed an endorsement deal with soft-drink manufacturer Pepsi. In one of her Pepsi commercials, she debuted her song "Like a Prayer". The corresponding music video featured many Catholic symbols such as stigmata and burning crosses, and a dream about making love to a saint, leading the Vatican to condemn the video. Religious groups sought to ban the commercial and boycott Pepsi products. Pepsi revoked the commercial and canceled her sponsorship contract.^[54] The song was included on Madonna's fourth studio album, Like a Prayer, which was co-written and co-produced by Patrick Leonard and Stephen Bray.^[55] Rolling Stone wrote that it was "as close to art as pop music gets".^[56] Like a Prayer peaked at number one on the Billboard 200 and sold 13 million copies worldwide, with 4 million copies sold in the U.S. alone.^[22]^[57] Six singles were released from the album, including "Like a Prayer", which reached number one, and "Express Yourself" and "Cherish", both peaking at number two.^[23]^[34] By the end of the 1980s, Madonna was named as the "Artist of the Decade" by media such as MTV, Billboard and Musician magazine.^[58]^[59]^[60]

Madonna starred as "Breathless" Mahoney in the film Dick Tracy (1990), with Warren Beatty playing the title role.^[61] To accompany the film, she released the soundtrack album I'm Breathless, which included songs inspired by the film's 1930s setting. It also featured the U.S. number-one hit, "Vogue",^[62] and "Sooner or Later", which earned songwriter Stephen Sondheim an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1991.^[63] While shooting the film, Madonna began a relationship with Beatty which dissolved by the end of 1990.^[64]^[65] In April 1990 she began her Blond Ambition World Tour, which continued for nearly four months. Regarding the tour, Madonna commented "I know that I'm not the best singer and I know that I'm not the best dancer. But, I can fucking push people's buttons and be as provocative as I want. The tour's goal is to break useless taboos."^[66] Rolling Stone called it an "elaborately choreographed, sexually provocative extravaganza" and proclaimed it "the best tour of 1990".^[67] The tour was met with strong reaction from religious groups for her performance of "Like a Virgin", during which two male dancers caressed her body before she simulated masturbation.^[48] The Pope asked the general public and the Christian community not to attend the concert.^[68] A private association of Catholics calling themselves Famiglia Domani also boycotted the tour for its eroticism.^[69] In response, Madonna said, "I am Italian American and proud of it ... The tour in no way hurts anybody's sentiments. It's for open minds and gets them to see sexuality in a different way. Their own and others"; she declared that the Church "completely frowns on sex ... except for procreation."^[70] The Laserdisc release of the tour won Madonna a Grammy Award in 1992 for Best Long Form Music Video.^[71]

The Immaculate Collection, Madonna's first greatest-hits compilation album, was released in November 1990. It included two new songs, "Justify My Love" and "Rescue Me".^[72] The album was certified diamond by RIAA and sold over 30 million copies worldwide, becoming the best-selling compilation album by a solo artist in history.^[32]^[73] "Justify My Love" reached number one in the U.S. and top ten worldwide.^[34]^[74] Its music video featured scenes of sadomasochism, bondage, same-sex kissing and brief nudity.^[75]^[76] The video was deemed too sexually explicit for MTV and was banned from the network.^[75] Madonna responded to the banning: "Why is it that people are willing to go and watch a movie about someone getting blown to bits for no reason at all, and nobody wants to see two girls kissing and two men snuggling? ... MTV has been good to me, and they know their audience. If it's too strong for them, I understand. Although, half of me thought I was going to get away with it."^[77] The second single, "Rescue Me", became the highest-debuting single by a female artist in Hot 100 chart history at that time, entering at number 15 and peaking at number nine.^[72]

In December 1990, Madonna decided to leave Jennifer Lynch's film Boxing Helena, which she had previously agreed to star in, without any explanation to the producers.^[78] From late 1990 to early 1991, Madonna dated Tony Ward, a model and pornography performer who appeared in her music videos for "Cherish" and "Justify My Love". She also had an eight-month relationship with rapper Vanilla Ice.^[79] Her first documentary film Truth or Dare (known as In Bed with Madonna outside North America) was released in mid-1991. The documentary chronicled her Blond Ambition World Tour.^[18]

[edit] 1992–96: Maverick, Sex, Erotica, Bedtime Stories and Evita

A picture of a Evita, former first lady of Argentina. Her hair is drawn into a tight bun at the back. She is wearing a black, low-cut dress. Around her neck is a number of chains. The lady's hands are folded in her front and she has a white fur shawl around her.

Madonna's portrayal of Eva Perón (above) in the film Evita garnered her critical acclaim.

In 1992, Madonna had a role in A League of Their Own as Mae Mordabito, a baseball player on an all-women's team. She recorded the film's theme song, "This Used to Be My Playground", which became a Hot 100 number one hit.^[34] The same year, she founded her own entertainment company, Maverick, consisting of a record company (Maverick Records), a film production company (Maverick Films), and associated music publishing, television broadcasting, book publishing and merchandising divisions. The deal was a joint venture with Time Warner and paid Madonna an advance of $60 million. It gave her 20% royalties from the music proceedings, one of the highest rates in the industry, equaled at that time only by Michael Jackson's royalty rate established a year earlier with Sony.^[80] The first release from the venture was Madonna's book, entitled Sex. It consisted of sexually provocative and explicit images, photographed by Steven Meisel. The book caused strong negative reaction from the media and the general public, but sold 1.5 million copies at $50 each in a matter of days.^[81]^[82] At the same time she released her fifth studio album, Erotica, which debuted at number two on the Billboard 200.^[22]^[82] Its title track peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100.^[34] Erotica also produced five further singles: "Deeper and Deeper", "Bad Girl", "Fever", "Rain" and "Bye Bye Baby".^[83]

The provocative imagery that was her trademark continued in the 1990s with the erotic thriller Body of Evidence, a film which contained scenes of sadomasochism and bondage. It was poorly received by critics.^[84]^[85] She also starred in the film Dangerous Game, which was released straight to video in North America. The New York Times described the film as "angry and painful, and the pain feels real."^[86] In October 1993, she embarked on The Girlie Show World Tour, in which she dressed as a whip-cracking dominatrix surrounded by topless dancers.^[87] The show faced negative reaction, specifically in Puerto Rico where she rubbed the island's flag between her legs on stage.^[48] In March 1994, she appeared as a guest on the Late Show with David Letterman, using profanity that was required to be censored on television and handing Letterman a pair of her underwear and asking him to smell it.^[88] The releases of her sexually explicit films, albums and book, and the aggressive appearance on Letterman all made critics question Madonna as a sexual renegade. She faced strong negative publicity from critics and fans, who commented that "she had gone too far" and that her career was over.^[89]

According to biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli, the ballad "I'll Remember" (1994), was an attempt to tone down her provocative image. The song was recorded for Alek Keshishian's film With Honors.^[90] She made a subdued appearance with Letterman at an awards show and appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno after realizing that she needed to change her musical direction in order to sustain her popularity.^[91] With her sixth studio album, Bedtime Stories (1994), Madonna employed a softer image to reconnect with the general public.^[91] The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 and produced four singles, including "Secret" and "Take a Bow", the latter topping the Hot 100 for seven weeks.^[34] At the same time, she became romantically involved with fitness trainer Carlos Leon.^[92] Something to Remember, a collection of ballads, was released in May 1995. The album featured three new songs: "You'll See", "One More Chance", and a cover of Marvin Gaye's "I Want You".^[34]^[93] In later years, Madonna commented that she was very fond of the albums between Like a Prayer and Something to Remember, "though I would agree that all of these albums were watershed moments for me".^[94]

"This is the role I was born to play. I put everything of me into this because it was much more than a role in a movie. It was exhilarating and intimidating at the same time. And it was the farthest I've ever had to push myself creatively. At every level, I had a great education. And I am prouder of Evita than anything else I have done."

