Madonna.
A seven letter name that carries the weight of so many implications. They range broadly, from musician to business woman, from Kaballah activist to provocateur. In 2013, the Queen of Pop basically goes by any name, since she's adopted so many personalities over her career, it's hard to tell which persona came first. Her net worth has reportedly crossed 1 billion dollars, and she is currently the best selling female artist of all time, with 300 million records sold worldwide. She has 38 top ten hits in the US (more than any other artist), eight number one albums, 43 number one hits on the Hot Club/Dance Play chart, and has won some Grammys to boot. Obviously, her status as an artist is her most prominent position. She's held the honor of the world's best-selling female artist ever since 2000, even when her record sales started to decline, she has kept her grasp on her fame for three decades. Now, Barbra Streisand and Cher have been palpable presences in the world since the 1960s, but neither of them have inspired legions of female artists to strive for musical greatness. True, we can't find another person quite like Cher or Barbra, but imagine a world without Madonna. It would be kind of drab wouldn't it? Like it or not, Madonna hasn't just changed the face of music throughout her career, she's changed the world alot too.
Without Madonna, things would be very, very different. No Madonna means that we wouldn't have Katy Perry, Fergie, Beyonce, Ke$ha, P!nk, Rihanna, Avril Lavigne, and most importantly, Britney Spears and Lady Gaga. Feel free to argue all you want, but none of those artists would be so successful right now if Madonna didn't blaze the trail for female artists back in 1983. Without her urge to provoke, P!nk, Lady Gaga, and Ke$ha would still be waitressing right now. Without her urge to constantly refine her music and voice, Beyonce and Rihanna would have fallen to the wayside a long time ago. Without her urge to dissect and exploit the act of sex, Katy Perry and Fergie would still be chasing down record labels right now. And come on, who doesn't enjoy laughing at Madge's futile attempts to stay young wearing boy scout outfits and dancing in a viking outfit at the super bowl?
But in all seriousness, Madonna is still one of the biggest stars on the planet, even after all these years (another fun fact: when Madonna doesn't tour or make new music, she still earns $50 million a year on average). But why is she? What escalated her to this paramount of success? I mean, a 25-year old dancer from Michigan became the Queen of Pop? Well, there are several reasons why she's ranked among the most influential people who've ever lived. Obviously, there's the constant re-inventing of both her sound and image. I'll point out, however, that doing it is not easy, you need to be a flexible and well endowed musician to pull of so many styles and moods as well as she has. You have to be committed too, half-assing never got anyone anywhere, including her. Nope, she goes all in, with varying levels of success, but at least she goes for it full throttle. Although, this has backfired in the past (do I need to bring up the embarrassing "Hard Candy" again?), but every artist will face great highs and lows. And Madonna is sharp enough to know this, always willing to get back up after a stumble. Maybe this constant exertion to be modern and always relevant gets annoying, but at least she still has a finger on the pulse of what's in and what's out. Once a style or sound has expired, she simply moves to the next one. Sadly, she's not on the vanguard like she was in her "Ray of Light" days, but there's still not one pop star as savvy and as sharp as Madge. She exploits her strengths to the hilt while bringing out the strengths in her collaborators, who else can do that in 2013?
That's her best quality: intellect. Madonna is nothing if not smart, as once again, who else can hold on to their massive success for 30 years? Especially in the digital era, how Madonna has been able to keep her presence known is something quite admirable. This once again proving how sharp she really is, because you can't start a career like "Oh My God I'm going to be famous for the next 50 years", it doesn't happen like that. Her constant re-invention isn't just to flash her abilities, however honed their are. It's to keep her moving through the times, releasing albums that transcend well beyond their year of release. Ultimately, though, with all of her keen business savvy aside, the main reason why Madonna has risen above the rest is because of her music. She's a musician, so it makes sense. Let's say for a moment that all throughout her career she just kept rehashing "Lucky Star" and "Holiday". This will keep her prominent for a few years but after awhile, the public will start demanding more. They will eventually forget all about her and move on to the next big thing.
