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Happy 60th Birthday, Madonna!


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Madonna at 60: The Queen of Pop in seven charts

By Clara GuibourgData journalist, BBC News
 

Madonna turns 60 on Thursday. To celebrate, we're taking a look back at her 35 years in the industry.

Since Madonna's eponymous debut album hit the shelves in 1983, she's performed on 10 concert tours and sold more than 300 million records. 

This has earned her a spot in the Guinness World Records as the best-selling female recording artist of all time. 

What else can a look at the numbers tell us about the Queen of Pop?

1) She's had more UK number one albums than any other female artist

Twelve of Madonna's albums have hit the number one spot. Only the Beatles and Elvis Presley can boast more.

Top albums

Greatest hits album The Immaculate Collection spent a 338 weeks in the charts after its release in 1990 - including more than two months at number one.

2) These are the people's favourites

Like A Virgin your favourite Madonna tune? Join the crowd: Spotify data ranks this 1984 classic as her most popular song.

In fact, only one song in the top five is not from the 80s: Hung Up from 2005. 


Most popular songs Presentational white space

3) She's had more singles in the top five than any other female artist

Madonna's had 46 singles make the top five in the UK charts - only Elvis has had more.


Chart: Madonna's top 5 singles by decade

The run of top five hits spans three decades, from Like A Virgin in 1984 to Celebration in 2009. 

onna: a fixture in the UK charts since the mid-1980s

4) Her Super Bowl performance was record-breaking

Obviously, Google wasn't around to tell us what people were curious about back in the 1980s.

But since 2010, global searches for Madonna reached their highest point in March 2012, when she was the Super Bowl's first female headline act since Janet Jackson had her "wardrobe malfunction" in 2004.


Chart: Google search interest in Madonna

In 2012, Madonna set a record for the highest viewing audience of a Super Bowl halftime show - which lasted until 2015 when it was smashed by Katy Perry and 'Left Shark'.

5) Spotify doesn't hear Madonna the same way we do

Most streaming services give songs a numeric value to determine if it's a "happy" or "sad" song, based on its key, tempo and other factors.

It only measures how the music sounds - and ignores the lyrical content - but uses this information to auto-recommend new music to us.

So looking at how Spotify's computers "hear" her work, they would classify it as getting "sadder" over time, with slower songs and more minor keys being used.


Chart: Madonna's musical positivity over time

Clearly this is far from the whole story - machines can't (currently) understand the words and "feel" songs in the way we do.

Some of Madonna's deepest, most emotional work is actually on her early albums, despite those records sounding more "happy" overall.

True Blue from 1986 ranks among the "happiest" sounding, despite songs covering teenage pregnancy, deceit and parental estrangement.

And while 2012's MDNA and 2015's Rebel Heart both sound "gloomier" to a computer, songs such as Give Me All Your Luvin and Girl Gone Wild are lyrically anything but.

So streaming services have a way to go before they can reveal more to us about a song than just its sound.

6) G major is the most common key

Madonna's studio albums feature songs in 24 different keys - but G major is the most common, with 17 songs employing it.


Chart: Madonna's most common keys

7) She's the richest female musician in America

Looks like she really is a Material Girl.

Forbes estimated Madonna's net worth at $580m (£454m) last year, making her the richest female artist based in America, comfortably $200m (£157m) ahead of runner-up Celine Dion. 


Chart: Richest female musicians

 
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Strike a Pose: Madonna’s 20 Most Essential Magazine Covers

http://www.newnownext.com/madonna-magazine-covers/08/2018/

"Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean, on the cover of a magazine..."
 

by Matthew Rettenmund 21h ago

 

Madonna turns 60 on August 16, and she has amassed one of the greatest music catalogues in history — but her visuals have always been at least as important to her legacy.

At The New Music Seminar way back in 1984, Madonna clapped back at fellow panelist John Oates of Hall & Oates when he moaned that rockers shouldn’t have to act in videos, saying, “If someone puts a camera on you, what’s the difference?”

 

For Madonna, who never met a camera she didn’t lick, the difference has been between being regarded merely as a great artist and as one of the biggest icons of all time.

She even sings about fetishizing the striking of poses — and being “on the cover of a magazine.”