—Madonna talking about Evita and her role as Eva Perón.^[95]

The following year saw the release of Evita in which she played the title role of Eva Perón.^[96]^[97] For a long time, Madonna had desired to play Perón and even wrote to director Alan Parker, explaining how she would be perfect for the part. After securing it, she underwent vocal training and learned about the history of Argentina and Perón. During shooting she fell sick many times, commenting that "The intensity of the scenes we have been shooting and the amount of emotional work and concentration needed to get through the day are so mentally and physically exhausting that I'm sure I will need to be institutionalized when its over." It was on the set of Evita Madonna found out that she was pregnant, which further complicated the shooting for her.^[98] Evita was a period drama and almost 6,000 costumes were needed for the scenes. Madonna herself wore 370 different costumes, earning her a Guinness World Record for the most costume changes in a film.^[97] After its release, the film garnered critical appreciation. Zach Conner from Time magazine commented "It's a relief to say that Evita is pretty damn fine, well cast and handsomely visualized. Madonna once again confounds our expectations. She plays Evita with a poignant weariness and has more than just a bit of star quality. Love or hate Madonna-Eva, she is a magnet for all eyes."^[99]^[100] Madonna won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for the role.^[101] She released three singles from the Evita soundtrack album including "You Must Love Me" (which won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1997) and "Don't Cry for Me Argentina".^[102] On October 14, 1996, Madonna gave birth to Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon, her daughter with Leon.^[103]

[edit] 1997–2002: Ray of Light, Music and Drowned World Tour

A blond woman sitting on a block of hay. She is playing a guitar and singing in front of a standing microphone. She has short hair and wears grey colored cowboy clothes.

Madonna performing on the Drowned World Tour

After Lourdes' birth, Madonna became involved in Eastern mysticism and Kabbalah. She was introduced to Jewish mysticism by actress Sandra Bernhard in 1997.^[104] Her seventh studio album, Ray of Light, (1998) reflected this change in her perception and image.^[105] She commented: "This record, more than any other records, covers all the areas of life. I had recently joined Kabbalah and I had left off partying—but I had just had a baby, so my mood was complete, and I was incredibly thoughtful, retrospective and intrigued by the mystical aspects of life."^[106] The album garnered critical acclaim and Slant Magazine declared it as "one of the great pop masterpieces of the '90s".^[107] Ray of Light was honored with four Grammy Awards, and listed as one of Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".^[108]^[109] Topping the charts in Australia, Canada, UK and mainland Europe, the album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200—held off from the top spot by the soundtrack to the film Titanic—and sold over 20 million copies worldwide.^[22]^[110] The album's first single, "Frozen", became Madonna's first single to debut at number one in the UK, while in the U.S. it became her sixth number-two single and set another record for Madonna as the artist with the most number two hits.^[34]^[111] The song was banned in Belgium, however, adjudicated to be plagiarized from Belgian songwriter Salvatore Acquaviva's 1993 song "Ma Vie Fout L'camp".^[112] The second single, "Ray of Light", debuted at number five on the Billboard Hot 100.^[113] Madonna's relationship with Leon ended in December 1998; she declared that they were "better off as best friends."^[114] Following their break-up, Madonna signed to play a violin teacher in the film Music of the Heart but left the project, citing "creative differences" with director Wes Craven.^[115] She followed the success of Ray of Light with the single "Beautiful Stranger", recorded for the 1999 film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. It reached number 19 on the Hot 100 solely on radio airplay and earned Madonna a Grammy Award for "Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media".^[34]^[71]

In 2000, Madonna starred in the film The Next Best Thing, and contributed two songs to the film's soundtrack: "Time Stood Still" and the international hit "American Pie", a cover version of Don McLean's 1971 song.^[116] She released her eighth studio album, Music, in September 2000. It featured elements from the electronica-inspired Ray of Light era, and catered to her gay audience.^[117] Collaborating with French producer Mirwais Ahmadzaï, Madonna commented: "I love to work with the weirdos that no one knows about—the people who have raw talent and who are making music unlike anyone else out there. Music is the future of sound."^[117] Stephen Thomas Erlewine from Allmusic felt that "Music blows by in a kaleidoscopic rush of color, technique, style and substance. It has so many depth and layers that it's easily as self-aware and earnest as Ray of Light."^[118] The album took the number-one position in more than 20 countries worldwide and sold four million copies in the first ten days.^[108] In the U.S., Music debuted at the top, and became her first number-one album in eleven years since Like a Prayer.^[119] It produced three singles: the Hot 100 number one "Music", "Don't Tell Me" and "What It Feels Like for a Girl".^[34] The music video of "What It Feels Like for a Girl" depicted Madonna committing murders and involved in car accidents, and was banned by MTV and VH1.^[120]

Around the same time of the Music album, Madonna became involved in a relationship with Guy Ritchie, whom she had met in 1999 through mutual friends Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler. On August 11, 2000, she gave birth to their son, Rocco Ritchie.^[121] In December, Madonna and Ritchie were married in an exclusive ceremony in Scotland.^[122]

Her fifth concert tour, entitled Drowned World Tour, started in April 2001.^[48] The tour visited cities in the U.S. and Europe and was the highest-grossing concert tour of the year by a solo artist, earning $75 million from 47 sold-out shows.^[123] She also released her second greatest-hits collection, entitled GHV2, to coincide with the home video release of the tour. GHV2 debuted at number seven on the Billboard 200.^[124] Madonna starred in the film Swept Away, directed by Ritchie. Released direct-to-video in the UK, the film was a commercial and critical failure.^[125] Later that year, she released "Die Another Day", the title song of the James Bond film Die Another Day, in which she had a cameo role. The song reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated both for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and a Golden Raspberry for Worst Song.^[34]^[126]

[edit] 2003–06: American Life and Confessions on a Dance Floor

Madonna performing at the Live 8 benefit concert (2005)

Following Die Another Day, Madonna collaborated with fashion photographer Steven Klein in 2003 for an exhibition installation named X-STaTIC Pro=CeSS. It included photography from a photo shoot in W magazine, and seven video segments. The installation ran from March to May in New York's Deitch Projects gallery. It then traveled the world in an edited form.^[127] Madonna released her ninth studio album, American Life, which was based on her observations of American society, and received mixed reviews.^[128] She commented, "[American Life] was like a trip down memory lane, looking back at everything I've accomplished and all the things I once valued and all the things that were important to me."^[129] Larry Flick from The Advocate felt that "American Life is an album that is among her most adventurous and lyrically intelligent ... It is like the flip side to 2000's Music, and turns out to be a lazy, half-arsed effort to sound and take her seriously."^[129]^[130] The title song peaked at number 37 on the Hot 100.^[34] Its original music video was canceled as Madonna thought that the video, featuring violence and war imagery, would be deemed unpatriotic since America was then at war with Iraq.^[131] With only four million copies sold worldwide, American Life was the lowest-selling album of her career.^[132] She gave another provocative performance later that year at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, while singing "Hollywood" with Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Missy Elliott. Madonna kissed Spears and Aguilera suggestively during the performance, triggering a tabloid frenzy.^[133]^[134] In October 2003, Madonna provided guest vocals on Spears' single "Me Against the Music".^[135] It was followed with the release of Remixed & Revisited. The EP contained remixed versions of songs from American Life and included "Your Honesty", a previously unreleased track from the Bedtime Stories recording sessions.^[136] Madonna also signed a contract with Callaway Arts & Entertainment to be the author of five children's books. The first of these books, entitled The English Roses, was published in September 2003. The story was about four English schoolgirls and their envy and jealousy of each other.^[137] Kate Kellway from The Guardian commented "[Madonna] is an actress playing at what she can never be—a JK Rowling, an English rose."^[138] The book debuted at the top of The New York Times Best Seller list and became the fastest-selling children's picture book of all time.^[51]

The next year, Madonna and Maverick sued Warner Music Group and its former parent company Time Warner, claiming that mismanagement of resources and poor bookkeeping had cost the company millions of dollars. In return, Warner filed a countersuit alleging that Maverick had lost tens of millions of dollars on its own.^[139]^[140] The dispute was resolved when the Maverick shares, owned by Madonna and Ronnie Dashev, were purchased by Warner. Madonna and Dashev's company became a wholly owned subsidiary of Warner Music, but Madonna was still signed to Warner under a separate recording contract.^[139] In mid-2004 Madonna embarked on the Re-Invention World Tour in the U.S., Canada and Europe. It became the highest-grossing tour of 2004, earning $125 million.^[141] She made a documentary about the tour named I'm Going to Tell You a Secret.^[142] Rolling Stone ranked her at number 36 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time".^[143] In January 2005, Madonna performed a cover version of the John Lennon song "Imagine" at Tsunami Aid.^[144] She also performed at the Live 8 benefit concert in London.^[145]

"I tried several different things when Stuart [producer Stuart Price] brought me music. And it was like divine inspiration. It just clicked, like: 'This is the direction of my record.' That's what we intended, to make a record that you can play at a party or in your car, where you don't have to skip past a ballad. It's nonstop."

