Madonna facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Madonna
Madonna in 2023
Born	Madonna Louise Ciccone (1958-08-16) August 16, 1958 (age 66) Bay City, Michigan, US
Occupation	Singer songwriter actress dancer record producer director author businesswoman
Years active	1979–present
Works	Albums songs singles unreleased videos concerts films books fashion brands
Spouse(s)	Sean Penn ​ ​ (m. 1985; div. 1989)​ Guy Ritchie ​ ​ (m. 2000; div. 2008)​
Partner(s)	Carlos Leon (1995–1997)
Children	6, including Lourdes Leon
Relatives	Christopher Ciccone (brother)
Awards	Full list
Musical career
Origin	New York City, US
Genres	Pop electronica dance
Instruments	Vocals guitar
Labels	Warner Sire Maverick Interscope
Signature

Madonna Louise Ciccone (/tʃɪˈkoʊni/; born August 16, 1958) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. With sales of over 300 million records worldwide, she is the best-selling female recording artist of all time. She is also the most successful solo artist in the history of the U.S.

Forbes estimated Madonna's net worth at $850 million as of 2024, making her one of the wealthiest musicians in the world.

Early life

Madonna Louise Ciccone was born on August 16, 1958, in Bay City, Michigan, to Catholic parents Madonna Louise (née Fortin) and Silvio Anthony "Tony" Ciccone. Her father's parents were Italian emigrants from Pacentro while her mother was of French-Canadian descent. Tony Ciccone worked as an engineer designer for Chrysler and General Motors. Her mother died of cancer on December 1, 1963. She had two older brothers, Anthony and Martin, and three younger siblings, Paula, Christopher, and Melanie. In 1966, Tony married the family's housekeeper Joan Gustafson. They had two children, Jennifer and Mario. Madonna resented her father for getting remarried and began rebelling against him, which strained their relationship for many years afterward.

Madonna attended St. Frederick's and St. Andrew's Catholic Elementary Schools, and West Middle School. She was known for her high grade point average and achieved notoriety for her unconventional behavior. She later admitted to seeing herself in her youth as a "lonely girl who was searching for something. I wasn't rebellious in a certain way. I cared about being good at something. <...> But I studied and I got good grades... I wanted to be somebody."

Madonna's father put her in classical piano lessons, but she later convinced him to allow her to take ballet lessons. Christopher Flynn, her ballet teacher, persuaded her to pursue a career in dance. Madonna later attended Rochester Adams High School and became a straight-A student as well as a member of its cheerleading squad. After graduating, she received a dance scholarship to the University of Michigan and studied over the summer at the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina.

In 1978, Madonna dropped out of college and relocated to New York City. She said of her move to New York, "It was the first time I'd ever taken a plane, the first time I'd ever gotten a taxi cab. I came here with $35 in my pocket. It was the bravest thing I'd ever done."

Career

Madonna soon found an apartment in the Alphabet City neighborhood of the East Village and had little money while working at Dunkin' Donuts and with modern dance troupes.

After performing as a drummer, guitarist, and vocalist in the rock bands Breakfast Club and Emmy, Madonna decided to promote herself as a solo artist. Both her debut single, "Everybody" (1982), and her second single, "Burning Up", reached number three on Billboard magazine's Hot Dance Club Songs chart. She rose to stardom with her 1983 eponymous debut studio album. A series of successful albums followed, including all-time bestsellers Like a Virgin (1984), True Blue (1986), and The Immaculate Collection (1990), as well as Grammy Award winners Ray of Light (1998) and Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005).

In 1985, Madonna embarked on her first concert tour in North America, the Virgin Tour. The tour saw the peak of Madonna wannabe phenomenon, with many female attendees dressing like her.

Madonna's popularity was enhanced by roles in films such as Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Dick Tracy (1990), A League of Their Own (1992) and Evita (1996). While the lattermost won her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, many of her other films were not as well received.

In January 2023, Madonna announced the Celebration Tour, her first greatest hits concert tour, which will run from July 2023 to January 2024 with special guest Bob the Drag Queen. The following March, it was announced that she would collaborate on three songs of the Christine and the Queens album Paranoïa, Angels, True Love. On June 2, 2023, Madonna collaborated with The Weeknd and Playboi Carti on the single "Popular", which was taken from the soundtrack to the drama series The Idol.

