After a celebrity reaches a certain status, it's easy to overlook what they became famous for and focus solely on their personality. Madonna is such a star. Madonna shot to stardom so fast in 1984 that it masked most of her musical merits. Appreciating her music became even more difficult as the years wore on, as talking about her lifestyle became more common than discussing her music. Nevertheless, one of Madonna's greatest accomplishments is how she controlled the media and the public with her music, her videos, her publicity, and her sexuality. Arguably, Madonna was the first female pop star to have complete control of her music and image.

Madonna relocated from her native Michigan to New York in 1977, with ideas of becoming a ballet dancer. She studied with choreographer Alvin Ailey and modeled. In 1979, she became part of the Patrick Hernandez Revue, a disco outfit that had the hit "Born to Be Alive." Madonna traveled to Paris with Hernandez; it was there that she met Dan Gilroy, who would become her boyfriend. After returning to New York, the team formed the "Breakfast Club", a pop and dance group. Madonna first played drums for the band, but she soon became the lead singer. In 1980, she left the band and created "Emmy" with her earlier boyfriend, drummer Stephen Bray. Soon, Bray and Madonna broke off from the group and began working on dance and disco oriented songs. A demo tape of these songs found its way to Mark Kamins, a New York-based Disc Jockey and producer. Kamins sent the tape to Sire Records, which signed the singer in 1982.

Kamins produced Madonna's first single, "Everybody," which became a club and dance smash hit by the end of 1982; her second single, 1983's "Physical Attraction," was another club hit. In June of 1983, Madonna had her third club hit with the lively "Holiday," written by Jellybean Benitez. Madonna's self-titled debut album was released in September of 1983; "Holiday" became her first Top 40 hit the next month. "Borderline" became her first Top 10 hit in March of 1984, beginning an amazing run of 17 consecutive Top 10 hits. While "Lucky Star" was climbing to number four, Madonna began working on her first starring role in a feature film, Susan Seidelman's "Desperately Seeking Susan" (1985) about a bored suburban housewife, who seeking adventure to her life, accidentally gets hit on the head, wakes up with amnesia, and is mistaken for a free-spirited New York City drifter named Susan.

Madonna's second album, the Niles Rodgers-produced "Like a Virgin", was released at the end of 1984. The title song hit number one in December, staying at the top of the charts for six weeks; it was the start of a busy year for the singer. During 1985, Madonna became an worldwide celebrity, selling millions of records on the force of her chic, sexy videos and sweet personality. After "Material Girl" became a number two hit in April, Madonna started her first tour, backed by the Beastie Boys. "Crazy for You" became her second number one song in May. 'Desperately Seeking Susan" was released in June, becoming a box office smash hit; it also prompted a video release of "A Certain Sacrifice", an erotic drama she shot in 1979. "A Certain Sacrifice" wasn't the only uncomfortable issue pulled into the media during the summer of 1985 -- both Playboy and Penthouse published nude photos of Madonna that she posed for in 1977. The world, it seemed, wanted to see Madonna naked, and rushed to buy both the Playboy and Penthouse magazines with her nude photo shoot. Her centerfold nude photos stunned the world.

Nonetheless, her reputation continued unabated, with thousands of teenage girls embracing her sexy appearance and fashion style. In July, she married actor Sean Penn; the couple had a bumpy marriage that ended in 1989.

Madonna began working with Patrick Leonard at the beginning of 1986; Leonard would co-write most of her smash hits in the '80s, including "Live to Tell," which hit number one in June of 1986. A more impressive and skillful album than her two previous efforts, "True Blue" was released the next month, to both more massive commercial success (it was a number one in both the U.S. and the U.K., selling over ten million copies in America alone. "Papa Don't Preach" became her fourth number one hit in the United States. While her musical career was booming, her film career took a bad hit with the November release of "Shanghai Surprise" (1986). Starring Madonna and Sean Penn, the comedy received bad reviews, which translated into slow box office returns.

At the start of 1987, she had her fifth number one single with "Open Your Heart," the third number one from "True Blue" alone. The title song from the soundtrack of her third feature film, "Who's That Girl?", was another chart hit, while the movie was another box office dud. 1988 was a quiet year for Madonna as she spent the first half acting in David Mamet's "Speed the Plow" on Broadway. In the meantime, Madonna released the album "You Can Dance". After withdrawing the divorce papers she filed at the beginning of 1988, she divorced Sean Penn in the beginning of 1989.