—Madonna talking about Confessions on a Dance Floor.^[146]

Her tenth studio album, Confessions on a Dance Floor, was released in November 2005. Musically the album was structured like a club set composed by a DJ. The songs on the album started out light and happy, and as it progressed, it became intense, with the lyrics dealing more about personal feelings, hence "Confessions."^[147] Keith Caulfield from Billboard commented that the album was a "welcome return to form for the Queen of Pop."^[148] The album won a Grammy Award for "Best Electronic/Dance Album".^[71] Confessions on a Dance Floor and its lead single, "Hung Up", went on to reach number one in 40 and 41 countries respectively, earning a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.^[149] "Sorry", the second single, became Madonna's twelfth number-one single in the UK.^[35] She embarked on the Confessions Tour in May 2006, which had a global audience of 1.2 million and grossed over $194.7 million, becoming the highest-grossing tour to that date for a female artist.^[150] Madonna used religious symbols, such as the crucifix and Crown of Thorns, in the performance of "Live to Tell". It caused the Russian Orthodox Church and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia to urge all their members to boycott her concert.^[151] The Vatican protested the concert, as did bishops from Düsseldorf.^[152] Madonna responded: "My performance is neither anti-Christian, sacrilegious or blasphemous. Rather, it is my plea to the audience to encourage mankind to help one another and to see the world as a unified whole."^[153] In the same year, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry announced officially that Madonna had sold over 200 million copies for her albums alone worldwide.^[154] In June 2006, Madonna was voted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends online Hall of Fame.^[155]

While on tour, Madonna participated in the Raising Malawi initiative by partially funding an orphanage in and traveling to that country.^[156] On October 10, 2006, she filed adoption papers for a boy from the orphanage, David Banda Mwale. He was later renamed David Banda Mwale Ciccone Ritchie.^[157] The adoption raised strong public reaction, because Malawian law requires would-be parents to reside in Malawi for one year before adopting, which Madonna did not do.^[158] She addressed this on The Oprah Winfrey Show, saying that there were no written adoption laws in Malawi that regulated foreign adoption. She described how Banda had been suffering from pneumonia after surviving malaria and tuberculosis when she first met him.^[159] Banda's biological father, Yohane, commented, "These so-called human rights activists are harassing me every day, threatening me that I am not aware of what I am doing ... They want me to support their court case, a thing I cannot do for I know what I agreed with Madonna and her husband."^[160] The adoption was finalized on May 28, 2008.^[161]

A clothing line titled M by Madonna, in collaboration with Swedish clothing retailer H&M, was launched internationally in 2006.^[162] The collection consisted of leather trench coats, sequined shift dresses, cream-colored calf-length pants and matching cropped jackets. H&M said the collection reflected Madonna's "timeless, unique and always glamorous style."^[163]

[edit] 2007–09: Live Nation, Hard Candy and the Sticky & Sweet Tour

A blond woman in a black dress, holding a black hat atop her head with her riht hand, and a microphon in her left. She is pointing her tongue towards the camera. Beside her the smiling face of a man is visible.

Madonna performing at the Live Earth concerts

Madonna released the song "Hey You" for the Live Earth series of concerts. The song was available as a free download during its first week of release. She also performed it at the London Live Earth concert.^[164] Madonna announced her departure from Warner Bros. Records, and a new $120 million, ten-year contract with Live Nation. She became the founding artist for the new music division, Live Nation Artists.^[165] She produced and wrote I Am Because We Are, a documentary on the problems faced by Malawians. The documentary was directed by Nathan Rissman, who worked as Madonna's gardener.^[166] She also directed her first film Filth and Wisdom. The story of the film was about three friends and their aspirations. Madonna commented that it was Ritchie who inspired her to develop the screenplay for the film. "The fact of the matter is that all the work I do is very autobiographical, directly or indirectly, because who do I know better than me?"^[167] The Times said she had "done herself proud" while The Daily Telegraph described the film as "not an entirely unpromising first effort [but] Madonna would do well to hang on to her day job."^[168]^[169] In December 2007, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced Madonna as one of the five inductees of 2008.^[170] At the induction ceremony on March 10, 2008,^[171] Madonna did not sing but asked fellow Hall of Fame inductees and Michigan natives The Stooges to perform her songs "Burning Up" and "Ray of Light". She thanked Christopher Flynn, her dance teacher from 35 years earlier, for his encouragement to follow her dreams.^[172]

Madonna released her eleventh studio album, Hard Candy, in April 2008. Containing R&B and urban pop influences, the songs on Hard Candy were autobiographical in nature and saw Madonna collaborating with Justin Timberlake, Timbaland, Pharrell Williams and Nate "Danja" Hills.^[173] Rolling Stone complimented it as an "impressive taste of her upcoming tour."^[174]

"Probably in many respects most of the songs [on Hard Candy] are [autobiographical]. But in more of an unconscious way. I don't really think about telling personal stories when I'm writing music. It just comes. And then a lot of times, six months later, eight months later, I go, 'Oh, that's what I wrote that song about.' But that's when I play the song for lots of people and they all go, 'Oh, I can totally relate to that.'"

— Madonna talking about the inspiration behind Hard Candy^[175]

The album debuted at number one in 37 countries and on the Billboard 200.^[176]^[177] It received generally positive reviews worldwide though some critics panned it as "an attempt to harness the urban market".^[178]^[179] Its lead single, "4 Minutes", reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was Madonna's 37th Hot 100 top-ten hit—it pushed Madonna past Elvis Presley as the artist with the most top-ten hits.^[180] In the UK, she retained her record for the most number-one singles for a female artist; "4 Minutes" becoming her thirteenth.^[181] At the 23rd Japan Gold Disc Awards, Madonna received her fifth "Artist of the Year" trophy from Recording Industry Association of Japan, the most for any artist.^[182] To further promote the album, Madonna embarked on the Sticky & Sweet Tour; her first major venture with Live Nation. With a gross of $280 million, it became the highest-grossing tour by a solo artist, surpassing the previous record Madonna set with the Confessions Tour.^[183] It was extended to the next year, adding new European dates, and after it ended, the total gross was $408 million.^[183]^[184]

Life with My Sister Madonna, a book by Madonna's brother Christopher Ciccone, debuted at number two on The New York Times Bestseller List.^[185] It was not authorized by Madonna, and led to a rift between them.^[186] Problems also arose between Madonna and Ritchie, with the media reporting that they were on the verge of separation. Ultimately, Madonna filed for divorce from Ritchie, citing irreconcilable differences, which was finalized in December 2008.^[187]^[188] She decided to adopt again from Malawi. The country's High Court initially approved the adoption of Chifundo "Mercy" James;^[189] however, the application was rejected because Madonna was not a resident of Malawi.^[190] Madonna appealed, and on June 12, 2009, the Supreme Court of Malawi granted Madonna the right to adopt Mercy James.^[191] She also released Celebration, her third greatest-hits album, and the closing release with Warner. It contained the new songs "Celebration" and "Revolver" along with 34 hits spanning her career.^[192] Celebration reached number one in the UK, tying her with Elvis Presley as the solo act with most number one albums in the British chart history.^[193] She appeared at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards on September 13, 2009, to speak in tribute to deceased pop star Michael Jackson.^[194] Madonna ended the 2000s as the best-selling single artist of the decade in the U.S. and the most-played artist of the decade in the UK.^[195]^[196] Billboard also announced her as the third top-touring artist of the decade—behind only The Rolling Stones and U2—with a gross of over $801 million, 6.3 million attendance and 244 sell-outs of 248 shows.^[197]

[edit] 2010–present: W.E., MDNA and business ventures

A blond woman in a black dress, smiling and looking down.

Madonna at the premiere of W.E. at the Toronto Film Festival.

