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Madonna (born August 16, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she 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". Critics have praised Madonna for her diverse musical productions while at the same time serving as a lightning rod for religious controversy.

Madonna

Madonna career was further enhanced by film appearances that began in 1979, despite mixed commentary. She won critical acclaim and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for her role in Evita (1996), but has received harsh feedback for other film roles. Madonna's other ventures include being a fashion designer, children's book author, film director and producer. Madonna has been acclaimed as a businesswoman. In 1992, she founded entertainment company Maverick as a joint venture with Time Warner. In 2007, Madonna signed an unprecedented US $120 million contract with Live Nation.

Madonna has sold more than 300 million records worldwide and is recognized as the world's top-selling female recording artist of all time by the Guinness World Records. 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. 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 the Billboard chart. She was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the same year. Considered to be one of the "25 Most Powerful Women of the Past Century" by Time for being an influential figure in contemporary music, Madonna is known for continuously reinventing both her music and image, and for retaining a standard of autonomy within the recording industry.

Life and career

Early life and career beginnings
Madonna was born in Bay City, Michigan, on August 16, 1958. Her father, Silvio Anthony Ciccone, is a first-generation Italian American, while her mother, Madonna Louise (n�e Fortin), was of French Canadian descent. The Ciccone family originated from Pacentro, Italy; her father later worked as a design engineer for Chrysler and General Motors. Madonna was nicknamed "Little Nonni" to distinguish her from her mother. The third of six children from the same two parents, her full-blood siblings are: Martin, Anthony, Paula, Christopher, and Melanie. Madonna was raised Roman Catholic. Upon receiving confirmation, she adopted Veronica as an additional confirmation name. She was raised in the Detroit suburbs of Pontiac and Avon Township (now part of Rochester Hills).

Madonna

Her mother died of breast cancer at the age of 30 in 1963. 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. 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." 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."

Madonna eventually learned to take care of herself and her siblings, and she 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. 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." Terrified that her father could be taken from her as well, Madonna was often unable to sleep unless she was near him. Her father married the family's housekeeper Joan Gustafson, and they had two children: Jennifer and Mario Ciccone. At this point, Madonna began to express unresolved feelings of anger towards her father that lasted for decades, and developed a rebellious attitude. 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.

Madonna later attended Rochester Adams High School, and was a straight-A student and a member of the cheerleading squad. After graduating, she received a dance scholarship to the University of Michigan. She convinced her father to allow her to take ballet lessons and was persuaded by Christopher Flynn, her ballet teacher, to pursue a career in dance. At the end of 1977 she dropped out of college and relocated to New York City. She had little money and worked as a waitress at Dunkin' Donuts and with modern dance troupes. 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." 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." While performing as a dancer for the French disco artist Patrick Hernandez on his 1979 world tour, Madonna became romantically involved with musician Dan Gilroy. They formed her first rock band, the Breakfast Club, for which Madonna sang and played drums and guitar. In 1980 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.

2010�present: W.E. and twelfth studio album
Madonna performed "Like a Prayer" at the Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief concert in January 2010. 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. She announced plans to direct her second film, W.E., a biopic about the affair between King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson; it was co-written with Alek Keshishian. She later clarified that the film is about a woman's journey and was not going to be about the duchess' life. Instead, the duchess would act as the woman's spiritual guide. Following the completion of the shooting for W.E, Madonna released the "Material Girl" clothing line, which she designed with her daughter, Lourdes. 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. 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 stopped from selling and the profits be returned. The Material Girl clothing was first fronted by Taylor Momsen but she was later replaced by Kelly Osbourne.

Madonna

Madonna granted American TV show Glee the rights to her entire catalogue of music, and the producers planned an episode which would feature Madonna songs exclusively. 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. 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" in not just expressing admiration for the singer, but "demonstrating a potent understanding of why Madonna matters." Glee: The Music, The Power of Madonna, an EP containing eight cover versions of Madonna songs featured in the episode was released in May. The EP debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, with 98,000 copies sold in the U.S. Madonna also announced plans to open 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. The first of the gyms was opened at Mexico City in November 2010, as Madonna believed that Mexico City "will serve as a great test market before bringing the gyms to cities around the world." She added, "If any of you have seen my shows, you know that I don't skimp on them, and the same is true for the gym. We spend what it takes to make a globally first-class gym."

W.E. premiered out of the main competition at the 2011 Venice Film Festival, and received mixed reviews. In June 2011, Madonna's manager, Guy Oseary, took to his Twitter page to confirm that Madonna would begin recording her twelfth studio album the following month. Later, Madonna confirmed during the premiere of W.E. that the album will be released before spring of 2012, and a new single will precede it in February. The single will feature Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. who both appear in the music video directed by Megaforce. The singer signed to Universal Records�who became the main promoter for the album�through her deal with Live Nation. In an interview with Extra, Madonna confirmed she had contributed a new song titled "Masterpiece" for the W.E. soundtrack, composed by herself, Julie Frost and Jimmy Harry. The song will play over the end credits of the film and will be included on the new album. By December 2011, the National Football League (NFL) confirmed that Madonna will perform at the Bridgestone Super Bowl XLVI Halftime Show to be broadcast on NBC on February 5, 2012, from Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. The performance will be visualized by Cirque Du Soleil and Jamie King. It was also announced that she would release a second fashion brand named Truth or Dare by Madonna. It will be the second partnership with MG Icon and Macy's, and involve footwear, handbags, intimates, accessories and fragrance.