"Like a Prayer", released in the spring of 1989, was her most impressive album, integrating elements of pop, rock, and dance. It was another number one hit and launched the number one title track as well as "Express Yourself," "Cherish," and "Keep It Together," three more Top Ten hits. In April 1990, Madonna started her colossal "Blonde Ambition" tour, which ran throughout the year. "Vogue" became a number one hit, setting the stage for her co-starring role in Warren Beatty's "Dick Tracy" (1990); it was her most victorious film role since "Desperately Seeking Susan". Madonna released her greatest-hits album, "The Immaculate Collection", at the end of the year. It featured two new songs, including the number one single "Justify My Love," which ignited another media storm with its sexy video; the second new song, "Rescue Me," became the highest-debuting single by a female artist in United States chart history, entering the charts at number 15. "Truth or Dare", a documentary of the "Blonde Ambition" tour, was released to good reviews and strong ticket sales during the spring of 1991.

Madonna returned to the charts in the summer of 1992 with the number one "This Used to Be My Playground," a single featured in the film "A League of Their Own" starring Tom Hanks and Geena Davis, which featured the singer in a small role. Later that year, Madonna released "Sex", an exclusive, steel-bound soft-core pornographic book that had hundreds of erotic photographs of herself, several models, and other celebrities -- including Isabella Rossellini, Big Daddy Kane, Naomi Campbell, and Vanilla Ice -- as well as selected writings. "Sex" received bad reviews and huge negative publicity, yet that didn't stop the accompanying album, "Erotica", from selling over five million copies. "Bedtime Stories", released two years later, was a more quiet album than "Erotica". The album yielded her biggest hit, "Take a Bow," which lasted seven weeks at number one. It also featured the Björk written "Bedtime Stories," which became her first song not to make the Top 40; its follow-up, "Human Nature," also failed to crack the Top 40. Nonetheless, "Bedtime Stories" was her seventh album to go multi-platinum.

Starting in 1995, Madonna began one of her most delicate image makeovers as she pushed for the title role in the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Evita" (1996) starring Antonio Banderas. Backing away from the explicit sexuality of "Erotica" and "Bedtime Stories", Madonna created herself as an upscale women, and the compilation "Something to Remember" fit into the plan nicely. Released in the fall of 1995, around the same time she accepted the role of Evita Peron, the album was made up entirely of ballads, designed to appeal to the mature audience that would also be the target of "Evita". 

As the filming ended, Madonna announced she was pregnant and her daughter, Lourdes, was born late in 1996, just as "Evita" was due for release. The movie was met with positive reviews and Madonna began a campaign for an Oscar nomination that resulted in her winning the Golden Globe for Best Actress (Musical or Comedy), but not the popular Academy Award nomination. The soundtrack for "Evita", however, was a runaway hit, with a dance remix of "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" and the newly written "You Must Love Me" both becoming hits.

During 1997, Madonna worked with producer William Orbit on her first album of new material since 1994's "Bedtime Stories". The result was, "Ray of Light", and was greatly influenced by electronic, techno, and hip-hop, updating her classic dance-pop sound of the late '90s. "Ray of Light" received first-rate reviews with its March 1998 release and debuted at number two on the charts. Within a month, the record was turning out to be her biggest album since "Like a Prayer". Two years later Madonna returned with "Music", which joined her with Orbit and also had production work from Mark "Spike" Stent and Mirwais, a French electro-pop producer and musician in the style of Daft Punk and Air.

The year 2000 saw the birth of Madonna's second child, Rocco, whom she had with filmmaker Guy Ritchie; the two married at the end of the year. With Ritchie as director and Madonna as star, the pair released a remake of the film "Swept Away" in 2002. It sank at the box office making it one of the least profitable films of the year. Her serious 2003 album, "American Life", did a little better but was not a huge success. That same year she released a successful children's book, "The English Roses". "Confessions on a Dance Floor" marked her return to music and to the dance-oriented material that had made her a star; released in late 2005, it topped the Billboard charts, and was accompanied by a worldwide tour in 2006, the same year that "I'm Going to Tell You a Secret", a CD/DVD made during her "Re-Invention Tour", came out. In 2007 Madonna released another CD/DVD, "Confessions Tour", this time chronicling her controversial tour of the same name. 

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