The story of Madonna

From Michigan to the New York underground

Madonna Louise Ciccone was born in Bay City, Michigan, on the sixteenth of August 1958. She shared her first name with her mother, so the family called her Little Nonnie. Her father Tony was the son of Italian immigrants from the mountain town of Pacentro and worked as an engineer for Chrysler's defense division. Her mother, of French Canadian descent, was an X ray technician. She died of breast cancer on the first of December 1963, at the age of thirty. Madonna was five. The loss never left her. Years later, turning thirty herself, she said she flipped out, because she kept thinking that she was now outliving her mother.[1] [2] [3]

She grew up in the Detroit suburbs of Pontiac and Avon Township, one of six children, with two older brothers and three younger siblings. In 1966 she took Veronica as her confirmation name, and that same year her father married the family's housekeeper, Joan Gustafson. Madonna was a straight A student, and her father paid her a quarter for every A. She was also famous at school for doing cartwheels in the hallways and hanging upside down from the monkey bars. Her father started her on classical piano, but she talked him into letting her study ballet instead. Looking back, she described herself as a lonely girl who studied hard because she wanted to be somebody.[1] [2]

The person who changed her direction was her ballet teacher, Christopher Flynn. He told her she was the best student in the class and inspired her to make dance her life. Madonna later wrote that dance was the superglue that held her and her younger brother Christopher together through a difficult childhood. She was a cheerleader and a straight A student at Rochester Adams High School, graduated in January 1976, and won a dance scholarship to the University of Michigan. That summer she studied at the American Dance Festival in North Carolina. While in Ann Arbor she dated a young drummer named Stephen Bray, a name that will come back in this story.[1] [2] [3]

In 1978 she dropped out of college and flew to New York. It was the first time she had ever been on a plane or in a taxi, and she later called it the bravest thing she had ever done. She settled in the East Village and took whatever work she could find, including a hatcheck job at the Russian Tea Room. She danced with the Pearl Lang Dance Theater, took classes at the Alvin Ailey school and studied with Martha Graham, who gave her the nickname Madame X. The city was also cruel to her. One night after a rehearsal two men held her at knifepoint and sexually assaulted her, and she has also spoken of being raped at knifepoint after accepting an offer to use a stranger's phone. She said the attack showed her that for all her tough girl show, she still could not save herself.[1] [2] [3]

In 1979 she began dating a musician called Dan Gilroy, who taught her to play drums and guitar. She also answered an ad and landed a job as a backing singer and dancer in Paris for the French disco star Patrick Hernandez, touring Europe and Tunisia with his troupe. Back in New York she moved into an abandoned synagogue in Corona, Queens, where Dan and his brother Ed lived and rehearsed. Together they formed a band called Breakfast Club, with Madonna on drums, and later on guitar and some lead vocals. A tape from that time, published decades later, includes a song called Tell the Truth, which she has described as the first song she ever wrote. Dan Gilroy, by the way, went on to write and direct the film Nightcrawler.[1] [2] [3]

Club demos, Sire Records and Holiday

In 1980 she left Breakfast Club after falling out with Dan Gilroy and phoned her old Michigan boyfriend Stephen Bray, who moved to New York to drum for her. They rekindled their romance, moved into the Music Building in Manhattan and called their band Emmy, one of Madonna's many nicknames. In 1981 Camille Barbone of Gotham Records signed her and became her manager. But Gotham wanted a rock singer and Madonna had fallen in love with the dance floor. She was already studying the club scene and collecting a small cult following in the downtown gay clubs. The deal ended in 1982, and she and Bray quietly recorded a four song dance demo, including a track called Everybody.[1] [2] [3] [4]

With no label behind her, Madonna took the demo from club to club and begged DJs to play it. At Danceteria, the four floor club on West Twenty First Street, the resident DJ Mark Kamins put on Everybody and the crowd went for it. Kamins and Madonna became lovers, and he played the tape to his boss at Island Records, Chris Blackwell, who said he was not going to sign his A and R guy's girlfriend. So Kamins went to Seymour Stein, the head of Sire Records, the label of the Ramones and Talking Heads. Stein was in Lenox Hill Hospital recovering from heart surgery. He had the tape brought to his bed, loved it, and signed her from there.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Sire gave her a singles deal worth fifteen thousand dollars a record, with Madonna paying the recording costs. Everybody was cut in three days at Blank Tape Studios in April 1982 and released on the sixth of October 1982, produced by Kamins even though Bray felt the job was his. The sleeve had no picture of her, a deliberate plan to get the record onto black radio and into black clubs. It worked so well that many listeners assumed she was black, and one Billboard review even described her as a young New York duo. Everybody reached number three on the dance chart and earned her an album deal. During this period she was also living with the painter Jean Michel Basquiat in his SoHo loft.[1] [2] [3]

