Madonna

Madonna is an American singer-songwriter, actress, director, dancer and entrepreneur.

Madonna is known for continuously reinventing both her music and image, and for retaining a standard of autonomy within the recording industry. She attained immense popularity by pushing the boundaries of lyrical content in mainstream popular music and imagery in her music videos. Critics have praised her diverse musical productions which have also been known to induce controversy. In 1982, Madonna signed to Sire Records and released her debut album the following year. She has since released a series of successful albums, including Ray of Light (1998) and Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005). Many of her songs peaked atop record charts, including “Like a Virgin”, “Into the Groove”, “Papa Don’t Preach”, “Like a Prayer”, “Vogue”, “Frozen”, “Music”, “Hung Up”, and “4 Minutes”.

Madonna has sold more than 300 million records worldwide and is recognized as the best-selling female recording artist of all time by Guinness World Records. Time considered her to be one of the "25 Most Powerful Women of the Past Century" for being an influential figure in contemporary music. Madonna is the best-selling female rock artist of the 20th century and the second best selling female artist in the United States, with 64.5 million certified albums. Considered by Forbes and other publications as a cultural icon, she is often referred by the international press as the "Queen of Pop". In 2008, Billboard ranked her at number two, behind only The Beatles, on the Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists, making her the most successful solo artist in the history of the chart. She was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the same year. In 2012, she was crowned the "Greatest Woman In Music" by VH1. As of 2013, some sources report that Madonna's net worth has crossed over one billion dollars.

Note:
Artist or band-related texts on this page are under the Creative-Commons-Attribution/Share-Alike-Lizenz

Source and author list:  Wikipedia