On June 24, 2023, Madonna was hospitalized after being found unresponsive in her New York City apartment. She was treated in the intensive care unit and was intubated. Madonna spent five days in the hospital to receive treatment for a "serious bacterial infection" following a low-grade fever. As a result, the initial North American leg of her Celebration Tour was postponed. The first concert took place on October 14, 2023 at The O2 Arena, London, to critical acclaim.

Following the Celebration Tour, Madonna restarted work on her biographical film. She considered reworking it into a television series as a result. Madonna shifted her focus towards conceiving new music with Stuart Price. In February 2025, the singer revealed she was working on a sequel to 2005's Confessions on a Dance Floor, which Price also produced.

As a businesswoman, she founded the company Maverick in 1992, which included Maverick Records, one of the most successful artist-run labels in history. Madonna's other ventures include fashion brands, written works, health clubs and filmmaking. She contributes to various charities, having founded the Ray of Light Foundation in 1998 and Raising Malawi in 2006, and advocates for gender equality.

Personal life

Madonna married actor Sean Penn on her birthday in 1985. After several years of tumulous marriage, Madonna filed for divorce from Penn on January 5, 1989.

Madonna's eldest daughter, Lourdes Leon, was born October 14, 1996. Leon's father is Carlos Leon, personal trainer and actor.

Madonna met director Guy Ritchie in mid-1998, and gave birth to their son Rocco John Ritchie in Los Angeles on August 11, 2000. Rocco was christened at Dornoch Cathedral in Dornoch, Scotland, on December 21, 2000. Madonna married Ritchie the following day at nearby Skibo Castle. The couple divorced in 2009 citing irreconcilable differences.

Madonna decided to adopt a Malawian boy named David Banda in October 2006. The adoption raised strong public reaction, because Malawian law requires would-be parents to reside in Malawi for one year before adopting, which Madonna did not do. She addressed this on The Oprah Winfrey Show, saying that there were no written adoption laws in Malawi that regulated foreign adoption. Madonna described how Banda had been suffering from pneumonia after surviving malaria and tuberculosis when they first met. The adoption was finalized in May 2008.

She later adopted Chifundo "Mercy" James from Malawi. In February 2017, Madonna adopted four-year-old twin sisters from Malawi named Estere and Stella, and she moved to live in Lisbon, Portugal, in mid-2017 with her adoptive children.

Influences

According to Taraborrelli, the death of her mother had the most influence in shaping Madonna into the woman she would become. He believed that the devastation and abandonment Madonna felt at the loss of her mother taught her "a valuable lesson, that she would have to remain strong for herself because, she feared weakness—particularly her own."

Madonna was influenced by Debbie Harry (left) and Chrissie Hynde (right), whom she called "strong, independent women who wrote their own music and evolved on their own".

Madonna's major influences include Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, Karen Carpenter, the Supremes and Led Zeppelin, as well as dancers Martha Graham and Rudolf Nureyev. She also grew up listening to David Bowie, whose show was the first rock concert she ever attended.

Musical style and composition

Madonna has remained in charge in every aspect of her career, including as a writer and producer in most of her own music. Madonna's early songwriting skill was developed during her time with the Breakfast Club in 1979. She subsequently became the sole writer of five songs on her debut album, including "Lucky Star" which she composed on synthesizer. As a songwriter, Madonna has registered more than 300 tracks to ASCAP, including 18 songs written entirely by herself. Rolling Stone has named her "an exemplary songwriter with a gift for hooks and indelible lyrics." Despite having worked with producers across many genres. Madonna has been nominated for being inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame three times. In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked Madonna at number 56 on the "100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time" list.

Madonna's discography is generally categorized as pop, electronica, and dance.

Voice and instruments

Madonna playing the guitar riff of "A New Level" by heavy metal band Pantera during the 2008 Sticky & Sweet Tour

Madonna possesses a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Besides singing, she can play several musical instruments. Piano was the first instrument taught to her as a child. In the late 1970s, she learned to play the drum and guitar from her then-boyfriend Dan Gilroy, before joining the Breakfast Club line-up as the drummer. She later played the guitar with the band Emmy as well as on her own demo recordings. After her career breakthrough, Madonna was absent performing with guitar for years. Madonna decided to perform with guitar again during the promotion of Music (2000) and recruited guitarist Monte Pittman to help improve her skill. Since then, Madonna has played the guitar on every tour, as well as her studio albums. She received a nomination for Les Paul Horizon Award at the 2002 Orville H. Gibson Guitar Awards.