Warner Bros assigned the producer Reggie Lucas to her debut album, and the partnership soon soured. Madonna felt he was polishing away the rough club edge of her demos. Lucas brought in two songs of his own, including Borderline, and left. To finish the record she turned to her new boyfriend, the star Funhouse DJ John Jellybean Benitez, who remixed the tracks. She wrote Lucky Star on a cheap Casio keyboard as a thank you to Mark Kamins, hoping he would play it in his sets. Then Madonna discovered that Stephen Bray had sold one of their demo songs to another act, leaving the album one uptempo song short.[1] [2] [3]

Jellybean had the answer. Holiday had been written by Curtis Hudson and Lisa Stevens of the group Pure Energy, whose own label had rejected it, and it had already been turned down by Mary Wilson of the Supremes and by Phyllis Hyman. Warner gave Benitez one week to finish it. Hudson played the funky guitar, and Madonna herself played the cowbell you hear at the start. Released in September 1983, Holiday became her first number one on a Billboard chart, topping the dance chart, and reached number sixteen on the Hot 100. The album Madonna, released on the twenty seventh of July 1983, climbed to number eight, with Borderline and Lucky Star both reaching the top ten. It went on to sell around ten million copies.[1] [2] [3]

Like a Virgin and the making of a superstar

Late in 1983 she found the manager who would steer her through the rest of the decade. Freddy DeMann had managed Michael Jackson during Off the Wall and Thriller, and he would manage Madonna from 1983 until 1997. He quickly got her a small part as a club singer in the film Vision Quest. In January 1984 she performed on American Bandstand and Top of the Pops. Her look, put together with the stylist Maripol, was lace tops, fishnet stockings, crucifixes, stacked bracelets and bleached hair, and teenage girls everywhere were starting to copy it.[1] [2]

For her second album Madonna wanted full control, and Sire refused to let her produce it herself. She complained publicly about a hierarchy of old men, and the label let her pick any producer she liked. She chose Nile Rodgers of Chic, because she loved his work on David Bowie's Let's Dance. Rodgers had been warned she was difficult, but found her a true professional. He brought in his Chic bandmates Bernard Edwards and Tony Thompson, and they recorded at the Power Station in New York in April 1984, using brand new digital tape. The engineer remembered that Rodgers was there most of the time, but Madonna was there all of the time. She never left.[1] [2] [3]

The title song came from the songwriters Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, and several record executives had already turned it down because of its title. Madonna loved the wordplay at once. Rodgers did not, until the tune was still stuck in his head four days later and he apologized. Like a Virgin was released in November 1984 and spent six weeks at number one, her first Hot 100 chart topper. At the very first MTV Video Music Awards in 1984 she performed it on top of a giant wedding cake in a wedding dress, then rolled across the stage. Conservative groups were furious. MTV later called it one of the most iconic performances in pop history.[1] [2] [3]

The album became the first by a woman to sell more than five million copies in the United States, and eventually more than twenty one million worldwide. Material Girl reached number two, with a video recreating Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. On that video set in January 1985 she met the actor Sean Penn. In 1985 she also starred in Desperately Seeking Susan, playing a free spirited drifter, and the New York Times critic Vincent Canby named it one of the ten best films of the year. For it she wrote Into the Groove with Stephen Bray. It was never released as a single A side in America, yet in Britain it became her first number one and remains her best selling single there.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In April 1985 she launched her first tour, the Virgin Tour, at the height of the Madonna wannabe craze, with crowds of teenage girls dressed exactly like her. In July she played Live Aid in Philadelphia, backed by Patrick Leonard, the tour's musical director, who became one of her most important writing partners. That same month Penthouse and Playboy published nude photographs taken in 1978, when she had posed as an art model for about twenty five dollars a session. She refused to apologize. And on the sixteenth of August 1985, her twenty seventh birthday, she married Sean Penn, who turned twenty five the next day.[1] [2] [3] [4]

True Blue and a stormy marriage

Madonna started her third album in December 1985 and, for the first time, cowrote and coproduced every song. She worked separately with Patrick Leonard and Stephen Bray. Leonard would play an idea on piano, she would write a lyric and sing it, and they often finished a song a day. True Blue, released on the thirtieth of June 1986, was dedicated to Penn, whom the liner notes called the coolest guy in the universe. It topped the charts in a record twenty eight countries, spent five weeks at number one in America and has sold about twenty five million copies. It remains her best selling studio album.[1] [2] [3]

The album showed a more grown up Madonna. Live to Tell started as a Patrick Leonard instrumental rejected for another film. Madonna wrote the words on the spot for At Close Range, a Sean Penn crime drama, and Leonard kept her shy, raw demo vocal. It became her third number one. Papa Don't Preach, written by Brian Elliot about teenage conversations he overheard outside his studio, told the story of a pregnant teenager who decides to keep her baby. Family planning groups accused her of glamorizing teenage pregnancy, while anti abortion groups praised it. It went to number one too, and Open Your Heart made it three chart toppers from one album.[1] [2] [3]

