Madonna, (born Madonna Louise Ciccone; Veronica is her
chosen confirmation name; on August 16, 1958 in Bay
City, Michigan) is a famous American pop singer and
actress.As of December 2005, Madonna had 11 multi-platinum
albums certified by the Recording Industry Association
of America, which, in all, had certified her for shipments
of 60 million units. In a 2005 statement, her record
label, Warner Bros., said she had sold more than 200
million albums and more than 75 millions singles worldwide.[1].
Madonna's highest-selling albums are 1984's Like a Virgin
and 1990's The Immaculate Collection, each certified
10-times platinum by the RIAA.Madonna currently resides
in Wiltshire, England with her husband, film director
Guy Ritchie, her daughter, Lourdes (b. Lourdes Maria
Ciccone Leon, 14 October 1996) and their son, Rocco
(b. Rocco John Ritchie, 11 August 2000).
Biography
Childhood & beginning
Madonna was born to an Italian-American Chrysler engineer,
Silvio "Tony" P. Ciccone, and Madonna Louise
Fortin (from a French Canadian family in Bay City, Michigan)
and identifies herself as an Italian American. She was
raised in a Catholic family of twelve children in the
Detroit suburbs of Pontiac and Rochester Hills.
Her mother died at the age of thirty,
of breast cancer, on December 1, 1963, when Madonna
was only five. The singer has frequently discussed
the enormous impact her mother's death had on her
life and career. Following his wife's death, Silvio
brought in a housekeeper, Joan Gustafson. He later
married her and had two children.Silvio required all
of his children to take music lessons. After a few
months of piano lessons, Madonna convinced her father
to allow her to take ballet classes instead, and she
proved to be a gifted dancer.
Madonna attended James Madison Memorial
High School, where she was a straight-A student and
excelled at sports. She was a member of the cheerleading
squad, honing her dance skill. After graduating from
high school in 1976, Madonna received a dance scholarship
to the University of Michigan. At the encouragement
of her ballet teacher, Christopher Flynn, Madonna
left college at the end of her second year and moved
to New York City to pursue a dance career. She studied
with modern dance legend Martha Graham, as well as
a Graham disciple, Pearl Lang. Madonna later performed
with several modern dance companies, including Alvin
Ailey and the Walter Nicks dancers.
After performing as a dancer for French
disco star Patrick Hernandez on his 1979 world tour,
Madonna abandoned her fledgeling dance career to pursue
music. She formed several bands, including "Breakfast
Club" and "Emmy". She also wrote a
number of songs that brought her local fame in New
York dance clubs, particularly Danceteria. It was
in the band Emmy that Madonna found herself at the
lengendary underground NYC club called Max's Kansas
City.it was there that she saw and adopted the sexual
stance of Andy warhol's superstar Cherry Vanilla,
who served as a blueprint role model for Madonna's
80s antics.
The first album
In 1982 the singer inked a deal with Sire Records.
Her demo song, "Ain't No Big Deal", was
written by her frequent collaborator, Stephen Bray,
but was shelved for several years because it had recently
been recorded and released by the group Barracuda.
Madonna's first single was "Everybody",
produced by Mark Kamins, which peaked at #3 on the
Billboard Dance chart. It gained heavy rotation on
R&B radio stations, leading many to assume that
Madonna was an African American artist. When "Everybody"
was released as a single, Madonna's picture did not
appear on the single cover sleeve, because Sire did
not want to risk losing the black audience (Madonna's
core audience at that point) by advertising that Madonna
was white. "Burning Up", Madonna's second
single like "Everybody" failed to break
into the Billboard Hot 100, but this time "Burning
Up" even failed to chart in the Bubbling Under
chart. The song did manage to peak at number 3 on
the Billboard Hot Dance/Club Play Chart, staying on
the chart for 16 weeks.
In 1983, her self-titled first album,
Madonna, was released, and its first single, "Holiday",
was Madonna's first top 20 hit single in several countries.
Other hits on Madonna included "Borderline"
and "Lucky Star". The album was produced
by Reggie Lucas and with contributions from John 'Jellybean'
Benitez, with whom Madonna had had a brief romance.
