Madonna scored her first Hot 100 top ten hit with “Borderline” in 1984, and her (to date) last with “Give Me All Your Luvin'” in 2012. So many, many songs: well over 200 officially released tracks over the course of her career, a stunning percentage of which should remain familiar to even casual pop fans of her lifetime. Madonna Delivers Her Blunt Truth During Fiery, Teary Billboard Women In Music Speechīut for all her innovation, iconicity and activism, what really endure as we approach her 60th birthday (on Aug. She’s spent so much of her career dragging pop music into the future that it’s not surprising to see today’s pop stars continuing to call back to her, whether it’s Drake invoking her name as the ultimate superstar presence, or Ariana Grande casting her as the no-credit-needed voice of biblical female vengeance, or Rihanna simply using her entire career arc as the pace-setter for her own. She confronted misogyny, abuse and gender double standards inside and outside of the music industry for decades before there was any kind of nationwide #MeToo movement to support her.Īnd while many of her peers struggled to adapt or openly railed against new trends in popular music, she successfully incorporated elements of house, trip-hop, techno, drum and bass, G-funk and Auto-Tune into her music at various points in her career, working with everyone from Nile Rodgers to Lenny Kravitz to Björk to Andrew Lloyd Webber to Pharrell to SOPHIE - scoring Billboard Hot 100 hits with all of them - without ever losing her center. She talked (and sang, and wrote, and performed) frankly about sex and desire at a time when doing so largely inspired mockery at best and condemnation at worst. She loudly championed her LGBT fanbase while many pop stars were still avoiding their existence altogether. For decades, Madonna wasn’t ahead of the curve so much as consistently bending its angle with her gravity.
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