Her marriage, meanwhile, was a tabloid war. Penn loathed photographers. In 1985 he was fined for assaulting two journalists in Nashville, and on the set of their film Shanghai Surprise in Macau he was charged over another attack on a photographer. The film, produced by George Harrison's company, was a disaster that won Madonna a Golden Raspberry for worst actress, and Harrison had to fly to Hong Kong to calm the crew. In 1987 Penn punched a film extra, violated his probation and served thirty three days in jail. That summer Madonna's first world tour, Who's That Girl, drew more than 130,000 people to a single show near Paris, then a record for a female artist.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Who's That Girl film flopped, but its soundtrack gave her two more big hits, and during the tour she dedicated Papa Don't Preach to Pope John Paul the Second, which the Vatican did not appreciate. In December 1987 she filed for divorce, then withdrew the papers two weeks later. In 1988 she made her Broadway debut in David Mamet's Speed the Plow, which sold a record number of advance tickets because of her. Over the New Year weekend of 1989, according to the Associated Press, she filed an assault report after an incident at their Malibu home, then asked that no charges be pursued. She filed for divorce for good on the fifth of January 1989.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Like a Prayer, Vogue and Blond Ambition

Like a Prayer was her most personal record yet. She went through her diaries and wrote about her Catholic guilt, her broken marriage, her father and the mother she had lost. With Patrick Leonard she wrote a song a day and did not change them. The title track, finished in about three hours, mixed gospel and rock, and she brought in Andrae Crouch's choir. Leonard was uneasy about some of her double meanings and asked her to change a line, and she refused. Released in March 1989, the album spent six weeks at number one and has sold about fifteen million copies. Rolling Stone said it proved she should be taken seriously as an artist.[1] [2] [3]

In January 1989 Pepsi signed her to a five million dollar deal, and the song premiered in a Pepsi commercial seen by an estimated 250 million people during the Grammy Awards broadcast. The next day MTV showed her own video, directed by Mary Lambert. It featured stigmata, burning crosses and Madonna kissing a statue of a black saint who comes to life, in a story about a black man wrongly arrested for a crime she witnessed. The Vatican condemned it, religious groups called for a boycott of Pepsi, and the company pulled the ad and cancelled the sponsorship of her next tour. She kept the five million dollars. The song became her seventh number one.[1] [2] [3]

In 1990 she played Breathless Mahoney in Dick Tracy, directed by and starring Warren Beatty, whom she was dating. She took the role for scale, about thirty five thousand dollars. Vogue was written with Shep Pettibone as a humble B side, recorded in a vocal booth that had once been a closet, and and inspired by the voguing dancers she saw at the New York club the Sound Factory. Warner heard it and said it was far too good to hide. Vogue topped the charts in more than thirty countries, and David Fincher shot its black and white video in sixteen hours during tour rehearsals.[1] [2] [3]

The Blond Ambition World Tour opened in Japan in April 1990. Her brother Christopher was art director, and Jean Paul Gaultier designed the costumes, including the famous cone bra. The show was theatre in five acts, and in Like a Virgin she writhed on a red velvet bed between two male dancers, simulating masturbation. In Toronto police warned that she could be arrested for indecency, and she refused to change a thing. Pope John Paul the Second urged Catholics to stay away, and one show in Rome was cancelled. Rolling Stone named it the best tour of 1990, and it is widely seen as one of the most influential pop tours ever staged.[1] [2] [3]

The tour was filmed for the documentary Truth or Dare, called In Bed with Madonna outside North America. It shows her yelling at her manager, mocking Kevin Costner, lying beside her mother's grave for the first time since childhood, and Warren Beatty laughing that she does not want to live off camera. Asked who was the love of her life, she answers Sean. It became the highest grossing documentary of its time. Then came The Immaculate Collection, which has sold about thirty million copies, and the new single Justify My Love. Its video, starring her boyfriend, the model Tony Ward, was banned by MTV, and the controversy helped send the song to number one.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Sex, backlash and a softer comeback