Madonna performed at the Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief concert in January 2010.^[198] In April she released her third live album, Sticky & Sweet Tour. It was her first release under Live Nation, but was distributed by Warner Bros.^[199] Madonna granted American TV show Glee the rights to her entire catalogue of music, and the producers planned an episode featuring Madonna songs exclusively.^[200] Titled "The Power of Madonna", the episode was approved by her, telling Us Weekly that she found it "brilliant on every level", praising the scripting and the message of equality.^[201] The episode also received positive reviews from critics. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly called it "one of the best hours of TV you're likely to see all year", writing that the episode pays Madonna "the highest compliment possible".^[202] Glee: The Music, The Power of Madonna, an EP containing eight cover versions of Madonna songs featured in the episode, was released afterward and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200.^[203]

Madonna released the "Material Girl" clothing line, which she designed with her daughter, Lourdes.^[204] The 1980s inspired clothing line, borrowed from Madonna's punk-girl style when she rose to fame in the 1980s, was released under the Macy's label.^[204] Soon after the clothing line went on sale, apparel manufacturer L.A. Triumph Inc. sued her saying that they have been using the name Material Girl and selling clothes under that name since 1997. They demanded that Madonna's clothing line be halted from selling and the profits be returned.^[205] The Material Girl clothing was first fronted by Taylor Momsen but she was later replaced by Kelly Osbourne.^[206] Madonna also opened a series of fitness centers around the world. Named Hard Candy Fitness, the gyms are a partnership between Madonna, her manager Guy Oseary and Mark Mastrov, the founder and CEO of 24 Hour Fitness.^[207] The first of the gyms was opened at Mexico City in November 2010, as Madonna believed that the city served as "a great test market before bringing the gyms to cities around the world."^[208] In November 2011, Madonna and MG Icon announced the release of a second fashion brand called Truth or Dare by Madonna to include footwear, underclothing, and accessories. The brand represents a second partnership between MG Icon and Macy's.^[209]

Madonna directed her second feature film, W.E., a biopic about the affair between King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson; it was co-written with Alek Keshishian.^[210] The film premiered out of the main competition at the 2011 Venice Film Festival, where it received mixed reviews.^[211] Critical respones to the film has been negitive.^[212]^[213] Madonna also contributed the ballad "Masterpiece" for the film's soundtrack, which won her a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.^[214] In December 2011, it was revealed that the singer had signed a three-album deal with Interscope Records, who would act as the distributor in partnership with her 360 deal with Live Nation.^[215] Her twelfth studio album, MDNA, was released in March 2012. Reuniting with her long-time collaborator William Orbit, Madonna also worked with a variety of producers such as Martin Solveig, The Demolition Crew, Benny Benassi, Alle Benassi, Indiigo and Michael Malih.^[216] The album was well-received by music critics.^[217] Priya Elan from NME called the album "a ridiculously enjoyable romp", citing its "psychotic, soul-bearing stuff" as "some of the most visceral stuff she's ever done."^[218] The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and many other countries worldwide.^[219] Madonna surpassed Elvis Presley's record for the most number-one album by a solo artist in the United Kingdom.^[220] The lead single "Give Me All Your Luvin'", featuring guest vocals from Nicki Minaj and M.I.A., became Madonna's record-extending 38th top-ten hit on the Billboard Hot 100.^[221] Prior to the album's release, Madonna performed at Super Bowl XLVI during the Bridgestone Halftime Show.^[222] The performance was visualized by Cirque Du Soleil and Jamie King and featured special guests LMFAO, Nicki Minaj, M.I.A. and Cee Lo Green. It became the most-watched Super Bowl halftime show in history with 114 million viewers, higher than the game itself.^[223] The MDNA Tour, which will further promote the album, is set to begin in May 2012 in Tel Aviv, Israel.^[224]

Artistry [link]

Musical style [link]

	"Papa Don't Preach" (1986) noicon "Papa Don't Preach" had Madonna singing in a much fuller voice, and incorporated classical instrumentation. "Frozen" (1998) noicon Composed with the darker electronic undertones, eastern strings and Middle Eastern percussion, "Frozen" features Madonna's previously unexplored vocal range.
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Madonna's music has been the subject of much analysis and scrutiny by critics. Robert M. Grant, author of Contemporary Strategy Analysis (2005), commented that what has brought Madonna success is "certainly not outstanding natural talent. As a vocalist, musician, dancer, songwriter, or actress, Madonna's talents seem modest."^[225] He asserts Madonna's success is in relying on the talents of others, and that her personal relationships have served as cornerstones to the numerous reinventions in the longevity of her career.^[225] Madonna's approach was far from the music industry wisdom of "Find a winning formula and stick to it." Her musical career has been a continuous experimentation with new musical ideas and new images and a constant quest for new heights of fame and acclaim. Grant concluded that "having established herself as the queen of popular music, Madonna did not stop there, but continued re-inventing."^[226] Conversely, Rolling Stone has named Madonna "an exemplary songwriter with a gift for hooks and indelible lyrics, and a better studio singer than her live spectacles attest."^[18]^{[not in citation given]} Mark Bego, author of Madonna: Blonde Ambition, called her "the perfect vocalist for lighter-than-air songs", despite not being a "heavyweight talent."^[227] Madonna has always been self-conscious about her voice, especially in comparison to her vocal idols such as Ella Fitzgerald, Prince and Chaka Khan.^[228]

Throughout her career, Madonna has written or co-written most of her own materials, as well as songs of other artists such as Nick Kamen's "Each Time You Break My Heart" and Gary Barlow's "Love Won't Wait".^[229] According to Freya Jarman-Ivens, Madonna's talent for developing "incredible" hooks for her songs allows the lyrics to capture the attention of the audience, even without the influence of the music. As an example, Jarman-Ivens cites the 1985 single "Into the Groove" and its line "Live out your fantasy here with me, just let the music set you free; Touch my body, and move in time, now I know you're mine."^[230] From 1983 to 1986, Madonna's musical productions were often girlish and naïve in nature, focusing primarily on love, romance, passion and boy-meets-girl relationships.^[230] This changed with the album Like a Prayer, when the lyrics became much more personal, as in "Promise to Try", which references Madonna's lingering pain at the loss of her mother.^[230] Madonna's lyrics often suggest an identification with the gay community. Santiago Fouz-Hernández believes that when Madonna sings "Come on girls, do you believe in love?" in "Express Yourself", she is addressing both the gay audience and the heterosexual female.^[230] Even in the Erotica era, with its often adult-oriented lyrics, the songs appear free-flowing and gullible ("So won't you go down, where it's warm inside" — "Where Life Begins" from Erotica). Madonna's songwriting ability has been criticized, with Rolling Stone's Maria Raha calling her lyrics "flighty and not sophisticated. Madonna can only bring a trunk full of trite lyrics on the long standing tradition of pop music, love; when she wasn't singing about love, she was singing about partying and dancing."^[231] Her lyrics were considered banal, and her songwriting capability was largely ignored by critics until the release of Ray of Light and Music. According to Jarman-Ivens, lyrics such as "You're frozen, when your heart's not open" ("Frozen", 1998) and "I can't remember, when I was young, I can't express if it was wrong" ("Paradise (Not for Me)", 2000) reflected an artistic palette, "encompassing diverse musical, textual and visual styles in its lyrics."^[230]

Madonna, seen here on The Virgin Tour, had a bright, girlish vocal timbre that became passé in her later works.