Although the album sold only moderately at first,
thanks to heavy rotation on a brand new cable channel
called MTV, Madonna gained nationwide exposure and
the album peaked at number eight on the Billboard
chart, and went platinum five times.
MTV aggressively marketed Madonna's
image as a playful and sexy combination of punk and
pop culture, and she soon became a fixture on the
network. Her bleached blonde hair (with brown roots),
sexy lace gloves, lingerie on the outside and "Boy
Toy" belt buckle became popular in malls and
schoolyards across America. In many ways, she defined
pop fashion of the era.
Like a Virgin
In 1984 Madonna released Like a Virgin. The album,
produced by the legendary Nile Rodgers, had a distinctive
soul and funk flavor, with hard, loud drums and plenty
of bass guitar, yet remained pop-friendly and accessible.
The title track has been a worldwide hit and topped
the U.S. charts for six weeks.
Madonna's performance at the First
Annual MTV Video Music Awards in 1984 at the age of
26 is considered to be the first controversial incident
since then in a career that would see many more. She
took the stage to sing "Like a Virgin" wearing
a combination bustier/wedding gown, which included
her trademark "Boy Toy" belt. During the
performance, she rolled around on the floor, revealing
lacy stockings and garters, and made a number of sexually
suggestive moves. While such a performance would probably
not raise eyebrows today, it was shocking to a mid-1980s
audience. However, Madonna seemed to thrive on the
controversy, and it only served to increase her popularity.
The record spawned three other hits, all of which
went to Billboard's Top Five.
Like a Virgin was the first time Madonna
used what became a continuing career strategy: a change
of image. Where Madonna had been mostly synthesizers
and dance beats, featuring a "street urchin"
version of the singer, the image projected in Like
a Virgin was lacy and sensual, with Madonna portraying
Lolita-like sexual decadence.
In 1985, she made a brief appearance
in the film Vision Quest playing a club singer, with
the song she performed, "Crazy for You",
becoming her second number-one hit. It garnered her
the first of many Grammy nominations, and the song's
video, combining clips from the movie with Madonna
singing, was in heavy rotation on MTV for months.
Later that same year, she received commercial and
critical success for her starring role in Susan Seidelman's
film Desperately Seeking Susan.
This era of Madonna's career also
saw the advent of the "Madonna Wannabe".
Across America, teenage girls went to great lengths
to emulate their idol, dressing in spandex, miniskirts,
torn t-shirts, and lacy bras, with armfuls of black
rubber bangles, teased, bow-tied hair and a stressed
mole above the lip. Madonna has remarked in interviews
that it was startling to see girls dressing like her
all over the country, because her "look"
was based mainly on recycled streetwear during her
lean years, using old hosiery to tie up her hair and
cutting up old shirts.
Also in 1985, Madonna launched her
first full-scale live performance tour, called "The
Virgin Tour". Every stop on the tour sold out;
tickets for the opening night performance in Seattle
were gone in thirty-three minutes.
Around this time, a number of black
and white nude photos of Madonna surfaced, published
in both Penthouse and Playboy magazines. The photos
were taken during the late 1970s, when she posed for
art photographers in New York City as a way to make
money.
1985 proved to be a pivotal year both
professionally and personally for Madonna. Along with
enjoying the commercial success of the Like a Virgin
album and tour andher film appearances, she also met
and fell in love with actor Sean Penn. On her twenty-seventh
birthday, August 16, 1985, Penn and Madonna were married
in an outdoor ceremony in Malibu, California. They
divorced four years later due to Sean's abusive nature
and Madonna's self proclaimed self absorption.
True Blue
In 1986, Madonna released her third album, True Blue.
The album was co-produced by Patrick Leonard and Madonna's
longtime friend Stephen Bray. It included the hits,
"Open Your Heart", "True Blue",
"Live to Tell", "La Isla Bonita",
and "Papa Don't Preach". True Blue was described
by Rolling Stone as her "blue collar album",
while other critics felt the songs were reminiscent
of the 1950s.
One of the hit songs, "Papa Don't
Preach", caused some cultural debate and controversy.
In the song, a girl is confessing to her father that
she is pregnant. Madonna portrayed a variety of characters
in the music videos that accompanied the True Blue
album. In the video for "Open Your Heart",
Madonna played a stripper who befriends a young boy.