In April 1992 Time Warner gave her Maverick, her own entertainment company, with a sixty million dollar advance and a twenty percent royalty rate matched only by Michael Jackson. The name combined the names of the founders, Madonna, her business partner Veronica Ronnie Dashev and Freddy DeMann. That summer she played a baseball player in A League of Their Own, where she made a lifelong friend in Rosie O'Donnell, and its theme song became her tenth number one. Then, in October 1992, she released the album Erotica and, a day later, Sex, a metal covered coffee table book of explicit photographs by Steven Meisel, starring her alter ego Mistress Dita.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Sex sold more than 150,000 copies on its first day in America and topped the New York Times best seller list, but the reaction was savage. Critics, conservatives, feminists and anti pornography groups all attacked it. Her boyfriend at the time, the rapper Vanilla Ice, said he had been included without his consent, and they split. Erotica, a dark house and hip hop record about sex in the time of AIDS, became her lowest selling album yet. Then came two panned erotic films, Body of Evidence and Dangerous Game, and the Girlie Show tour, where she played a whip cracking dominatrix. Many critics decided her career was finished.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In March 1994 she went on the Late Show with David Letterman, swore fourteen times and handed him a pair of her underwear. It became the most censored episode in American network talk show history, and even fans felt she had hit her lowest point. Around this time she briefly dated the rapper Tupac Shakur, who later named her among the friends who supported him in prison, and she had a very public affair with the basketball star Dennis Rodman, whom she first met by interviewing him for Vibe magazine. She decided she needed to soften her image, and began with a tender ballad, I'll Remember, which reached number two.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Her 1994 album Bedtime Stories moved toward smooth R and B. She worked with Babyface, Dallas Austin and the trip hop producer Nellee Hooper, and she worked with Bjork on the song Bedtime Story. Babyface wrote Take a Bow with her in his home studio in Beverly Hills, and at her suggestion used a live string orchestra for the first time in his career. Take a Bow spent seven weeks at number one, the longest run of her career. In the song Human Nature she answered her critics directly. Meanwhile Maverick Records became one of the most successful artist run labels ever, releasing Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill, which sold around thirty three million copies.[1] [2] [3]

For years she had wanted to play Eva Peron, and she wrote directly to the director Alan Parker to ask for the part in Evita. She took vocal lessons, discovering a whole part of her voice she had never used, and studied Argentine history. Filming began in Buenos Aires in February 1996 amid protests from Argentines who feared the film would tarnish Evita's memory. She was pregnant during the shoot. On the fourteenth of October 1996 she gave birth to her daughter, Lourdes Maria, known as Lola, whose father was her fitness trainer Carlos Leon. Evita won her the Golden Globe for best actress in a musical or comedy.[1] [2] [3]

Ray of Light, Music and a new life in England

Motherhood changed her. Her friend Sandra Bernhard introduced her to Kabbalah, and she took up Ashtanga yoga and read about Hinduism and Buddhism. She began the next album with Babyface and then Patrick Leonard, but neither sounded new enough. Her Maverick partner Guy Oseary suggested the British electronic musician William Orbit, who sent her a tape of thirteen tracks. They worked together through the summer and autumn of 1997, the longest recording process of her career, often delayed because Orbit's equipment kept breaking down. She even had an alter ego for the project, Veronica Electronica, after her confirmation name.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Ray of Light came out on the twenty second of February 1998 and was hailed as her masterpiece, a lush fusion of electronica and pop that critics credit with bringing electronic music into the mainstream. It sold more than sixteen million copies and won four Grammys. Frozen, the lead single, became her first song to enter the British chart at number one. It later got her into trouble in Belgium, where a court ruled in 2005 that its opening melody had been copied from a Belgian song, and banned it from sale and broadcast there. An appeals court reversed that ruling in 2014, ending an eight year ban.[1] [2] [3]

In 1998 she met the young British director Guy Ritchie at a dinner party thrown by Sting and Trudie Styler. Their son Rocco was born in Los Angeles on the eleventh of August 2000, after a dangerous delivery caused by placenta praevia. For her next album she chose the French producer Mirwais, whose demo had been passed to Maverick. He barely spoke English, and for the first days she wanted to rip her hair out, so his manager translated. The title track Music was inspired by a Sting concert where she watched a polite crowd lose all inhibition. Music became her twelfth and, as of 2026, last number one single in America, and the album was her first number one album there in eleven years.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Rocco was christened at Dornoch Cathedral in Scotland on the twenty first of December 2000, and the next day Madonna married Guy Ritchie at nearby Skibo Castle. She took up the guitar seriously, taught by Monte Pittman, and in 2001 launched the Drowned World Tour, her first in eight years, with a young DJ called Stuart Price as musical director. Her brother Christopher had expected to direct it and was not hired, which began a long rift between them. Then her acting career hit a wall. Swept Away, directed by Ritchie in 2002, was panned everywhere, and she vowed never to act in a film again. Her Bond theme, Die Another Day, fared better.[1] [2] [3] [4]

American Life, Confessions and Malawi

After the September eleventh attacks Madonna turned political. American Life, made again with Mirwais and released in April 2003, attacked materialism and the American dream. Its original video showed war and violence, and when the invasion of Iraq began she withdrew it herself. The album became her lowest seller. At the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards she kissed Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera on stage, one of the most talked about moments in the show's history. In 2004 she and Maverick sued Warner Music over the running of the label, Warner countersued, and the dispute ended with Warner buying her out. Maverick folded in 2009.[1] [2] [3]