Awards and achievements

Madonna was the first person to be inducted into the Wembley Square of Fame in London, England.

Madonna's net worth is estimated between US$590 million to $800 million. Forbes has named her the annual top-earning female musician 11 times across the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. She has sold over 300 million records worldwide. The Guinness World Records acknowledged her as the bestselling female music artist of all time. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), she is the bestselling female rock artist of the 20th century and the third highest-certified female albums artist in the United States, with 65.5 million certified album units. She has the most RIAA multi-platinum albums by a female artist, with 12 releases (tying with Barbra Streisand).

Madonna had generated over US$1.5 billion from ticket sales of her concert tours throughout her career. According to Billboard Boxscore, she is the highest-grossing female touring artist of all time, grossing over $1.376 billion between 1990 and 2020. Madonna also remains the only woman in history to have two solo concerts with 100,000 sold tickets; her Who's That Girl World Tour's concert in Parc de Sceaux, Paris, drew over 130,000 audience, while her Girlie Show's concert in Maracanã Stadium, Rio de Janeiro, drew over 120,000 audience. She has also won seven Grammy Awards and twenty MTV Video Music Awards, including the 1986 Video Vanguard Award for which she became the first female recipient.

According to Billboard, Madonna is the most successful solo artist in the Hot 100 chart history (second overall behind the Beatles) and the most successful dance club artist of all time. With a total of 50 Dance Club Songs chart-toppers, Madonna became the artist with the most number ones on any singular Billboard chart, pulling ahead of George Strait with 44 number-one songs on the Hot Country Songs chart. She has also scored 38 top-ten singles on the Hot 100; she held the record among all artists for nearly two decades (between 2002 and 2020), before being overtaken by Drake and by Taylor Swift in 2022 among females. Internationally, Madonna holds the record for the most number-one singles by a female artist in Australia (11), Canada (24), Italy (23), Finland (7), Spain (21), and the United Kingdom (13). At the 40th anniversary of the GfK Media Control Charts, Madonna was ranked as the most successful singles artist in German chart history.

Interesting facts about Madonna

• Since Madonna had the same name as her mother, family members called her "Little Nonnie".
• The singer has cited Nancy Sinatra as one of her idols.
• Madonna is often referred to in the media as the "Queen of Pop".
• She became the first ever woman to accumulate US$1 billion in concert revenue.
• True Blue remains Madonna's bestselling studio album, with sales of 25 million copies. It was featured in the 1992 edition of Guinness World Records as the bestselling album by a woman of all time.
• There is an academic mini subdiscipline devoted to the singer called Madonna studies.
• According to Acclaimed Music, which statistically aggregates hundreds of critics' lists, Madonna is the most acclaimed female musician of all time.

Madonna quotes

• "No matter who you are, no matter what you did, no matter where you've come from, you can always change, become a better version of yourself."
• "I stand for freedom of expression, doing what you believe in, and going after your dreams."
• "If your joy is derived from what society thinks of you, you're always going to be disappointed."
• "I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art."
• "Better to live one year as a tiger, then a hundred as sheep."
• "We all fall to the floor at some point. It's how you pick yourself up that's the real challenge."

Discography

Filmography

Films starred

Films directed

• Filth and Wisdom (2008)
• W.E. (2011)

Enterprises

• Maverick (1992–2004)
• Ray of Light Foundation (1998)
• Raising Malawi (2006)
• Hard Candy Fitness (2010–2019)
• Truth or Dare by Madonna (2011–2018)

Images for kids

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  Madonna performing at the 2001 Drowned World Tour, the highest-grossing tour of the year by a solo artist

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  Madonna performing at the 2004 Re-Invention World Tour, the highest-grossing tour of the year

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  Madonna performing on the 2009 leg of the Sticky & Sweet Tour, which was the second highest-grossing tour of all time

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  Madonna receiving the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song in 2012.

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  Madonna, joined by Cee Lo Green and a marching band, performing during the Super Bowl XLVI halftime show on February 5, 2012

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  Madonna performing at the Rebel Heart Tour in 2016

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  Madonna performing at the Madame X Tour in 2020

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  Wax figure of Madonna at Madame Tussauds museum in Hong Kong

See also

In Spanish: Madonna para niños