In "La Isla Bonita", she played a Spanish
woman, which was one of the first indications of Madonna's
fondness for the Hispanic culture.
Madonna appeared with husband, Sean
Penn, in the 1986 film Shanghai Surprise, which was
unanimously panned by critics. The couple soon earned
a reputation for hostility towards the media, thanks
to Penn's frequently violent outbursts against the
paparazzi. The paparazzi often referred to the couple
as the "Poison Penns".
In 1987 Madonna starred in the film
Who's That Girl, which was minor worldwide success
but flopped in the U.S.. Nevertheless, the soundtrack
spawned three hits: the title track, "Causing
a Commotion", and "The Look of Love".
She also appeared as Hortense in a film called Bloodhounds
of Broadway, which was harshly dismissed by many reviewers.
Madonna embarked on the "Who's
That Girl World Tour", beginning her long association
with backing vocalists and dancers Donna DeLory and
Niki Haris. The tour marked her first run-in with
the Vatican; the Pope urged fans not to attend her
performances in Italy. The fans were not affected,
however, and the tour went on as scheduled. That year
she also released a successful remix album entitled
You Can Dance.On September 14, 1989 she divorced husband
Sean Penn, citing spousal abuse
Like a Prayer
In 1989, at the age of 31, Madonna released the album
Like a Prayer. The album released five singles, including
top ten hits "Like a Prayer", "Express
Yourself", "Cherish" and "Keep
It Together", as well as the top 40 hit "Oh
Father". Like a Prayer is often cited by critics
as the best album of her career.
The music video for Like a Prayer
featured many Catholic symbols, such as stigmata,
and was denounced by the Vatican for its "blasphemous"
mixture of eroticism, Catholic symbolism, and its
implied story about racism. (In addition to a scene
where police mistake an innocent black man for a murderer,
the video features Madonna dancing in a field of burning
crosses, a symbol of the KKK's historic terrorism
against African Americans.)
Madonna had signed a deal with Pepsi,
according to which the song "Like a Prayer"
would be debuted as a Pepsi commercial in which Madonna
would appear. When Madonna's own music video version
of the song debuted on MTV, Pepsi pulled theirs off
the air and cancelled all plans for future commercials
with Madonna. Though the contract with Pepsi called
for three future commercials, Madonna got to keep
her five-million-dollar endorsement fee without fulfilling
her contractual obligations.
I'm Breathless
In 1990, at the age of 32, she starred as Breathless
Mahoney in Dick Tracy alongside Warren Beatty, whom
she also briefly dated. She earned some good reviews
for the role, though critics pointed out that it continued
her tradition of performing well when portraying characters
quite similar to herself (in this case, a demanding
and powerful vamp). I'm Breathless: Music from and
Inspired by the Film 'Dick Tracy' spawned the huge
number-one hit, "Vogue", which popularized
a dance trend in which people struck poses like fashion
models in magazines (such as Vogue, hence the term
"voguing").
Widely considered one of her best
songs, "Vogue" (also directed by David Fincher)
would routinely be ranked as one of the top four music
videos of all time by MTV during the early 1990s.
The Immaculate Collection
She also released her first greatest hits album, The
Immaculate Collection, towards the end of 1990. The
album was dedicated to the "Pope", her "divine
inspiration". She included fifteen of her biggest
hits and two new songs, both top-ten hits.
Despite the radio success of the single
release of "Justify My Love", the sexual
content of both the song's lyrics and its ground-breaking
video proved to be too much for MTV, and network executives
decided they could not air it. Madonna's record company
then decided to sell the video on VHS as a "video
single", the first one ever released. The video
sold over 400,000 copies, and the CD single sold over
one million.