Madonna has a mezzo-soprano vocal range.^[232] She started her musical career with songs that she described as "soulful pop music". Madonna recalled in a 1983 interview with Island magazine that she had wanted to grow up as a black kid.^[233] "First of all, all the black girls in my neighborhood had these dances in their yard where they had these little turntables with 45 records and they'd play all this Motown stuff and they would dance, just dance, all of them dancing together and none of the white kids I knew would ever do that. They were really boring and stiff. And I wanted to be part of the dancing. I didn't like my friends. I had to be beaten up so many times by these little black girls before they would accept me and finally one day they whipped me with a rubber hose till I was like, lying on the ground crying. And then they just stopped doing it all of a sudden and let me be their friend, part of their group."^[233] On her 1983 debut album, Madonna's vocal abilities and personal artistry were not fully formed. Her vocal style was similar to other pop stars of that period like Paula Abdul, Debbie Gibson and Taylor Dayne.^[228] The songs on Madonna reveal several key trends that have continued to define her success, including a strong dance-based idiom, catchy hooks, highly polished arrangements and Madonna's own vocal style. In songs such as "Lucky Star" and "Borderline", Madonna introduced a style of upbeat dance music that would prove particularly appealing to gay audiences. The bright, girlish vocal timbre of the early years became passé in Madonna's later works, the change being deliberate, since Madonna was constantly reminded of how the critics had once labelled her as "Minnie Mouse on helium", because of her early voice.^[228] Her second album, Like a Virgin (1984), foreshadowed several trends in Madonna's later works. It contained references to classical works (pizzicato synthesizer line that opens "Angel"); potential negative reaction from social groups ("Dress You Up" was blacklisted by the Parents Music Resource Center); and retro styles ("Shoo-Bee-Doo", Madonna's homage to Motown).^[228] Madonna's early style, and the change that she ushered in it, is best evident in the song "Material Girl". It opens with Madonna using a little-girl voice, but following the first verse, she switches to a richer, more mature voice in the chorus.^[228] This mature artistic statement was visible in True Blue (1986). The song "Papa Don't Preach" was a significant milestone in her artistic career. The classical introduction, fast tempo and the gravity in her voice were unprecedented in Madonna's œuvre at that time.^[228]

With Like a Prayer (1989), Madonna again entered a new phase, musically. The album introduced live recorded songs and incorporated different genres of music, including dance, R&B and gospel music.^[53] Madonna continued to compose ballads and uptempo dance songs for Erotica (1992) and Bedtime Stories (1994). She tried to remain contemporary by incorporating samples, drum loops and hip hop into her music. Her voice grew much deeper and fuller, evident in the tracks like "Rain" and "Take a Bow".^[234] During the filming of Evita, Madonna had to take vocal lessons, which increased her range further. Of this experience she commented, "I studied with a vocal coach for Evita and I realized there was a whole piece of my voice I wasn't using. Before, I just believed I had a really limited range and was going to make the most of it."^[235] Continuing her musical evolution with Ray of Light, the track "Frozen" displayed her fully formed vocal prowess and her allusions to classical music. Her vocals were restrained and she sang the songs in Ray of Light without vibrato. However, the intake of breath within the songs became more prominent.^[228] With the new millennium came her album Music in which Madonna sang in her normal voice in a medium range, and sometimes in a higher register for the chorus.^[228] A change was also noted in the content of the songs, with most of them being simple love songs, but with an underlying tone of melancholy. Her next record, American Life, was infused with thumping techno rhythm, liquid keyboard lines, acoustic choruses and a rap on the title track. The unconventional rock songs of the album were intermingled with dramatic lyrics about patriotism and composition, including the appearance of a gospel choir in the song "Nothing Fails".^[236] Musically, things changed with Confessions on a Dance Floor, which returned Madonna to pure dance songs, infusing club beats and retro music, but the lyrics continued to be about paradoxical metaphors and reference to her earlier works.^[237] In her studio album, Hard Candy, she mixed R&B and hip hop music with dance tunes. The album also had songs whose lyrics were autobiographical and expressed support for helping Africa.^[175] Fouz-Hernández commented that "Throughout her career, Madonna's manipulation of her voice shows us that, by refusing to be defined in one way, she has in fact opened up a space for new kinds of musical analysis."^[228]

Influences [link]

Bust of a blond woman in short curled hair and wearing a bright pink, sleeveless dress. Putting both her hands up, she looks to the right of the image.

Marilyn Monroe (pictured) had a profound influence on Madonna.

According to Taraborrelli, "Almost certainly, the defining moment of Madonna's childhood—the one that would have the most influence in shaping her into the woman she would become—was the tragic and untimely death of her beloved mother."^[5] Psychiatrist Keith Ablow suggests that her mother's death would have had an immeasurable impact on the young Madonna at a time when her personality was still forming. According to Ablow, the younger a child is at the time of a serious loss, the more profound the influence and the longer lasting the impact. He concludes that "some people never reconcile themselves to such a loss at an early age, Madonna is not different than them."^[5] Conversely, author Lucy O'Brien feels that the impact of the rape is, in fact, the motivating factor behind everything Madonna has done, more important even than the death of her mother: "It's not so much grief at her mother's death that drives her, as the sense of abandonment that left her unprotected. She encountered her own worst possible scenario, becoming a victim of male violence, and thereafter turned that full-tilt into her work, reversing the equation at every opportunity."^[238]

As they grew older, Madonna and her sisters would feel deep sadness as the vivid memory of their mother began drifting farther from them. They would study pictures of her and come to think that she resembled poet Anne Sexton and Hollywood actresses. This would later raise Madonna's interest in poetry with Sylvia Plath being her favourite.^[5] Later, Madonna commented: "We were all wounded in one way or another by [her death], and then we spent the rest of our lives reacting to it or dealing with it or trying to turn into something else. The anguish of losing my mom left me with a certain kind of loneliness and an incredible longing for something. If I hadn't had that emptiness, I wouldn't have been so driven. Her death had a lot to do with me saying—after I got over my heartache—I'm going to be really strong if I can't have my mother. I'm going to take care of myself."^[5] Taraborrelli felt that in time, no doubt because of the devastation she felt, Madonna would never again allow herself, or even her daughter, to feel as abandoned as she had felt when her mother died. "Her death had taught [Madonna] a valuable lesson, that she would have to remain strong for herself because, she feared weakness—particularly her own—and wanted to be the queen of her own castle."^[5]

In 1985, Madonna commented that the first song to ever make a strong impression on her was "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" by Nancy Sinatra; she said it summed up her own "take-charge attitude".^[239] As a young woman, she attempted to broaden her taste in literature, art, and music, and during this time became interested in classical music. She noted that her favorite style was baroque, and loved Mozart and Chopin because she liked their "feminine quality".^[240] Other musical influences included artists Karen Carpenter, The Supremes, Led Zeppelin, and dancers such as Martha Graham and Rudolf Nureyev.^[241] Madonna's Italian-Catholic background and her relationship with her parents were reflected in the album Like a Prayer.^[56] It was an evocation of the impact religion had on her career.^[242] Her video for the title track contains Catholic symbolism, such as the stigmata. During The Virgin Tour, she wore a rosary, and also prayed with it in the music video for "La Isla Bonita".^[243] The "Open Your Heart" video sees her boss scolding her in the Italian language. On the Who's That Girl World Tour, she dedicated the song "Papa Don't Preach" to the Pope.^[243]^[244]

During her childhood, Madonna was inspired by actors, later saying, "I loved Carole Lombard and Judy Holliday and Marilyn Monroe. They were all incredibly funny ... and I saw myself in them ... my girlishness, my knowingness and my innocence."^[239] Her "Material Girl" music video recreated Monroe's look in the song "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend", from the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She studied the screwball comedies of the 1930s, particularly those of Lombard, in preparation for the film Who's That Girl. The video for "Express Yourself" (1989) was inspired by Fritz Lang's silent film Metropolis (1927). The video for "Vogue" recreated the style of Hollywood glamour photographs, in particular those by Horst P. Horst, and imitated the poses of Marlene Dietrich, Carole Lombard and Rita Hayworth, while the lyrics referred to many of the stars who had inspired her, including Bette Davis, described by Madonna as an idol.^[70]^[245] Influences also came to her from the art world, most notably through the works of artist Frida Kahlo.^[246] The music video of the song "Bedtime Story" featured images inspired by the paintings of Kahlo and Remedios Varo.^[247] She is also a collector of Tamara de Lempicka's art deco paintings and has included them in her music videos and tours.^[248] Her 2003 video for "Hollywood" was an homage to the work of photographer Guy Bourdin; Bourdin's son subsequently filed a lawsuit for unauthorised use of his father's work.^[249] Pop artist Andy Warhol's use of sadomasochistic imagery in his underground films were reflected in the music videos for "Erotica" and "Deeper and Deeper".^[250] However, Madonna's film career has been largely received negatively by the film critic community. Stephanie Zacharek, critic for Time magazine, stated that, "[Madonna] seems wooden and unnatural as an actress, and it's tough to watch, because she's clearly trying her damnedest."^[251] According to biographer Andrew Morton, "Madonna puts a brave face on the criticism, but privately she is deeply hurt."^[251] After the 2002 box office bomb Swept Away, Madonna vowed that she would never act in a film, hoping that her repertoire as a bad actress will never be discussed again.^[251]

Madonna is dedicated to Kabbalah and in 2004, she adopted the name Esther which in Persian means "star".^[252] She has donated millions of dollars to New York and London schools teaching the subject.^[252]^[253] She faced opposition from rabbis who felt Madonna's adoption of the Kabbalah was sacrilegious and a case of celebrity dilettantism. Madonna defended her studies, saying "It would be less controversial if I joined the Nazi Party", and that her involvement with the Kabbalah is "not hurting anybody."^[254] The influence of the Kabbalah was subsequently observed in Madonna's music, especially albums like Ray of Light and Music.^[252] During the Re-Invention World Tour, at one point in the show, Madonna and her dancers wore t-shirts that read "Kabbalists Do It Better".^[252]

Music videos and performances [link]

A young blond woman dancing with a group of dancers. They are all wearing black outfits.