Her 2004 Re Invention Tour was the highest grossing tour of the year, and during it Elton John accused her of lip syncing, a claim he later withdrew. For her next album she began with Mirwais again, but found they spent all their time talking politics. So she switched to Stuart Price and recorded in the loft of his London home, where, the BBC reports, she carved her name into the rafters during idle moments. Confessions on a Dance Floor was built like a nonstop DJ set. Its lead single Hung Up sampled ABBA, and Madonna sent an emissary to Stockholm with a letter begging Benny and Bjorn for permission. They rarely allow samples, but they said yes.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Hung Up reached number one in forty one countries, and the album topped the charts in forty, a Guinness world record. It won her a Grammy for best electronic dance album. The Confessions Tour of 2006 became the highest grossing tour ever by a woman at the time. In it she sang Live to Tell hanging from a mirrored cross, wearing a crown of thorns. The Russian Orthodox Church and Jewish groups in Russia called for a boycott, and religious leaders around the world accused her of blasphemy. She said the scene was meant to highlight the plight of African children affected by AIDS.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Africa was now central to her life. In 2006 she founded the charity Raising Malawi with Michael Berg of the Kabbalah Centre, and that year she adopted a little boy, David Banda, who had survived malaria and tuberculosis. The adoption caused an outcry, because Malawian law required a year of residence, but his father backed it and it was finalized in 2008. In 2009 Malawi's High Court refused her application to adopt a girl, Chifundo Mercy James, and the Supreme Court overturned that decision. Her planned girls' academy collapsed in 2010 after an audit questioned its spending, and in 2013 the office of Malawi's president accused her of bullying officials.[1] [2] [3]

In 2007 she left Warner for a ten year deal with the concert promoter Live Nation worth about 120 million dollars. Her last Warner album, Hard Candy, made with Timbaland, Justin Timberlake and Pharrell Williams, produced 4 Minutes, which gave her more American top ten hits than Elvis Presley. The Sticky and Sweet Tour grossed 411 million dollars. But on the sixteenth of July 2009 a stage roof being built for her show in Marseille collapsed, killing two workers, Charles Criscenzo and Charles Prow, and injuring eight others. She said she was devastated, and met Criscenzo's family and injured crew members. In 2008 her brother Christopher published a hurtful tell all book, and in October she filed for divorce from Guy Ritchie.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Super Bowl, MDNA, Rebel Heart and Lisbon

The divorce was settled at the end of 2008, with Ritchie receiving a reported fifty to sixty million pounds, including their English country estate. She tried directing, with Filth and Wisdom in 2008 and W.E. in 2011, a film about Edward the Eighth and Wallis Simpson that critics disliked, though its song Masterpiece won her a Golden Globe. In February 2012 she headlined the Super Bowl halftime show in Indianapolis with Cirque du Soleil, Nicki Minaj, M.I.A. and CeeLo Green. It drew 114 million viewers, more than the game itself, and M.I.A.'s middle finger to the camera led to a long legal fight between her and the NFL.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Her 2012 album MDNA, partly with William Orbit, was her fifth studio album in a row to debut at number one. The MDNA Tour grossed more than 305 million dollars and made her the first woman to earn a billion dollars from touring, but it was full of fights. A video showing the French far right leader Marine Le Pen with a swastika drew a legal threat. In Moscow she spoke up for the jailed punk band Pussy Riot, and before her Saint Petersburg show the American embassy warned of a threat of violence. She handed out pink wristbands in protest at Russia's anti gay law, and later said Russia fined her a million dollars, a fine she never paid.[1] [2] [3]

In December 2014 dozens of unfinished demos for her next album leaked online, and she called it artistic rape. Israeli police, working with the FBI, arrested a former singing contest contestant named Adi Lederman, who had hacked her computers and had also leaked a MDNA single. He was sentenced to fourteen months in prison. She rushed out six songs early, and Rebel Heart followed in March 2015, praised as her best work in a decade. At the Brit Awards that February a dancer pulled on her cape, which was tied too tight, and she tumbled backwards down a flight of stairs. She got straight back up and finished the song.[1] [2]

During the Rebel Heart Tour her son Rocco chose to stay in London with his father, and a custody battle played out in courts in New York and London before Madonna withdrew and settled privately. In 2016 Billboard named her its Woman of the Year, and her furious speech about ageism and sexism went viral. At the Women's March in Washington in January 2017 she said she had thought about blowing up the White House, then said her words were taken out of context. In February 2017 she adopted twin girls from Malawi, Estere and Stella, and that July opened a children's surgical hospital there named after her daughter Mercy.[1] [2]

In 2017 she moved to Lisbon so that David could train at a top football academy. There the singer Dino D'Santiago took her to living room sessions of fado and Cape Verdean music, and taught her to sing in Portuguese. The result, Madame X, named after Martha Graham's old nickname for her, came out in June 2019 and became her ninth number one album in America. She performed at Eurovision in Tel Aviv, where two of her dancers appeared with Israeli and Palestinian flags on their backs. The theater tour that followed was plagued by a knee injury and late starts, and in March 2020 it ended early when France banned large gatherings because of Covid.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Survival, Celebration and Confessions II