Check out these 20 career-defining Madonna magazine covers, from her virginal first to her lady-of-the-manor latest.

http://www.newnownext.com/madonna-magazine-covers/08/2018/

 

Dance Music Authority (1982)

1982-1533833189-1533833190.jpeg?quality=
Island (1983)
1983-1533833184-1533833184.jpg?quality=0Rolling Stone(1984)
1984-1533833178-1533833179.jpeg?quality=
 
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Madonna celebrating her 60th birthday in Marrakech
Madonna is ready to celebrate her 60th birthday, and this time she chose to party in Marrakech.
The main location will be set in the castle of Richard Branson, patron of the Virgin and owner of the Kasbah Tamadot, a manor overlooking a canyon a few kilometers from the ocher city.

The castle is located a few kilometers from Marrakech and preparations are under way also in the historical center of the city; the Branson family in fact has luxury properties even within the ancient walls.

1646C501-1E62-4890-85BE-B52C70E70DE2.jpeg

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On 8/14/2018 at 11:58 AM, cailohfornia said:

I am getting impression that...

The UK/Europe/Australia (anywhere that's not the USA) are truly celebrating Madonna at 60 waaaaaay more than here in the US! And they're doing it respectfully and properly... but here in the U.S. barely signs of it tbh! How disgraceful

That is so disappointing what the fuck man! I am so disgruntled by America right now! USA just fucking celebrates/recognizes trash artists and social media "celebrities" instead of real icons and legends like Madonna. FUCK.

Because in American unless you're ill, dying, dead or saying something like "blowing up the White House" is all the attention you're going to get when you're over 40.  Just look at Aretha Franklin.  No one has talked about her in years and she just released an album last year, yet she's on her death bed and bam, she's "NEWS".  :Madonna002:

Anyway, I'm so happy to see so much love is given to her in other nations.  Respect is not all lost! 

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1 hour ago, Liam said:

Because in American unless you're ill, dying, dead or saying something like "blowing up the White House" is all the attention you're going to get when you're over 40.  Just look at Aretha Franklin.  No one has talked about her in years and she just released an album last year, yet she's on her death bed and bam, she's "NEWS".  :Madonna002:

Anyway, I'm so happy to see so much love is given to her in other nations.  Respect is not all lost! 

True.

America has ZERO respect for its legends, unless they're dead.

Anyway, happy birthday M :luv:

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Hello everyone, 

Today is a big day as it's Madonna 60's birthday! Crazy, huh? She's still such an inspiration after so many years! 

I wrote a paper and together with a graphic designer friend we recreated some of her big magazines covers with some titles about her career and life :)

have a look if you want and let me know what you think Article About Madonna In Stylight

I know it's in French but you can always just have a look at those illustrations :)

Madonna_Cover_Interview.jpg

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Tenacity, grit, determination, passion and artistic longevity are some of the words that best describe an artist like Madonna.
On her it was written and said the worst, but one thing is certain: everyone would have wanted a career like yours, and especially in the years when you really had to be "ass" to be and become artists. The Internet wasn't there and then everything was really around the character, and everything originated from this extraordinary woman.
Madonna was able to ride an unparalleled success after her. He changed the image of the pop concert by turning the stage into a traveling and mass theatre, sang the rights of women, men, gays, lesbians, marginalised by a society that does not see in diversity an added value. But she saw it and made diversity a distinctive sign of her.
It has been demonized in an America where we are shocked by a book in which we speak and imagine a world of sexual fantasies, s and x... but then it allows anyone to carry a weapon and make a massacre, where it allows To a homophobic president and unworthy to rule one of the most powerful nations in the world, because no one can think that it could be a woman.
Today this dark in the American dream has brought madonna to find in Europe that return to the origins that is missing from an America now as and not evolved. When recently on Vogue Italia tells us that music is all the same is not lying. The same is sad I would add.
The various wannabies dress the cloths of something they don't know... from Beyoncé to Rihanna passing through various clones (poorly succeeded) we are going through a moment of artistic death of music.
And we expect that at the chime of the new era you, the chameleon silent still skin and turn the dream into reality and reality in illusion, because Madonna, the last diva, is the only one who can still do it.
I look forward to you.
God save the Queen.
Happy Birthday Madonna❤️
Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott

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https://www.imaphotography.co.uk/blog/mlvc-a-bourgeois-rebel

MLVC
A Bourgeois Rebel 

Happy Birthday Madonna you legend 

The collage includes press clippings from various newspapers in the 1990’s that I kept in scrapbooks as a teenager. 
Read the blog here: 

https://www.imaphotography.co.uk/blog/mlvc-a-bourgeois-rebel

 #Madonna60

 

6AD6D5E9-5C68-43B0-832B-977143B09E34.jpeg

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