100 Best Albums
- 21 MAR 1989
- 11 Songs
- Popular (feat. Playboi Carti) [Music from the HBO Original Series The Idol] - Single · 2023
- Like a Prayer · 1989
- Confessions on a Dance Floor · 2005
- 4 Minutes (The Remixes) [feat. Justin Timberlake & Timbaland] - EP · 2008
- Like a Virgin · 1984
- Celebration (Deluxe Version) · 1986
- Frozen - Single · 2021
- Celebration (Deluxe Version) · 2008
- True Blue · 1986
- Madonna · 1983
Essential Albums
- Ray of Light was both a comeback for Madonna and a sign of dance music’s impending claim to the pop throne. Her voice is impeccable throughout, but it's the album's slinky, rich dance-floor atmospherics that really set things in a new direction, with producer William Orbit giving the trip-hoppy “Frozen” a lush, dramatic feel and the title track its giddy euphoria. There's also a prevalent hypnotic and spiritual vibe— owing to Madonna's turn to Kabbalah—that helps make it one of the superstar's most exciting albums in years.
- 100 Best Albums After a busy 1987—the year in which Madonna not only starred in the movie Who’s That Girl, but also launched a hit single and a massive tour of the same name—the singer took a breather in 1988. But in early 1989, she split from husband Sean Penn, whom she’d married just four years earlier. Their divorce was soon finalised, and the newly single Material Girl arrived at a personal crossroads—one that fueled her landmark fourth album, Like a Prayer. From the gospel ecstasy of its chart-topping title track—and its controversial accompanying video, which mixed religion, racism and interracial desire as only Madonna could—Like a Prayer is the work of a pop sensation who’s made it through tabloid hell and has come out of the experience reborn as a true-blue artist. And while there’s only an occasional reference to the Penn breakup on Like a Prayer—most notably on the dizzying synth-pop bop “Till Death Do Us Part”—the album finds Madonna making the personal stuff about her, and not her ex. That means digging into her family trauma on “Promise to Try”, a heartfelt reflection on her mother’s death, and “Oh Father”, which takes a tough yet tender look at her daddy issues (“Oh Father”, in which Madonna stretches into Beatles-esque baroque pop, is one of several tracks on the album she wrote and produced with collaborator Patrick Leonard). All that soul-baring also results in Like a Prayer being her most soulful set since her 1983 self-titled debut. “Keep It Together” gives a knowing nod to Sly & the Family Stone, while “Love Song” is a funky meeting of music royalty between the Queen of Pop and Prince. Then there’s the massive “Express Yourself”, the worldwide smash Madonna co-created with Stephen Bray, her former Breakfast Club bandmate. Anthemic, affirming and undeniably powerful, the song is nothing short of Madonna’s “Respect”.
- A lot happened for Madonna between the years between her 1984 smash album Like a Virgin and its 1986 follow-up, True Blue. The singer appeared in her first two movies: The young-love drama Vision Quest— for which she recorded “Crazy for You”, her second No. 1 single—and the smartly fizzy comedy Desperately Seeking Susan, which produced an all-time classic with “Into the Groove”. As if that wasn’t enough, she delivered her third chart-topper, the ballad “Live to Tell”, for her then-husband Sean Penn’s bleak crime film At Close Range. “Live to Tell”, which would become the first single off True Blue, was the first in a string of era-defining hits that Madonna would co-write and co-produce with Patrick Leonard. You can hear the singer maturing as both a lyricist and a vocalist on “Live to Tell”—but it’s hardly the only moment of artistic growth to be found on True Blue. The second single, “Papa Don’t Preach”—yet another No. 1 hit—found the Material Girl tackling social issues for the first time. And “Open Your Heart”, fittingly, finds Madonna at her most open-hearted, with one of her most vulnerable vocals. It’s also one of several True Blue tracks in which Madonna goes deeper into the 1960s girl-group groove, along with “Where’s the Party”, “Jimmy Jimmy” and, of course, the title track. Elsewhere on the album, “White Heat”—one of a handful of tracks featuring her Like a Virgin collaborator Stephen Bray—feels like a precursor to Madonna’s role as Breathless Mahoney in the 1990 film Dick Tracy. Meanwhile, the Latin-flavoured “La Isla Bonita” inspired everything from her 1987 song “Who’s That Girl” to Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro”.