Madonna and her dancers voguing at the 1990 Blond Ambition World Tour. She made her live performances as reenactment of her music videos

In The Madonna Companion, biographers Allen Metz and Carol Benson noted that more than any other recent pop artist, Madonna had used MTV and music videos to establish her popularity and enhance her recorded work.^[255] According to them, many of her songs have the imagery of the music video in strong context, while referring to the music. The media and public reaction towards her most-discussed songs such as "Papa Don't Preach", "Like a Prayer" or "Justify My Love" had to do with the music videos created to promote the song and their impact, rather than the song itself.^[255] Morton felt that "artistically, Madonna's songwriting is often overshadowed by her striking pop videos."^[256] Madonna's initial music videos reflected her American and Hispanic mixed street style combined with a flamboyant glamor.^[255] She was able to transmit her avant-garde downtown New York fashion sense to the American audience.^[257] The imagery and incorporation of Hispanic culture and Catholic symbolism continued with the music videos from the True Blue era.^[258] Author Douglas Kellner noted, "such 'multiculturalism' and her culturally transgressive moves turned out to be highly successful moves that endeared her to large and varied youth audiences".^[259] Madonna's Spanish look in the videos became the fashion trend of that time, in the form of boleros and layered skirts, accessorizing with rosary beads and a crucifix as in the video of "La Isla Bonita".^[260]^[261] Academics noted that with her videos, Madonna was subtly reversing the usual role of male as the dominant sex.^[262] This symbolism and imagery was probably the most prevalent in the music video for "Like a Prayer". The video included scenes of an African-American church choir, Madonna attracted to a statue of a black saint, and singing in front of burning crosses. This mix of the sacred and the profane upset the Vatican and resulted in the Pepsi commercial withdrawal.^[263] Madonna has been honored with 20 MTV Video Music Awards—the most for any artist—including the lifetime achievement "Video Vanguard Award" in 1986.^[264] In 2003, MTV named her "The Greatest Music Video Star Ever" and said that "Madonna's innovation, creativity and contribution to the music video art form is what won her the award."^[265]

Madonna's emergence occurred during the advent of MTV, and, according to Chris Nelson from The New York Times, "with its almost exclusively lip-synced videos, ushered in an era in which average music fans might happily spend hours a day, every day, watching singers just mouth the words."^[266] The symbiotic relationship between the music video and lip-syncing led to a desire for the spectacle and imagery of the music video to be transferred to live stage shows. He added, "Artists like Madonna and Janet Jackson set new standards for showmanship, with concerts that included not only elaborate costumes and precision-timed pyrotechnics but also highly athletic dancing. These effects came at the expense of live singing."^[266] Thor Christensen of the Dallas Morning News commented that while Madonna earned a reputation for lip-syncing during her 1990 Blond Ambition World Tour, she has subsequently reorganized her performances by "stay[ing] mostly still during her toughest singing parts and [leaves] the dance routines to her backup troupe ...[r]ather than try to croon and dance up a storm at the same time."^[267] To allow for greater movement while dancing and singing, she was one of the earliest adopters of hands-free radio-frequency headset microphones, with the headset fastened over the ears or the top of the head, and the microphone capsule on a boom arm that extended to the mouth. Because of her prominent usage, the microphone design came to be known as the "Madonna mic".^[268]^[269] Metz noted that Madonna represents a paradox as she is often perceived as living her whole life as a performance. While her big-screen performances are panned, her live performances are critical successes.^[270] Madonna was the first artist to have her concert tours as reenactment of her music videos. Author Elin Diamond explained that reciprocally, the fact that images from Madonna's videos can be recreated in a live setting enhances the realism of the original videos. Thus her live performances have become the means by which mediatized representations are naturalized.^[271] Taraborrelli said that encompassing multimedia, latest technology and sound systems, Madonna's concerts and live performances are deemed as "extravagant show piece, a walking art show."^[272]

Legacy [link]

A blond woman standing on a stage. She has curvy, flowing hair and is dressed in a black, translucent top with boots in her leg and a white hat. The woman is holding an electric guitar with her left hand and singing in to a microphone in her right. She is surrounded by audience members whose heads can be seen in the image. Behind the woman, tow back-up singers can be seen in the distance.

Madonna performing at her Sticky & Sweet Tour, the highest-grossing tour of all time by a solo artist

Madonna has been considered to be one of the greatest figures in music and one of the most influential women in history.^[273] She is featured in the book 100 Most Important Women of the 20th Century, published in 1998 by Ladies' Home Journal.^[273] In 2010, Time magazine included Madonna in the elite list of the "25 Most Powerful Women of the Past Century", where she became one of the only two singers included, alongside Aretha Franklin.^[274] Madonna also placed at number one on VH1's "100 Greatest Women in Music" and "50 Greatest Women of the Video Era".^[275]^[276] Authors Ros Horton and Sally Simmons documented Madonna on their 2007 book Women Who Changed the World, which "pays homage to fifty of the most influential and admired women of all time."^[51] She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 10, 2008—her first year of eligibility—for "influence and significance on rock and roll music."^[277] Additionally, Madonna ranked seventh on VH1 and People magazine's list of the "200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons of All Time."^[278] In 2006, a new water bear species, Echiniscus madonnae, was named after her.^[279]^[280] The zoologists commented: "We take great pleasure in dedicating this species to one of the most significant artists of our times, Madonna Louise Veronica Ritchie."^[281] Aside from her critical acknowledgement, Madonna has also earned overwhelming commercial accomplishments. She has achieved multiple Guinness World Records citations, including world's top-selling female recording artist and most successful female recording artist of all time.^[149] Madonna has sold more than 300 million records worldwide.^[282]^[283] According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), she is the best-selling female rock artist of the 20th century and the second top-selling female artist in the United States, behind Barbra Streisand, with 64 million certified albums.^[284]^[285] Madonna is also one of the top-touring artist in history and her Sticky & Sweet Tour remains the highest-grossing tour of all time by a solo artist.^[286] In 2008, Billboard magazine ranked Madonna at number two, behind only The Beatles, on the Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists, making her the most successful solo artist in the history of American singles chart.^[171] She has also scored many hits on major international charts, including 13 number one singles in the United Kingdom, 11 in Australia, and 25 in Canada—all of which are more than any other female artist.^[287]^[288]^[289]

Caryn Ganz from Rolling Stone wrote that "Madonna is the most media-savvy American pop star since Bob Dylan and, until she toned down her press-baiting behavior in the nineties, she was the most consistently controversial one since Elvis Presley." According to her, Madonna's self-celebrating dance music and outré videos provided feminism with a makeover. Throughout the eighties she broke down sexual boundaries, making eroticism a crucial pop-song element, and challenging social and religious mores. Ganz felt that one fact was rarely disputed: "At nearly every turn, Madonna has maintained firm control over her career and image."^[18] Madonna became a leader in the Third Wave Feminism movement. Third Wave Feminism seeks to challenge and expel the "essentialist" definition of femininity. For her part, Madonna was a leading figure in encouraging sex-positivity. Madonna's music and videos celebrated women's sexuality as an exhilarating aspect of life, rather than oppressing and male-dominated. According to Camille Paglia, a New York Times journalist, Madonna's music and videos have shown women to be fully female and completely sexual, all the while maintaining complete control of their lives.^[290] For her part, Madonna has stated, "I may be dressing the typical bimbo, whatever, but I'm in charge. You know. I'm in charge of my fantasies. I put myself in these situations with men, you know, and people don't think of me as a person who's not in charge of my career or my life, okay. And isn't that what feminism is all about, you know, equality for men and women? And aren't I in charge of my life, doing the things I want to do? Making my own decisions?"^[291]

