Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone (born August 16, 1958 in Bay City, Michigan, United States), known as Madonna, is the Queen of Pop, an iconic dance-pop singer-songwriter, record and film producer, dancer, actress, author, philanthropist and fashion icon. She is noted for her ambitious music videos and stage performances as well as using political, sexual, and religious themes in her work.
In 2000, Guinness World Records listed Madonna as the most successful female recording artist of all time, with estimated worldwide sales of 120 million albums; in 2005, her record company credited her as having sold over 200 million albums worldwide.
Read more Madonna is the highest earning female singer of all time according to both the 2007 Guinness Book of Records and Billboard Magazine. Forbes magazine has estimated her net worth at $325 million. In addition, Madonna's 2008/2009 Sticky & Sweet Tour holds the record for the highest-grossing concert tour ever by a female artist or solo with gross of $US280 million, surpassing the title previous held by her Confessions Tour.
After signing to Sire Records in 1982, her debut single
Everybody was released in October of the same year. One year later, her debut album
Madonna followed, and since then hits such as
Holiday,
Like a Virgin and
Like a Prayer catapulted her to massive success. By the 1990s, her commercially successful albums, constantly reinvented image, groundbreaking music videos and controversial nature would earn her the title "Queen of Pop."
According to the aforementioned Guinness Book of World Records, Madonna is the most successful female solo artist of all time. Apart from achieving 12 No.1 singles and 37 top 10 singles on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, 48 top 40 hits, maintains the record for the most separate calendar weeks as a female artist with a charting single in any position (853+ weeks), she has also garnered 20 MTV Video Music Awards (including the Video Vanguard Award), seven Grammy Awards, as well as a Best Actress (Musical or Comedy) Golden Globe Award for her performance in "Evita". Two soundtrack cuts performed by Madonna,
Sooner or Later and
You Must Love Me, were awarded with Oscars. On the United World Chart, Madonna is the Most Successful Singles Artist of All Time and has a record of 13 Number One singles. Madonna also holds the record of 39 #1 Hot Dance Club Play hits in the US, the most for any other female singer or artist.
The 2005 album
Confessions on a Dance Floor, co-written & produced by Stuart Price previously known best for his remixes and as band member of
Les Rythmes Digitales and
Zoot Woman by set a new world record by going to No. 1 in a total of 40 countries, the most ever for an album. The lead single,
Hung Up, also set a record for going to No. 1 in 41 countries. Hung Up has become one of Madonna's best selling singles ever with a total sales of 4.7+ million from digital, ring tones and single sales. It uses a sample from
ABBA's
Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! after begging to use it the Swedish group finally allowed her to.
Madonna released her eleventh studio album,
Hard Candy, in April 2008. It was lauded by Rolling Stone as an "impressive taste of her upcoming tour." The album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, and the Billboard 200, with over 280,000 copies sold. Its lead single
4 Minutes reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100. The single scored Madonna her thirty-seventh Billboard Hot 100 top ten hit, thus surpassing Elvis Presley as the artist with the most top-ten hits. In the United Kingdom, she retained her record for the most number one singles for a female artist, this being her thirteenth. To further promote the album, Madonna embarked on the Sticky & Sweet Tour, which was her first major venture with Live Nation and became the highest-grossing concert tour ever by a solo artist. It ended on September 2, 2009 in Tel Aviv, Israel.