In 1991, Madonna starred in her first
documentary film, Truth or Dare / In Bed with Madonna,
which chronicled her "Blonde Ambition Tour";
the title was changed to Truth or Dare for its U.S.
release. In it, her personality and private life were
explored in intimate detail: the star came across
as extremely ambitious, demanding, forthright, sexy,
and highly intelligent. It also showed her softer
side as she confronted family members and visited
the grave of her mother. The documentary grossed fifteen
million in the U.S. and another twenty million overseas.In
1992, Madonna appeared in the Penny Marshall film,
A League of Their Own, which revolved around a women's
baseball team. Her performance was heralded by critics
as an impressive return to the form she'd hinted at
in Desperately Seeking Susan. She wrote and performed
the film's theme song, the number-one hit "This
Used to Be My Playground". It became a worldwide
hit and Madonna's tenth Hot 100 number one single.
Erotica
The erotic book Sex, photographed by Steven Meisel,
was released October 21, 1992 and sold for $49.95
each. Adult in nature, it featured Madonna as the
centerpiece of photographs along with other pop music
artists of the time depicting various sexual fantasies
and acts (including lesbianism, and sadomasochism).
It became an instant bestseller.
In the wake of publicity generated
by the book, Madonna, at the age of 34, released her
next album, Erotica, in the same year. She co-wrote
and produced this record mostly with the legendary
Shep Pettibone. Almost a companion piece to the book,
it featured bold sexual anthems that made no attempt
to disguise their star's appetite for erotic fantasy
and role-playing. The album spawned a number of top
ten hits, including "Erotica", which became
the highest-debuting (number three) single in the
history of the Hot 100 Airplay Chart. It was a huge
hit, but the controversial erotic video only aired
a total of three times on MTV.
Body of Evidence was regarded by many
commentators as an exercise in soft-core pornography,
with Madonna portraying a woman accused of killing
her lover by means of sexual intercourse. The film
was R-rated and contained copious nudity and graphic
sex scenes. Dangerous Game was similar in its graphic
and violent content. A movie about making movie and
the effects of a demanding Director on his leading
actor through affairs, violence and drug abuse. Madonna
would later comment that this entire period of her
life was designed to give the world every single morsel
of what they seemed to be demanding in their invasion
of her private life. She hoped that once it was all
out in the open, people could settle down and focus
on her work.
Bedtime Stories
In 1994, at the age of 36, Madonna released Bedtime
Stories. It included "Secret", produced
by Dallas Austin (Who was experiencing incredible
popularity with TLC and their song "Creep"),
and the number one smash "Take a Bow", co-written
and co-produced by singer/songwriter/producer Babyface,
who also sang backup on the track. "Take a Bow"
topped the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 for seven consecutive
weeks, breaking her previous record of six weeks with
"Like a Virgin", and would later assist
her in her winning the lead role in Evita. The album
was nominated for a Grammy in the same year, and Madonna
sang "Take a Bow" at the American Music
Awards. At the end of 2005, the album was certified
triple platinum in the U.S.
In an attempt to improve her acting
credentials, Madonna opted over the next few years
to take small roles in independent films. She appeared
as a singing telegram girl in Blue in the Face (1995)
and as a witch in Four Rooms (1995). She played the
part of a phone sex company owner in Spike Lee's flop
Girl 6 in 1996.
Madonna released a greatest ballads
album in 1996: Something to Remember. She began to
wear fashionable designer dresses and softened her
(by now medium length) hair to honey blonde. This
may have helped her to secure the coveted role of
Eva Perón in the 1996 film adaptation of Evita.
In 1996, Madonna is Eva Perón
in Alan Parker's motion picture Evita. The film marked
the first time that Madonna was heralded as an actress
in a leading role. She delivered a Golden Globe winning
performance and was critically praised. The Evita
soundtrack went on to become Madonna's twelfth platinum
album, thanks to the singles "Don't Cry for Me
Argentina" and "You Must Love Me",
the latter receiving an Oscar for best original song
in a film. While "You Must Love Me" was
a moderate hit on radio and MTV, it was actually a
dance remix of "Don't Cry for Me Argentina"
that cemented the soundtrack's mainstream pop success.
The remix became a worldwide top ten hit in December
1996/January 1997. The final release from this soundtrack
was "Another Suitcase In Another Hall" which
reached No.7 in the UK. There were also plans to release
"Buenos Aires" as the fourth single but
it was shelved although there are official remixes
of this title around.
