Madonnacom Madonna Louise Ciccone was born on August 16, 1958 in Bay City, Michigan, USA. Raised in a large Italian American and French-Canadian-American, (both were devout Catholic) family in the Detroit suburb of Rochester, Madonna lost her mother to cancer when she was five years old. She took classes in piano and ballet, and was an active participant in a variety of artistic activities at school. She received a dance scholarship and attended the University of Michigan for two years but quit and moved to the Corona, Queens district of New York in 1978 to pursue dance and acting professionally. [click here for more]



Confessions on a Dance Floor:
"Apparently there's nothing in Kabbalah that disallows sweaty, head-spinningly good dance music, because here comes a flame-haired Madonna hawking a dozen songs' worth: Confessions on a Dance Floor darts seamlessly from Madge's early days, when she emerged as the genre's enduring darling, through the political, kiddie, and acoustic pap that drove a wedge between her and early adopters of the fingerless glove look. Songs like the pop-leaning "Jump" and first single "Hung Up"--an adrenaline drip on high that, like many of these tracks, will inspire mild shame among those who've thrilled to the much thinner disco-dusted outpourings of younger divas recently--represent both a return to form and an unmistakable march into the future. "Get Together" is a sonic freak-out in the best sense; "Push" traffics in gut-level futuristic trance; and "Forbidden Love" loops in '80s blips and bleeps for a follow-me-into-the-past effect that's both neo and retro. For all the image-affirming innovations here, though, these confessions find Madonna framed in her share of reflective moments too. "Was it all worth it/How did I earn it?" she asks on "How High," a song featuring vocoder. "Nobody's perfect/I guess I deserve it," comes the answer. A later lyrical inquiry is left for the listener to judge: "Does this get any better?" Madonna wants to know. But that opens the door to a dizzying proposition. Few of us would have guessed, after all, that it got this good. "
-Taken from Amazon.com, by Tammy La Gorce