- 2008
- The crown jewels from the Queen of Pop.
- The sentimental side of the Queen of Pop.
- Her boundary-busting sexuality and infectious dance grooves set the standard.
- It's Madonna's first-ever tour celebrating her decades-spanning catalogue. See the set list here.
- The treasures that prove she can take on any type of pop.
- You know she’ll take you there.
Live Albums
Compilations
Appears On
- Madge made peace with her family, her God, and herself.
- Madonna valued her creative freedom over a lucrative deal.
- Revisiting two legendary shows in Super Bowl Halftime history.
- Madonna’s dual drop commanded pop culture’s attention.
- The Queen's frequent remixer spins classics for her birthday.
- Huey counts down the top '80s hits from the Material Girl.
- Celebrating the Queen of Pop with remixes of her hit songs.
About Madonna
When Madonna Louise Ciccone was 15, she put on a black silk cape and the biggest platform shoes she owned, snuck out of her bedroom window in suburban Michigan, and hitch-hiked to Detroit to see David Bowie live. The night changed her life—not just because the music was great, but because, as she put it more than 20 years later while accepting Bowie’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, “it was great theatre. Here was this beautiful, androgynous man, just being so…perverse.” More than a musician, Madonna—like Bowie was—is a supreme cultural curator. She's an artist capable of combining styles and images in ways that are both novel and groundbreaking, who changes with such frequency and confidence that change has become her defining characteristic. Born in Bay City, Michigan, in 1958, she spent her childhood studying ballet, later moving to New York to try and make it as a dancer. (She was fired from a brief stint at a Times Square Dunkin’ Donuts after spraying a customer—either accidentally or on purpose, she never confirmed—with doughnut jelly.) After playing in a couple of New Wave bands, she went solo, exploring a simple, almost punky, almost amateurish take on dance music (“Borderline”, “Lucky Star”) that brought the grandeur of disco down to human scale. She remained more or less invincible throughout the '80s, releasing a string of albums (Like a Virgin, True Blue and Like a Prayer) that continue to define the era. Like Prince, her music was immediate but her character was incredibly complex: She could be brassy (“Material Girl”) and sweet (“Open Your Heart”), earnest (“Papa Don’t Preach”) and playful (“Like a Virgin”), sacred and profane—a variety that widened the emotional spectrum for pretty much every female pop artist in her wake. In the ’90s, she shifted her focus more explicitly to the intersection of sex and power (Erotica, Bedtime Stories, the photo book Sex), with a sound that flirted with house, new jack swing and late-night R&B. (Between “Vogue” and the tour documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare, it was also a moment when she leaned into her support of the LGBTQ community—a relationship that has defined her career.) Just as quickly as she’d embraced her inner sinner, she pivoted, first with a role as former Argentinian first lady Eva Perón in the 1996 film and soundtrack Evita, then with the 1998 album Ray of Light—projects that rechristened her as a mature, soul-searching artist in a chaotic world. She kept pace through the 2000s and 2010s, exploring disco, electro and minimalistic takes on ’80s dance music, continuing to track the sound of the times while always, somehow, remaining herself. When she was a young woman pursuing a dance career in New York, she’d been given a nickname by the famed choreographer Martha Graham: Madame X, a shape-shifting woman whose identity was, as the name suggests, a variable. About 40 years later, she embraced the moniker for 2019’s Madame X, an album influenced by the yearning fado music of her adopted home of Lisbon, Portugal.
- HOMETOWN
- Bay City, MI, United States
- BORN
- 16 August 1958
- GENRE
- Pop