Ray of Light
In 1996 Madonna became pregnant by her then lover,
personal trainer Carlos Leon, and on October 14 gave
birth to her daughter, Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon
(Lola). The next year Madonna began studying Kabbalah,
a mystical interpretation of the Torah. She took Yoga
lessons and pursued a vigorous exercise regime that
brought her body to a peak of toned fitness. In March
of 1998, at the age of 39, she released Ray of Light,
an album co-produced by European electronic music
performer William Orbit. The release was Madonna's
most critically-acclaimed recording since Like a Prayer,
and her biggest hit in nearly ten years, selling more
than seventeen million copies worldwide. It spawned
two U.S. top-ten singles, with "Frozen"
going to number two. Madonna also received three Grammy
awards for Ray of Light. Her only previous Grammy
was for "The Blonde Ambition Tour", which
won the Best Long Form Music Video award in 1992.
Other singles were "The Power of Good-Bye",
"Ray of Light" and the fan favorite "Nothing
Really Matters" in which the video Madonna was
dressed up as a Geisha. The video for "Ray Of
Light" was directed by Scandinavian director
Jonas Åkerlund and won Madonna a couple of MTV
Video Music Awards in 1998 - including Video Of The
Year.
After Ray of Light, Madonna contributed
the top twenty airplay hit "Beautiful Stranger"
to the soundtrack of the Austin Powers: the Spy Who
Shagged Me film in 1999. In 2000, Madonna focused
next on her pet project, a film called The NextBest
Thing. Critics and audiences alike panned the film,
which marked yet another disappointment in Madonna's
ill-fated film career. The soundtrack spawned the
worldwide (excluding the U.S.) number one hit, "American
Pie", a dance cover version of the Don McLean
classic. As of November 18, 2005 the song "Frozen"
is banned from Belgian radio and television. A judge
ruled that Madonna's song plagiarized another song
by composer Salvatore Acquaviva, who was born in Mouscron,
Belgium. The opening theme of "Frozen" was
said to be similar to the theme from the Belgian song.
Music
In 2000, at the age of 42, Madonna released the album
Music. A bona fide commercial and critical hit, it
saw Madonna abandon her earlier sexual and religious
themes for throwaway lyrics and the "party"
spirit of dance, pop, and house. Music was produced
partly by Orbit and partly by French techno musician
Mirwais Ahmadzai. It spawned her twelfth number one
single, "Music", plus the hits "Don't
Tell Me" and "What It Feels Like for a Girl".
Madonna was pregnant with her second child, Rocco,
during the shooting of the "Music" video,
parts of which contain animation. The controversial
"What It Feels Like for a Girl" video was
directed by Madonna's husband, film director Guy Ritchie.
Madonna married Ritchie on 22 December
2000 at Skibo Castle in Scotland.
She released her second Greatest Hits
album, GHV2, in 2001; unlike her previous greatest
hits compilation, GHV2 featured a selection of her
hits from the 1992–2001 period, but did not
contain any new songs. In June 2001, she appeared
in Star, a short commercial film directed for BMW
by Ritchie, and then began working on Swept Away.
The film, released in 2002, was critically panned
and went on to become yet another in a string of acting
flops.In 2001 Madonna went on her "Drowned World
Tour". It was completely sold out and was Madonna's
first world tour since 1993's "The Girlie Show
Tour".
In 2002, Madonna performed the theme
song to the James Bond film Die Another Day, a worldwide
top-ten hit (number eight on the Billboard Hot 100).
She also had the opportunity to have a cameo in the
film as a fencing instructor named Verity.The song
was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Original
Song.
American Life
Her reputation appeared to take a turn for
the worse in the U.S.A., however, when the critical
drubbing she received for Swept Away was followed
by an disputed reception for her 9th studio album,
American Life. Its electronic-acoustic sound and the
political/spiritual nature of its lyrics divided fans.
In yet another move that followed her pattern of creating
"controversy" in the wake of an album's
release, she filmed a music video for "American
Life", which included a scene of her tossing
a lighter shaped like a hand grenade into the lap
of a President George W. Bush lookalike. Perhaps mindful
of the protests and boycotts in the U.S.A. that had
greeted the Dixie Chicks after they made some anti-war
comments (though she publicly denied it in an interview
with Matt Lauer), the video was revoked on the day
it premiered; it was later replaced by a video simply
featuring Madonna performing the song in military
garb in front of changing flags of the world.