In 2021 she returned to Warner Records in a deal covering her whole catalogue, and began a series of anniversary reissues. Finally Enough Love collected her fifty number ones on Billboard's dance club chart, more number ones than any artist on any single Billboard chart. A film of her life, which she was writing and planned to direct with Julia Garner in the lead, was dropped by Universal in 2023. The family losses began that February, when her eldest brother Anthony died at sixty six. He had struggled with alcoholism and had been homeless for years, at one point living under a bridge, before reconnecting with his family after rehab.[1] [2] [3]

In January 2023 she announced the Celebration Tour, her first greatest hits show. On the twenty fourth of June, weeks before opening night, she was found unresponsive at her New York home and rushed to hospital with a serious bacterial infection. She spent several days in intensive care, and was placed in a medically induced coma for forty eight hours. When she recovered, she said her first thought on waking was of her children, and her second was that she did not want to disappoint anyone who had bought a ticket. The tour was pushed back to October.[1] [2] [3]

The Celebration Tour opened at London's O2 Arena on the fourteenth of October 2023, with Stuart Price as musical director, her children David and Mercy playing guitar and piano, and a Live to Tell sequence filled with the faces of people lost to AIDS, including Keith Haring and Freddie Mercury. Fans sued over shows that started two hours late. It ended on the fourth of May 2024 with a free concert on Copacabana Beach in Rio. Live Nation put the crowd at one point six million people, beating the Rolling Stones' Copacabana record and becoming the largest audience ever for a standalone concert, and for a female artist.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In the autumn of 2024 her stepmother Joan died of cancer, and less than two weeks later, on the fourth of October, her brother Christopher died of cancer at sixty three. They had been estranged since his 2008 book, but when he became ill they found their way back to each other. She wrote that he had been the closest human to her for so long, and that as children they had danced through the madness together. In 2025 she released Veronica Electronica, the Ray of Light remix album she had shelved in 1998, and in September 2025 she signed again with Warner Records, promising a return to the dance floor.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In April 2026 she wiped her Instagram, then announced Confessions II, made again with Stuart Price. Days later she joined Sabrina Carpenter at Coachella, twenty years to the day after her first Coachella show, and they sang Bring Your Love. Her daughter Lourdes cowrote a song on it. Released on the third of July, Confessions II debuted at number one, her tenth American number one album and her best sales week in years. She played the first FIFA World Cup final halftime show, brought out Kylie Minogue in Amsterdam for Love Sensation, her record extending sixty fifth British top ten, and in September led the MTV Video Music Awards with thirteen nominations. In July her Ray of Light partner William Orbit died at sixty nine, and she called him singular.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

The people around Madonna

Madonna and Sean Penn. They met on the set of the Material Girl video in January 1985 and married on her twenty seventh birthday, the day before his twenty fifth. She dedicated True Blue to him, but his fights with photographers and his jail term in 1987 turned the marriage into a tabloid war, and she divorced him in 1989. Asked on camera in Truth or Dare for the love of her life, she answered Sean, and in 2015 she defended him in court.[1] [2] [3]

Madonna and Guy Ritchie. They met in 1998 at a dinner party given by Sting and Trudie Styler. Their son Rocco was born in 2000, they married at Skibo Castle in Scotland that December, and together they adopted David Banda. He directed her in Swept Away and the video for What It Feels Like for a Girl. They divorced in 2008 with a settlement of around fifty million pounds, and later fought over Rocco's custody.[1] [2] [3]

Madonna and Stephen Bray. He dated Madonna in Michigan in the late 1970s and moved to New York in 1980 when she called him to drum in her band Emmy. They recorded the demo that got her signed, and after she passed him over on her debut they wrote and produced many of her 1980s hits together, including Into the Groove and several songs on True Blue, until Like a Prayer. He later won a Grammy for The Color Purple on Broadway.[1] [2]

Madonna and Patrick Leonard. Leonard was musical director of her first tour and played keyboards with her at Live Aid. From True Blue to Like a Prayer they wrote songs at astonishing speed, often one a day, including Live to Tell, Like a Prayer and Cherish, and they reunited for Frozen. The song Dear Jessie was written for his daughter. He once joked that he had to feed his children, so he wrote songs with a girl who became extremely popular.[1] [2] [3]

Madonna and Christopher Ciccone. Her younger brother was her dancer, dresser, art director on Blond Ambition and director of the Girlie Show. They fell out when she did not hire him for the Drowned World Tour, and his 2008 memoir about her made the rift public. They reconciled when he became ill with cancer, and after his death in October 2024 she wrote that dance had saved them both.[1] [2] [3]

Madonna and John Jellybean Benitez. The star DJ of the Funhouse club became her boyfriend in 1983. He remixed her debut album and produced Holiday, her breakthrough, working night and day to meet Warner's one week deadline. He later produced Crazy for You, which went to number one, and scored a hit of his own with Sidewalk Talk, a song Madonna wrote for him.[1] [2]

Madonna and Warren Beatty. Beatty directed and starred in Dick Tracy and cast her as Breathless Mahoney, and they began a relationship during production. In Truth or Dare he appears growing tired of the cameras and laughing that she does not want to live off camera. The romance ended shortly after the film's premiere in 1990.[1] [2] [3]