Madonna was strikingly cunning in her mid 20s to know that she would have to shake things up in order to maintain her interest. You can call this calculation, but then you wouldn't get Madonna, since she's basically built her career on it. Every single song, music video, and tour, she shapes it from the ground up, knowing which trends to accept and which ones to abandon. Inadvertently, in a way, this is what leads to Madonna's insatiable urge to provoke. For every new album she made, she had an accompanying image and eyebrow-raising statement behind it. "Like a Virgin" and "Material" were all about flashing Madonna's knack for style. "Papa Don't Preach" was an energetic statement about teen pregnancy, while the music video for "Like a Prayer" featured stigmata and burning crosses. Then who could forget about "Erotica" in 1992? This was the peak of her provocation, as this album was accompanied with a lite-porn book called "Sex", which featured Madonna in a host of sexually explicit images. This was preceded, very fittingly by "Justify My Love" in 1990. Its music video was immediately banned from MTV and VH1 for being too suggestive; Madonna wasn't phased. After that, she turned down the dramatics and for the next ten years offered her most humane and seductive music. This all changed in 2003, when "American Life" saw Madge rejecting the American dream, and once again she was back to showing disturbing images of war in her music videos. She was quick to atone for this in "Confessions on a Dance Floor", but after that album fizzled, she resided to take the backseat and let her collaborators steer her musical direction from then on. Although she never left her will to raise our eyebrows behind (have you seen her boy-scout outfit lately?), there's no denying that she's not really the provocateur that she used to be.
Ultimately, though, her shameless exploits are just par for the course, because every single thing she did was necessary in the long run. She channeled her ambition into her music, creating some pretty awesome records. And in all honesty, if the music wasn't insanely good, then Madonna would've been just another passing fad. But her eponymous debut back in 1983 wasn't just good; it set the standard for dance-pop for the next 20 years. Also, it proved that Madonna, more than any other artist, was the sole driving force for bringing dance music back into the mainstream again, while sneaking the underground along with it. She picked the right partners to bring her visions to life as well, and even today, anything approved by Madonna is cool. As previously mentioned, she has a sort of perspective that lets her see the immense talent in a songwriter or producer that the public might not exactly see. All these elements taken together is what's made Madonna the most successful female artist of all time.
So now the big question is: who's the next Madonna? Well, this is a tricky subject because in actuality, Madonna is a persona, an entity that really can't be equaled or copied by anyone. Running down the list of potential heirs (deemed by the public and music critics): Britney Spears was considered the next Madonna since she brought teen-pop back to prominence and also sold millions of records while doing it. From a commercial standpoint Britney is very much like the Queen of Pop, but artistically and musically, not so much. Britney really has been nothing more than the figurehead of an enterprise, a perfectly calibrated pop machine that was designed to appeal to the masses. Madonna was calculated, but not that calculated, she didn't rely on flimsy pop filler for her albums and created them with her at their center. Britney doesn't do that, she walks through the motions and just happens to be wildly successful because of it. Then some said that P!nk could possibly be the Princess of Pop. P!nk is the opposite of Britney, she doesn't walk through the motions, she creates them. She varies her music and is always willing to push the envelope, kissing off stupid girls and George W. Bush. Commercially, however, she's not the juggernaut that Britney or Madonna is. She's sold half of what Britney has, and it's harder for P!nk to sell her records, while Britney and Madonna's fly off the shelves. Though this is no fault of her music, which is some of the best in the new millennium, there's also no denying that no matter how provocative P!nk tries to be, the public just doesn't notice. They take her as pure entertainment (I'm pretty sure her live shows don't help).
Now I'll address the elephant in the room: Lady Gaga. Is she really the next Madonna? Commercially, her success is pitched between P!nk and Britney, and Lady Gaga is no stranger to pushing our buttons and making us notice her (and what she has to say). She's more effective than P!nk in this regard, and her albums are also some of the best music of the new millennium (and they are centered around Gaga, not her management). However, as much as I would love to say that she is, Gaga is not a trendsetter, artistically or stylistically, like Madonna. Lady Gaga whole-heartedly works with her collaborators, feeding off of them and adapting to their personalities. Madonna doesn't do that, she forces her collaborators to adapt to her.
Sorry to say this, but there isn't going to be another Madonna. There's not going to be another female artist who pushes limits and boundaries, provokes the public, and sells millions of records while doing it. Even if Madonna's career is on the downside now, she's still going to transcend for many years to come, because no other artist in the world makes pop records as intriguing, layered, trendsetting, and intricate then she does.
Madonna.
A seven letter word that carries with it the weight of so many implications.
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