The album was an average worldwide success (except
the U.S) where the subsequent singles "Hollywood"
and "Love Profusion" continued to place
Madonna on the charts.Madonna performed in 2003 MTV
Video Music Awards in which she kissed Britney Spears
and Christina Aguilera on stage. It became one of
the most memorable performances in the history of
MTV Video Music Awards. (See main article Madonna
Kiss)
In 2004, Madonna embarked on her greatest
hits tour, the "Re-Invention World Tour",
during which she played fifty-six dates across the
world. The tour became the highest-grossing tour of
2004, earning 125 million dollars according to Billboard
magazine, and once again confirmed the longevity of
Madonna's popularity. After a brief battle with Warner
Brothers Records (with whom she shared record label
Maverick), Madonna sold her shares in the label and
announced that she is no longer involved in its dealings.
In the same month, Madonna announced that she had
adopted the name Esther, a tribute to the legendary
Jewish Queen of ancient Persia. This decision and
much of the artistic imagery used in her recent work
have been driven by Madonna's intense study of Kabbalah
at the controversial Kabbalah Centre in London, and
her abandonment of Catholicism.
On December 26, 2004, after a tsunami
hit India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Indonesia among
other countries, Madonna appeared in an NBC organized
aid concert called Tsunami Aid: A Concert of Hope,
televised on January 15, 2005. Madonna sang a cover
of John Lennon's song "Imagine". Then on
July 2, 2005, Madonna participated in the British
Live 8 concert, performing 3 hit songs. Before performing,
she greeted Birhan Woldu, a young woman who had almost
died in the Ethiopian famine in the 1980s, on stage.
Woldu's unexpected appearance on stage, followed immediately
by Madonna's performance of "Like a Prayer"
(hand-in-hand with Woldu), was hailed worldwide as
one of the highlights of the event. However, her explicit
langauge was met with complaints.
Confessions on a Dance Floor
The day of her forty-seventh birthday, Madonna was
thrown by a horse while riding with friends at her
English country home, Ashcombe House. She was admitted
to a hospital with five cracked ribs, a broken collar
bone, a misaligned fibula, a mild case of angina,
and a broken hand. She was released later that day.
A couple of months later, she released her 10th studio
album Confessions on a Dance Floor which debuted at
number one on the Billboard 200, selling 350,606 copies
in its first week. Her record label reported that
it debuted at #1 in over 25 different countries, and
shipped over 3 million copies that first week alone.
According to a press release, "On her highly
anticipated new Warner Bros. Records release, Confessions
on a Dance Floor, Madonna brilliantly re-invents dance
music for our time. A stunning creative leap into
the dazzling dimension of 'future disco', these dozen
new originals simultaneously capture the spontaneous
thrill of the iconic superstar’s early hits."
Confessions was co-produced by Madonna, Stuart Price
and a host of others including Mirwais Ahmadzai and
the Bloodshy & Avant. The first single, "Hung
Up" peaked at number one in more than 25 countries
becoming one of Madonna's biggest hits worldwide.
The track is remarkable in that it contains, at its
heart, a sample of the popular ABBA song "Gimme,
Gimme, Gimme (A Man After Midnight)". Benny Andersson
and Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA were quoted as saying
they allowed the use only because it was so good.
"I see that as a tribute," said Ulvaeus,
explaining: "We almost always say no to these
things. Madonna's assistant came over to Sweden and
played the track, and it was so catchy that Benny
and I immediately said 'Yes'. We have loads of offers
like that but we never say yes, but in this case it
was so cleverly done."
The album continued the worldwide
success of the single and peaked at number one in
nearly 40 countries, a record (The Beatles are in
second place with a recent No.1's compilation). She
also filmed her documentary titled I'm Going To Tell
You A Secret during her Re-Invention world tour showcasing
Madonna behind the scenes. On October 21, 2005 the
documentary made its TV debut on MTV.
Madonna opened the MTV Europe Music
Awards 2005, performing "Hung Up" live for
the first time. Performances at shows in Mannheim
(Germany), Paris, and London's KOKO, G-A-Y, annual
charity telethon BBC Children in Need, followed. She
also appeared at clubs in New York and London to promote
the album. On the 18th of November 2005.