Madonna and Freddy DeMann. The former manager of Michael Jackson took Madonna on in 1983 and guided her through her imperial years until 1997. He found her first film role, rescued the Blond Ambition tour with a new sponsor after Pepsi pulled out, and cofounded Maverick with her in 1992. He was bought out of the company for a reported twenty million dollars at the end of the 1990s.[1] [2] [3]

Madonna and Guy Oseary. He joined Maverick at nineteen as an A and R man and rose to run the label. He brought her William Orbit and Mirwais, and in 2005 became her manager, negotiating the 120 million dollar Live Nation deal in 2007 and overseeing some of the highest grossing tours in history. They also launched the Hard Candy Fitness gyms together.[1] [2] [3]

Madonna and William Orbit. Orbit had remixed Justify My Love and Erotica before they ever met. In 1997 they made Ray of Light together, an album that won Grammys and redefined her sound, and they worked again on MDNA. He later said making it nearly killed him. When he died in July 2026 she credited him with helping her write and sing in new ways, calling him otherworldly and singular.[1] [2] [3]

Madonna and Stuart Price. He started as musical director of the Drowned World Tour in 2001 and produced Confessions on a Dance Floor in his London loft. He famously said nobody produces Madonna, they collaborate with her. He returned as musical director of the Celebration Tour and produced its sequel, Confessions II, in 2026.[1] [2] [3]

Madonna and Lourdes Leon. Her first child, born in 1996 to Madonna and the trainer Carlos Leon, grew up under the spotlight, sang backing vocals on MDNA and launched a clothing line with her mother. As an adult she called her mother a control freak before seeing it differently, released experimental music as Lolahol, and in 2026 cowrote a song on Confessions II that Madonna described as a healing moment.[1]

