Madonna Extreme

Days after her 51st birthday, pop’s reigning queen reflects on three decades of provocation, scandal and monster hits. by Austin Scaggs Outside Madonna’s London home, which sits on a quaint street in the Marylebone neighborhood, hangs a sign that reads Someone famous may have thought once about living here. Today, that someone is on break from the last leg of her Sticky & Sweet Tour, and the house is buzzing with activity. In the basement, film editors are piecing together two new music videos. In the dimly lit foyer, with deep-blue walls and an old-master painting of a carnival in Venice, other staff mill about: an assistant, a construction worker, a maid and Madonna’s trainer, who is irritated about an unbecoming tabloid photo showing Madonna with sinewy arms. “I get hundreds of e-mails from people around the world who want that body,” the trainer complains. But in Madonna’s world, after 27 years of scandal and provocation, one unflattering pic is barely a blip on the radar...

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This week sees one of the biggest chart performers of all time make her first appearance on the Hot 100. Madonna Louise Ciccone was born in Bay City, Michigan in 1958. She moved to New York City in 1977 where she worked as a dancer and singer. She cut her first solo single,  Everybody  in 1982; it made it to #3 on the Dance chart but was a pop flop, bubbling under at #107. It was included on her eponymous  debut album , which produced another Dance #3,  Burning Up / Physical Attraction . The third time was the charm:  Holiday , a charming, joyous pop confection, debuted on the Hot 100 at #88 this week. It had just finished an impressive five-week run atop the Dance charts.  Holiday  sneaked up to #16 in January, a decent start that hardly warned of the phenomenon that was to come. Madonna  spawned two more hits:  Borderline  [#10, #4 Dance] and  Lucky Star  (#4, #1 Dance on the flip of  Ho...

These have not been an easy two years for Madonna. Since the release of “Truth or Dare,” it seems she can do little right. Proud of the film documenting her “Blonde Ambition” tour, she had granted more interviews than ever before, and familiarity bred contempt. Even more hype surrounded the release of her “Sex” book, followed by the disappointing “Erotica” album and the critically panned 1993 film “Body of Evidence,” all of which were seen as signs of her decline. The box-office success of Penny Marshall’s feel-good female baseball film “A League of Their Own,” the hit singles “This Used to Be My Playground” and “I’ll Remember” (which is one of her best-selling singles ever, spending 24 weeks on the Billboard charts), and the sell-out Girlie Show tour have conveniently been forgotten. “Madonna a-gonna!” screamed the headlines when the Girlie Show tour went to Britain, and tabloid stories this year have often portrayed her as a sad, sagging figure. In the United States, a per...