Throughout her career the singer has repeatedly reinvented herself through a series of visual and musical personas, earning her the nickname "Queen of Reinvention".^[292] In doing so, "she exploited her sexuality to fashion herself into a cultural and commercial icon who, for more than a decade, was unchallenged as the reigning Queen of Pop music."^[293] Fouz-Hernández agrees that these reinventions are one of her key cultural achievements.^[294] Madonna reinvented herself by working with upcoming talented producers and previously unknown artists, while remaining at the center of media attention. According to Freya Jarman-Ivens, "In doing so Madonna has provided an example of how to maintain one's career in the entertainment industry."^[294] Such reinvention was noted by scholars as the main tool in surviving the musical industry, for a female artist.^[295] As Ian Youngs from BBC News commented, "Her ability to follow the latest trends and adapt her style has often been credited with preserving her appeal."^[296] Madonna's use of shocking sexual imagery has benefited her career and catalyzed public discourse on sexuality and feminism.^[294] The Times stated, "Madonna, whether you like her or not, started a revolution amongst women in music ... Her attitudes and opinions on sex, nudity, style and sexuality forced the public to sit up and take notice."^[297] Rodger Streitmatter, author of Sex Sells! (2004), commented that "from the moment Madonna burst onto the nation's radar screen in the mid-1980s, she did everything in her power to shock the public, and her efforts paid off."^[298] Shmuel Boteach, author of Hating women (2005), felt that Madonna was largely responsible for erasing the line between music and pornography. He stated: "Before Madonna, it was possible for women more famous for their voices than their cleavage, to emerge as music superstars. But in the post-Madonna universe, even highly original performers such as Janet Jackson now feel the pressure to expose their bodies on national television to sell albums."^[299]

A quarter century after Madonna emerged, artists still use her ideas and seem modern and edgy doing so. Beyond the obvious Madonna wannabe 1980s singers, Madonna's influence is felt in artists from Gwen Stefani to Britney Spears to boy bands, who found in the 1990s there was an audience beyond the old rock crowd. It's worth noting that before Madonna, most music mega-stars were guy rockers; after her, almost all would be female singers. When The Beatles hit America, they changed the paradigm of performer from solo act to band. Madonna changed it back — with an emphasis on the female. With female artists everywhere these days, it's easy to forget how revolutionary her success was.^[300]

—Tony Sclafani from MSNBC talking about Madonna's impact on music.

Madonna has influenced numerous music artists throughout her career. Mary Cross, in her book Madonna: A Biography, wrote: "Her influence on pop music is undeniable and far-reaching. New pop icons from Nelly Furtado and Shakira to Gwen Stefani and Christina Aguilera (not to mention Britney Spears) owe Madonna, a debt of thanks for the template she forged, combining provocative sexiness and female power in her image, music, and lyrics."^[301] According to Fouz-Hernández, female pop performers such as Spears, the Spice Girls, Destiny's Child, Jennifer Lopez, Kylie Minogue and Pink were like "Madonna's daughters in the very direct sense that they grew up listening to and admiring Madonna, and decided they wanted to be like her."^[302] Among them, Madonna's influence was most notable in Spears, who has been called her protégé.^[297] Madonna has also been credited with the introduction of European electronic dance music into mainstream American pop culture, and for bringing European producers such as Stuart Price and Mirwais Ahmadzaï into the spotlight.^[243] In K-Pop music, South Korean band Secret named a song after Madonna.^[303] Kang Jiwon and Kim Kibum, the composers who wrote "Madonna" highlighted that the inspiration behind the song is about living with confidence by becoming an icon in this generation, like the American singer Madonna.^[303]

Madonna has received acclaim as a role model for businesswomen in her industry, "achieving the kind of financial control that women had long fought for within the industry", and generating over $1.2 billion in sales within the first decade of her career.^[304] As Taraborrelli noted, she already showed strong business sensibilities early in her career when she signed Freddie de Mann, Michael Jackson's former manager, to manage her career.^[305] As she said to Smash Hits magazine, "I thought, who's the most successful person in the music industry and who's his manager? I want him." Since it was Jackson, Madonna wanted de Mann more than anything else, and chance came when she learned that they had parted ways. After signing de Mann, Madonna's associates had expressed their apprehension as to whether that was a good business decision by her. Madonna was adamant that since de Mann was free he would be able to devote all his time into his career. True to her, Madonna's popularity increased significantly, being asked to do more promotional tours and media appearances.^[306] Her seriousness towards her business was also portrayed in the Truth or Dare documentary, in a scene where Madonna throws out the cameraman as she has a business meeting. This led Taraborrelli to comment that "she always knew the importance of the outcomes of these discussions with her associates. And she wanted the element of surprise."^[307] After its establishment, Maverick Records became a major commercial success from her efforts, which was unusual at that time for an artist-established label.^[308] Music journalist Robert Sandall said that while interviewing Madonna, it was clear that being "a cultural big hitter" was more important to her than pop music, a career she described as "an accident". He also saw a contrast between her anything-goes sexual public persona and a secretive and "paranoid" attitude toward her own finances; she fired her own brother when he charged her for an extra item.^[309] Professor Colin Barrow of the Cranfield School of Management described Madonna as "America's smartest businesswoman ... who has moved to the top of her industry and stayed there by constantly reinventing herself". He held up her "planning, personal discipline and constant attention to detail" as models for all aspiring entrepreneurs.^[310] London Business School academics called her a "dynamic entrepreneur" worth copying; they identified her vision of success, her understanding of the music industry, her ability to recognize her own performance limits (and thus bring in help), her willingness to work hard and her ability to adapt as the key to her commercial success.^[311] Morton commented that "Madonna is opportunistic, manipulative and ruthless—somebody who won't stop until she gets what she wants—and that's something you can get at the expense of maybe losing your close ones. But that hardly mattered to her."^[312] Taraborrelli felt that this ruthlessness was visible during the shooting of the Pepsi commercial in 1989. "The fact that she didn't want to hold a Pepsi can in the commercial, clued the Pepsi executives that Madonna the pop star and Madonna the businesswoman were not going to be dictated by somebody else, she will do everything in her way—the only way."^[313] Conversely, reporter Michael McWilliams commented: "The gripes about Madonna—she's cold, greedy, talentless—conceal both bigotry and the essence of her art, which is among the warmest, the most humane, the most profoundly satisfying in all pop culture."^[314]

Discography [link]

Main articles: Madonna albums discography, Madonna singles discography, and Madonna videography

Madonna (1983)
Like a Virgin (1984)
True Blue (1986)
Like a Prayer (1989)
Erotica (1992)
Bedtime Stories (1994)
Ray of Light (1998)
Music (2000)
American Life (2003)
Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005)
Hard Candy (2008)
MDNA (2012)

Tours [link]

Main article: List of Madonna concert tours

Notes [link]

^ Taraborrelli 2002, p. 10
^ Worrell, Denise (1985-05-27). "Now: Madonna on Madonna". Time. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,957025,00.html. Retrieved 2008-06-05.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d "The Child Who Became a Star: Madonna Timeline". The Daily Telegraph (London). 2006-07-26. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1400097/The-child-who-became-a-star.html. Retrieved 2008-06-09.
^ Guilbert 2002, p. 92
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l Taraborrelli 2002, pp. 11–13
^ Morton 2002, p. 47
^ ^a ^b Taraborrelli 2002, p. 23
^ Claro 1994, pp. 24, 27
^ Tilden, Imogen (2001-07-04). "Madonna | News". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2001/jul/04/netnotes.imogentilden. Retrieved 2008-05-29.
^ Morton 2002, p. 12
^ Taraborrelli 2002, pp. 26–29
^ Hosted by Paula Zahn (Saturday 11 a.m. and Sunday 7 p.m). "A Star with Staying Power". People in the News. CNN. http://edition.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/people/shows/madonna/profile.html.
^ Hosted by Jim Wallasky. "Madonna: Queen of Pop". Biography. 5 minutes in. The History Channel.
^ Rettenmund 1995, p. 45
^ O'Brien 2007, p. 56
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Orgill, Roxanne (2001). Shout, Sister, Shout!: Ten Girl Singers who Shaped a Century. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-689-81991-9
Pitts, Michael (2004). Famous Movie Detectives. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-3690-4
Rettenmund, Matthew (1995). Madonnica: The Woman & The Icon From A To Z. Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-11782-5
Robertson, Pamela (1996). Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp From Mae West to Madonna. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-1748-7
Rooksby, Rikky (2004). The Complete Guide to the Music of Madonna. Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-9883-3
Rust, Paula C. Rodriguez (2000). Bisexuality in the United States: A Social Science Reader. Columbia University Press
Sexton, Adam (1993). Desperately Seeking Madonna: In Search of the Meaning of the World's Most Famous Woman. Delta Publishing Inc.. ISBN 0-385-30688-1
St. Michael, Mick (2004). Madonna talking: Madonna in Her Own Words. Omnibus Press. ISBN 1-84449-418-7
Streitmatter, Rodger (2004). Sex Sells!. Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-4248-1
Taraborrelli, Randy J. (2002). Madonna: An Intimate Biography. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-2880-4
Tetzlaff, David (1993). Metatextual Girl. Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-1396-1
Victor, Barbara (2001). Goddess, Inside Madonna. Cliff Street Books. ISBN 0-06-019930-X
Voller, Debbie (1999). Madonna: The Style Book. Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-7511-6
Warren, Holly; George, Patricia Romanowski; Bashe, Patricia Romanowski; Pareles, Jon (2001). The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll. Fireside. ISBN 0-7432-0120-5
Welton, Donn (1998). Body and flesh: a philosophical reader. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 1-57718-126-3

