Madonna was born on August 16, 1958. She's the most successful female pop star ever, a dominant presence in American music and culture for almost forty years.
Madonna originally wanted to be a dancer. She was a straight-A student and a cheerleader in high school, and went to the University of Michigan on a dance scholarship. She attended summer classes at the American Dance Festival, studying both ballet and modern dance. In 1978, Madonna dropped out of college and moved to New York, where she continued to study dance, taking classes at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and performing with several modern dance companies.
She took her first steps into music in 1979, co-founding the group Breakfast Club. In 1981, she left the group, performing briefly with another band before deciding to focus on a solo career. (The post-Madonna Breakfast Club would go on to have one big pop hit in 1987, "Right on Track.")
Her first singles in 1982 and 1983, "Everybody" and "Burning Up," were big hits in the dance club, leading to the release of her debut album, Madonna. And almost instantly, Madonna was a smash. In the 1980s, it seemed that she could do no wrong. From "Lucky Star" in 1983 to "Cherish" in 1989, every single Madonna released made it to the top ten of the pop charts, a string of 18 consecutive hits that included "Material Girl," "Like a Virgin," "Papa Don't Preach," "Like a Prayer," and "Express Yourself."
Sex had always been an important part of Madonna's presentation, and she'd never been afraid of controversy. In the early 1990s, she took that to new levels. Her greatest hits album, The Immaculate Collection, included the new song "Justify My Love," which was accompanied by a music video that included scenes of bondage and sadomasochism too explicit for MTV, which refused to play the video. That didn't stop the song, which went right to #1.
The more extreme Madonna continued with her next album, Erotica, which was released simultaneously with the coffee-table book Sex, a collection of erotic photographs. The controversy continued with a 1994 appearance on David Letterman's talk show, during which she asked Letterman to sniff a pair of her panties, made a non-stop series of raunchy jokes, and had to be bleeped for profanity more than a dozen times.
The 1994 album Bedtime Stories was seen by many critics as an attempt to soften her image; it was a mellower R&B/pop album, much less overtly sexual than Erotica had been. The album and its songs were a success, with "Take a Bow" becoming Madonna's biggest hit ever, spending 7 weeks at #1 on the charts.
Madonna's next project was an ambitious departure; she took on the role of Eva Peron in the film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita. There was a lot of skepticism when her casting was announced, but her performance was generally well received, and she won the Golden Globe Award as Best Actress. That was something of an exception in Madonna's film career, which has not generally been successful. She is a five-time winner of the tongue-in-cheek Golden Raspberry Award for the year's worst actress, and in 2000, won a special Golden Razzie as Worst Actress of the Century.
In 1998, Madonna shifted musical gears again with Ray of Light, an album which helped to bring electronica into the mainstream of American pop. Since then, she's continued to explore a wide variety of pop styles—folk and acoustic music on American Life, straightforward dance music on Confessions on a Dance Floor, R&B and hip-hop on Hard Candy.
In addition to her popularity as a singer, Madonna also writes and produces much of her music, and while she doesn't often show off her instrumental skills, she's also a talented guitarist. She has been a master of controlling, manipulating, and altering her image and her style to keep up with, and to set, trends in pop music. She works hard at her craft, which has been particularly noticeable in the development of her voice. Early in her career, critics described her as "Minnie Mouse on helium;" her voice has become richer and her range wider over the years, particularly after the intensive vocal training she went through in preparation for Evita.
Madonna has had a career of remarkable consistency for longer than any other American pop singer, with 38 singles reaching the top ten of the pop charts. (On the dance charts, she's been even more impressive, with 44 #1 hits since 1983.) She led the way for the mega-divas who dominated the charts in later decades, and was a clear influence on singers like Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, and Pink. She's a fashion icon, a feminist icon, and a gay icon, and she took complete control of her music and her image in a way that very few musicians have ever done. Madonna simply is, a seemingly unstoppable force, and it's impossible to imagine what American pop music would have been without her.
In addition to the albums linked above, more of Madonna's music is available for streaming at Hoopla.