Also in 2005, Madonna appeared, along
with other artists in a TV commercial for the Motorola
ROKR phone. The commercial features her song "Hung
Up".
Personal life
Italian influence
Though Madonna Ciccone is half French Canadian, more
often the influence of her Italian American heritage
has been reflected in her work. Perhaps this is because
Madonna's French Canadian mother died when Madonna
was five and Madonna was subsequently raised by her
Italian American father. (It has been claimed that
Madonna shares a common French Canadian ancestor with
Celine Dion.)
References to Madonna's Italian heritage
have often been found in her work. In the video for
"Truth or Dare", Madonna describes herself
as "Italian American". She says, "I'm
an Italian American and proud of it." In the
video for Papa Don't Preach she wears a shirt that
says, "Italians Do It Better". Madonna has
described her birth name -- Madonna Ciccone -- as
being "very Italian". The video for her
second concert tour, the "Who's That Girl?"
tour, was filmed in Turin, Italy; the video is titled
"Ciao Italia: Madonna Live from Italy".
The video to her first #1 song, Like a Virgin, featured
Madonna performing in Venice, Italy.
Fellow Italian American pop singer
Gwen Stefani has been quoted as saying that she and
Madonna share a common relative. Stefani has claimed
that her great aunt married a man from Detroit, Michigan
(the area of Michigan that Madonna is from) with the
last name "Ciccone."
Involvement with Kabbalah Centre
Since the late 1990s, Madonna has become a devotee
of the Kabbalah Centre and a disciple of its controversial
head Rabbi Philip Berg and his wife Karen. Madonna
and husband Guy Ritchie attend Kabbalah classes and
have been reported to have adopted a number of aspects
of the movement and associated with Judaism. The media
has reported that Madonna has taken-on the Biblical
name of Esther, has donated millions of dollars to
the Kabbalah Centre in London, no longer performs
on Friday nights because it's the time when the Jewish
Sabbath begins, wears a red string, has visited Israel
with members of the Kabbalah Centre to celebrate some
of the Jewish holidays, studies personally with her
own private-tutor rabbi Eitan Yardeni whose wife Sarah
Yardeni runs Madonna's favorite charitable project,
"Spirituality for Kids", a subsidiary of
the Kabbalah Centre . Madonna reportedly donated 21
million dollars towards a new Kabbalah school for
children.
Recently references to Kabbalah Centre
beliefs and principles have appeared in her music,
including the track "Nobody Knows Me" from
American Life (I sleep much better at night / I feel
closer to the Light / Now I'm gonna try / To Improve
my life). Controversy again surrounded her well before
the release of her most recent album Confessions on
a Dance Floor when many Israeli rabbis condemned Madonna
and the forthcoming song "Isaac" (tenth
on its track listing) for they believed the song to
be a tribute to Rabbi Isaac Luria, also known as Yitzhak
Luria (1534-1572), one of the greatest Kabbalists
of all time. Jewish law forbids using a holy rabbi's
name for profit. In interviews, Madonna had called
this song: "The Binding of Isaac" and rumors
spread that it was based on the major episode in the
life of the Hebrew patriarch Isaac. Despite continued
accusations that the song is about Isaac Luria, Madonna
has repeatedly denied such accusations, claiming she
could not think of a title for the song and, thereforere,
named it after Yitzhak (Isaac) Sinwani. In the song,
Madonna sings with Sinwani, an Israeli singer, who
is chanting a Yemenite Jewish song. Said Madonna:
"The album isn't even out, so how could Jewish
scholars in Israel know what my song is about? I don't
know enough about Isaac Luria to write a song, though
I've learned a bit in my studies."
Madonna has openly defended her Kabbalah studies by
stating, for example:
I wouldn't say studying Kabbalah
for eight years goes under the category or falls under
the category of being a fad or a trend. Now there
might be people who are interested in it because they
think it's trendy, but I can assure you that studying
Kabbalah is actually a very challenging thing to do.
It requires a lot of work, a lot of reading, a lot
of time, a lot of commitment and a lot of discipline
source from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
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