Rare facts about Madonna

• Because she shared her mother's name, Madonna's family called her Little Nonnie. Madonna was named after her mother, Madonna Louise Fortin. To avoid confusion at home, relatives called the future Queen of Pop Little Nonnie when she was a child in Michigan.[1]
• Her father paid her a quarter for every A she earned at school. Tony Ciccone rewarded good grades with a quarter each, and Madonna was a straight A student. She was also known for cartwheels in the school hallways.[1]
• Martha Graham nicknamed the young dancer Madame X, the title Madonna used for her 2019 album. Madonna passed through Martha Graham's company around 1978, and the choreographer called her Madame X. Four decades later, Madonna revived the name for her fourteenth album and its theater tour.[1] [2]
• Veronica Electronica, her Ray of Light alter ego, came from her Catholic confirmation name. Madonna took Veronica as her confirmation name in 1966. During Ray of Light she created an alter ego called Veronica Electronica, and a remix album under that name, shelved in 1998, finally came out in 2025.[1] [2]
• She was paid one hundred dollars for her first film, A Certain Sacrifice. The director only paid her because she was short on rent. When he released the film in 1985 to cash in on her fame, she offered him up to ten thousand dollars for the rights and he refused.[1]
• Seymour Stein signed Madonna while lying in a hospital bed after heart surgery. The Sire Records boss had her demo brought to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, liked the hook and her voice, played it again, and agreed to a singles deal from his bed.[1] [2]
• Island Records boss Chris Blackwell passed on her because she was dating his own A and R man. Mark Kamins first took her demo to his employer at Island. Blackwell refused to sign his A and R guy's girlfriend, so Kamins went to Sire instead.[1]
• Her first single had no photo of her, and many listeners assumed she was black. Sire deliberately left Madonna off the Everybody sleeve to win over black radio. A Billboard review even called her a young New York duo, and early pressings of Holiday also hid her image.[1] [2]
• She wrote Lucky Star as a thank you gift to the DJ who discovered her. Madonna wrote it on a Casio keyboard with a cassette player Mark Kamins had given her, hoping he would play it at Danceteria.[1]
• That cowbell at the start of Holiday is Madonna playing it herself. She rarely played instruments in public until 2000, but she is credited with cowbell on her debut album and synthesizer on Like a Prayer.[1] [2]
• Holiday had already been rejected by Mary Wilson of the Supremes and by Phyllis Hyman. Written for the group Pure Energy and turned down by their own label, the song was also pitched to the Ritchie Family before Jellybean Benitez played it to Madonna.[1]
• Nile Rodgers thought Material Girl was ten times better than Like a Virgin. Rodgers wanted Material Girl as the lead single, and at first he disliked Like a Virgin, until it stuck in his head for four days. Madonna won the argument.[1] [2]
• Into the Groove, her first British number one, was never released as a US single A side. In America it was only the B side of the Angel twelve inch, which kept it off the Hot 100. In Britain it topped the chart and remains her best selling single.[1]
• The studio behind Desperately Seeking Susan originally campaigned for Barbra Streisand in Madonna's role. Orion's chairman wanted Streisand, and Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn were also discussed. The director cast two newcomers instead, choosing Madonna over Ellen Barkin and Jennifer Jason Leigh.[1]
• The dramatic strings that open Papa Don't Preach were played by an uncredited keyboardist. Fred Zarr, who had worked on her debut, came up with the introduction while playing with an Emulator synthesizer. Madonna loved it and kept it, but he received no credit.[1]
• A proposal to build a statue of Madonna in her grandparents' Italian hometown was rejected. During the 1987 Who's That Girl tour, a statue was suggested for Pacentro, the town her paternal grandparents came from. The local town hall said no.[1]
• Pepsi cancelled her ad over the Like a Prayer video, but she kept the five million dollars. The commercial premiered to an estimated 250 million viewers during the Grammys. After the video caused an uproar, Pepsi pulled it and ended the deal but let her keep the fee.[1] [2]
• Vogue was meant to be a B side and was recorded in a booth that used to be a closet. Warner wanted a strong B side for Keep It Together. Madonna wrote most of the words on a plane, cut her vocals in single takes, and the label decided it was far too good to bury.[1]
• She played Breathless Mahoney in Dick Tracy for scale, about thirty five thousand dollars. Madonna pursued the part and offered to work for the union minimum. It was also her idea to fold a Dick Tracy section into the Blond Ambition show.[1]
• The Sex book was almost called X, and she wanted it shaped like a condom. She dropped X to avoid seeming to copy Spike Lee's Malcolm X, and an oval condom shaped book proved too expensive to print, so it got an aluminium cover instead.[1]
• Take a Bow was Babyface's first recording with a live string orchestra, at Madonna's suggestion. They agreed the song's first line should be its title. It spent seven weeks at number one, the longest run of her career.[1]
• Frozen was banned in Belgium for eight years after a plagiarism ruling. A court in Mons ruled against it in 2005 and ordered it off the shelves and airwaves. The song was even left off Belgian copies of Celebration before an appeal cleared her in 2014.[1]
• She took three months of violin lessons for a film she then walked away from. In 1999 Madonna trained on the violin for three months to play a violin teacher in Music of the Heart, but she withdrew before filming began.[1]
• The song Music was inspired by a Sting concert at New York's Beacon Theatre. She watched a polite crowd suddenly lose its inhibitions when Sting played old Police hits, and thought that is what music does to people.[1]
• Mirwais spoke so little English that his manager translated in the studio. Madonna said the first days of recording Music made her want to tear her hair out, until they brought in an interpreter.[1] [2]
• Madonna carved her name into the rafters of Stuart Price's loft while making Confessions. According to the BBC, the 2005 album was recorded in the loft of Price's London home, and she carved her name into the beams during quiet moments.[1]
• To sample ABBA on Hung Up, she sent a messenger to Stockholm with a begging letter. Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus almost never allow samples. They took their time, then agreed, and Ulvaeus later praised the track as solid pop.[1]
• Her 2003 Gap advert mashup with Missy Elliott became part of two later tours. Into the Hollywood Groove, mixing Into the Groove with Hollywood, was made for a Gap commercial and later reappeared on the Re Invention and Celebration tours.[1]
• Dannii Minogue's 2003 single was the first time Madonna officially approved a sample of her song. Don't Wanna Lose This Feeling borrowed from Into the Groove. Twenty three years later Madonna teamed up with Dannii's sister Kylie on Love Sensation.[1] [2]
• At a 2009 show in Bucharest, fans booed when she spoke up for the Roma people. During the Sticky and Sweet Tour she used her stage time in Romania to criticize discrimination against the Romani community, and part of the crowd booed.[1]
• Madonna says Russia fined her a million dollars over her 2012 Saint Petersburg show, and she never paid. A case against her for gay propaganda was dismissed in 2012, but in 2020 she said the government had fined her a million dollars.[1]
• The hacker who leaked Rebel Heart had also leaked the lead single from MDNA. Adi Lederman, a former contestant on an Israeli singing show, was arrested in a joint operation with the FBI and sentenced to fourteen months in prison.[1]
• When she fell at the 2015 Brits, some fans in the balcony thought it was choreography. She fell on a line about letting her guard down and was back on her feet to finish the song. The cape, she said later, had been tied too tight.[1] [2]
• At Coachella in 2026 she joked it was her first time performing with someone shorter than her. Joining Sabrina Carpenter, the five foot four Madonna thanked her for the experience. It was twenty years to the day since her first Coachella set in 2006.[1]
• Before Love Sensation, Madonna and Kylie Minogue had exactly one hundred UK top ten hits between them. Madonna had sixty four and Kylie thirty six. Their duet took the totals to sixty five and thirty seven, and only Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard have more UK top tens than Madonna.[1]
• She got Sabrina Carpenter on her album by sending her a direct message after five days of waiting. Accepting a VMA in 2026, Madonna said she lost patience when Carpenter's team did not reply, so she messaged her directly. Within weeks they were in the studio.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.