External links [link]

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v t e Madonna

Albums Singles Videos Unreleased songs Tours Films Books Awards and nominations

Studio albums	Madonna Like a Virgin True Blue Like a Prayer Erotica Bedtime Stories Ray of Light Music American Life Confessions on a Dance Floor Hard Candy MDNA

Compilations	You Can Dance The Immaculate Collection Something to Remember GHV2 Remixed & Revisited Celebration

Soundtracks	Who's That Girl I'm Breathless Evita

Extended plays	Remixed Prayers The Holiday Collection

Video compilations	Madonna The Immaculate Collection The Video Collection 93:99 Celebration: The Video Collection

Video singles	"Justify My Love" "Ray of Light" "Music" "What It Feels Like for a Girl"

Live releases	Live – The Virgin Tour Ciao, Italia! – Live from Italy Live! – Blond Ambition World Tour 90 Truth or Dare (In Bed with Madonna) The Girlie Show – Live Down Under Drowned World Tour 2001 I'm Going to Tell You a Secret The Confessions Tour Sticky & Sweet Tour

Concert tours	The Virgin Tour Who's That Girl World Tour Blond Ambition World Tour The Girlie Show Drowned World Tour Re-Invention World Tour Confessions Tour Sticky & Sweet Tour MDNA Tour

Motion pictures	A Certain Sacrifice Vision Quest Desperately Seeking Susan Shanghai Surprise Who's That Girl Bloodhounds of Broadway Dick Tracy Shadows and Fog A League of Their Own Body of Evidence Dangerous Game Four Rooms Girl 6 Evita The Next Best Thing Swept Away Die Another Day Arthur and the Invisibles Filth and Wisdom W.E.

Documentaries	Truth or Dare (In Bed with Madonna) I'm Going to Tell You a Secret I Am Because We Are

Books	Sex The English Roses

Related organizations	Live Nation Interscope Records Universal Music Group Warner Bros. Records Sire Records Warner Music Group Kabbalah Centre

Companies	Maverick Semtex Girls Raising Malawi Truth or Dare by Madonna

Related articles	Madonna as gay icon Madonna wannabe Madonna Studies Madonna on Late Show with David Letterman Super Bowl XLVI Up for Grabs Madonna: An Intimate Biography Madonna Madonna: Like an Icon "Dolls and Dolls" "The Power of Madonna" (EP) X-STaTIC Pro=CeSS Breakfast Club Sean Penn Guy Ritchie Christopher Ciccone Ashcombe House, Wiltshire Pre-Madonna "She's Madonna"

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Madonna singles

Madonna

Like a Virgin

True Blue

Who's That Girl

You Can Dance

"Spotlight"

Like a Prayer

I'm Breathless

"Vogue"
"Hanky Panky"

The Immaculate Collection

"Justify My Love"
"Rescue Me"

Erotica

Bedtime Stories

Something to Remember

Evita

Ray of Light

Music

American Life

Confessions on a Dance Floor

Hard Candy

Celebration

"Celebration"
"Revolver"

MDNA

Other releases

Soundtrack releases	"Crazy for You" "Gambler" "Sooner or Later" "This Used to Be My Playground" "I'll Remember" "Beautiful Stranger" "American Pie" "Die Another Day"

Promotional singles	"I Want You" "GHV2 Megamix" "Impressive Instant" "Hey You" "Masterpiece"

Featured singles	"Me Against the Music" "Sing"

Other songs	"Gang Bang" "Turn Up the Radio"

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v t e Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy (1981–2000)

Bernadette Peters (1981) Julie Andrews (1982) Julie Walters (1983) Kathleen Turner (1984) Kathleen Turner (1985) Sissy Spacek (1986) Cher (1987) Melanie Griffith (1988) Jessica Tandy (1989) Julia Roberts (1990) Bette Midler (1991) Miranda Richardson (1992) Angela Bassett (1993) Jamie Lee Curtis (1994) Nicole Kidman (1995) Madonna (1996) Helen Hunt (1997) Gwyneth Paltrow (1998) Janet McTeer (1999) Renée Zellweger (2000)

Complete list (1950–1960) (1961–1980) (1981–2000) (2001–2020)

v t e Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song (2010s)

"You Haven't Seen the Last of Me" Music & Lyrics by Diane Warren (2010) "Masterpiece" Music & Lyrics by Madonna, Julie Frost and Jimmy Harry (2011)

Complete List (1960s) (1970s) (1980s) (1990s) (2000s) (2010s)

v t e UK best-selling albums (by year) (1970–1989)

1970: Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel) 1971: Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel) 1972: 20 Dynamic Hits (Various Artists) 1973: Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player (Elton John) 1974: The Singles: 1969–1973 (The Carpenters) 1975: The Best of The Stylistics (The Stylistics) 1976: Greatest Hits (ABBA) 1977: Arrival (ABBA) 1978: Saturday Night Fever (Original Soundtrack) 1979: Parallel Lines (Blondie) 1980: Super Trouper (ABBA) 1981: Kings of the Wild Frontier (Adam and the Ants) 1982: Love Songs (Barbra Streisand) 1983: Thriller (Michael Jackson) 1984: Can't Slow Down (Lionel Richie) 1985: Brothers in Arms (Dire Straits) 1986: True Blue (Madonna) 1987: Bad (Michael Jackson) 1988: Kylie (Kylie Minogue) 1989: Ten Good Reasons (Jason Donovan)

Complete list (1956–1969) (1970–1989) (1990–2009) (2010–2029)

Authority control: PND: 118829688 | LCCN: n84156128 | VIAF: 59270244 | WorldCat

Persondata
Name	Madonna
Alternative names	Ciccone, Madonna Louise
Short description	American musician, singer, songwriter, actress, author
Date of birth	August 16, 1958
Place of birth	Bay City, Michigan, United States
Date of death
Place of death

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This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.

Playlist

Film Summary

	Book: Madonna
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Madonna Filmography

Famous quotes by Madonna:

"I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art."

"Strong women leave big hickies"

"Listen, everyone is entitled to my opinion."

"When I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm thirsty, I drink. When I feel like saying something, I say it."

"I'm tough, ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay."

"Sometimes you have to be a bitch to get things done."

"A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That's why they don't get what they want."

"Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another."

"Everybody loves you when they are about to cum."

"Deep in my heart I'm concealing things that I'm longing to say. Scared to confess what I'm feeling - frightened you'll slip away."

Make changes yourself !

Contents

[edit] 1982–85: Madonna, Like a Virgin and marriage to Sean Penn

[edit] 1986–91: True Blue, Like a Prayer and the Blond Ambition Tour

[edit] 1992–96: Maverick, Sex, Erotica, Bedtime Stories and Evita

[edit] 1997–2002: Ray of Light, Music and Drowned World Tour

[edit] 2003–06: American Life and Confessions on a Dance Floor

[edit] 2007–09: Live Nation, Hard Candy and the Sticky & Sweet Tour

[edit] 2010–present: W.E., MDNA and business ventures

Related pages: