1958-
Singer, Dancer, Songwriter

Michigan Girl.

Even as a youngster in the Detroit suburb of Bay City, Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone was determined to stand out from the crowd. After the death of her mother when Madonna was six years old (an event that would haunt her and help shape her life and music), her father remarried. Disliking her new stepmother and tired of taking care of her five siblings, Madonna escaped into the world of dance, studying ballet with private tutor Christopher Flynn. A dance scholarship took Madonna to Ann Arbor, where she studied at the University of Michigan. After she spent two years there, Flynn encouraged her to try her luck in New York.

Club Girl.

With just the clothes on her back and thirty-seven dollars in cash, Madonna arrived in Manhattan in summer 1978. She relied on work as an artist's model and on various...