Madonna
Pop singer. Born August 16, 1958 in Rochester, Michigan. She trained as a dancer at University of Michigan before moving to New York City, where she began her professional career as a back-up singer to a number of New York groups. She hired Michael Jackson's manager prior to releasing Madonna (1983), an album which included five US hit singles.
Subsequent albums have included Like a Virgin (1984), True Blue (1986), Ray of of Light (1998), Music (2000), American Life (2003), and Confessions on a Dancefloor (2005).
Her defiant and raunchy stage appearances became an important role model for teenagers in the 1980s and 1990s, and her international success has been secured by clever promotion and image-making.
This was reinforced in several media in the early 1990s, with the publication of a controversial collection of erotic photographs of herself in Sex (1992), alongside an album, Erotica.