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It might prove a challenge to most to imagine a time when Madonna wasn’t, well, Madonna. When she was Madonna Ciccone or Madonna Louise or Madonna Louise Veronica or simply “Nonnie.” But for almost a full twenty-five years, she lived as a civilian before exploding onto the music scene like a supernova. And yet, unlike the supernova’s explosion marking the end of a star’s life, Madonna’s “Lucky Star” appropriately marked the beginning of hers. As a star, that is. Although Madonna would still remain known to a select demographic after the release of her self-titled debut on July 27, 1983 (just twenty-one days before her twenty-fifth birthday), it was only a year later, on September 14, 1984, that she would become a household name thanks to rolling around seductively in a wedding dress at the inaugural MTV VMAs.
That happened a little over a month after her twenty-sixth birthday (though Madonna was able to fudge her age slightly in the earlier days…like during a 1982 audition for Fame, when she told the casting director she was twenty-one, or in a 1985 blurb in Time that cites her as twenty-four instead of twenty-six). Indeed, one might say she didn’t truly become “Madonna” until then. During that moment when she was twenty-six…accidentally writhing around in front of a live audience, not to mention the many cable viewers watching at home.
Up until then, it was arguable that some semblance of “plebeian Madonna” still remained. Complete with the “street urchin-y” aesthetic complemented by all that “junk jewelry.” That image—and the many accessories that went with it—being shed by 1986, with the release of her third record, True Blue. Another “summer record” that came out at the end of July, Madonna forewent her “vagabond chic” look in favor of a sleeker gamine one, most noticeable in the fitness regimen she had taken on to get rid of the pounds from what she called her “chunky” era. So it was that she was slowly but surely leaning further into what “Madonna” would mean: constant, ceaseless evolution.
The cynics, of course, would deride her “reinventions” (a word she hated so much she decided to reappropriate it for herself by calling her 2004 world tour the Re-invention Tour) as “gimmicks,” whereas Madonna described them as simply continuing to pull back the layers to reveal more and more of her “true self.” Or whatever was true of herself at a particular (impressive) instant in time. What remained steadfastly true throughout all the incarnations was her enduring level of superstardom. Despite most of the twenty-first century thus far consisting of critics and fans alike writing her off as being everything from “desperate” to “over,” the fact that intense analysis and dissection of Madonna has gone on unrelentingly should indicate how relevant she remains. Even in the various TikTok trends (as though it should require TikTok to remind people who already know that Madonna is unmatched for her tireless work ethic and trailblazing viewpoints) that have come to highlight her singular nature among the pop star crop. Take, for instance, the one that’s recently gone viral of her doing jump squats repeatedly during a musical breakdown on “Music” for 2001’s Drowned World Tour. Madonna was doing that shit at forty-three.
And, at thirty-four, she was already railing against the society that was going to try and “put her out to pasture” once she turned forty. As they did to any woman in the public eye (luckily for Marilyn Monroe, she didn’t stick around long enough to experience it). It seemed that it wasn’t until Madonna’s fifties that becoming a lone spokeswoman for ageism against women in entertainment (especially pop stars) really ramped up though (and has only continued to do so in her sixties). This shined through most markedly during a speech she gave while accepting the award for Billboard’s Woman of the Year in 2016, stating with her sardonic tone, among other blunt truths, “Be what men want you to be, but more importantly, be what women feel comfortable with you being around other men. And finally, do not age. Because to age is a sin. You will be criticized and vilified and definitely not played on the radio.”
A feat Madonna has miraculously managed to overcome with the release of “Popular,” a song she’s featured on with The Weeknd and Playboi Carti. Regardless of the latter two having an influence on why the song is being played on the radio, it nonetheless is. And the fact that it’s charted on the Billboard Hot 100 has put Madonna in the rare category of being among the few artists to chart one of their singles in five different decades.
And so it seems that, having evolved into the sixty-five-year-old Madonna as of August 16, 2023, one of her key purposes all along was not just to break down barriers for the LGBTQIA+ community, but also for any female musician who wanted to keep going past their thirties. In the future, when women like Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift are in their sixties and still releasing albums, they will owe a direct debt to Madonna for bearing the brunt of the abuse that has made the public more accepting of pop stars not having an expiration date (something Kylie Minogue, too, has recently benefited from with “Padam Padam”).
Although Madonna has been Madonna for far longer than she was Madonna Ciccone (at times wrongly spelled as “Cicconi”), perhaps the one thing that has always lingered from that pre-fame girl is the masking of vulnerability through a “tough-as-nails” persona. Rarely lowering her guard to let anyone see it after the trauma that would last her entire lifetime: the death of her mother when “Nonnie” was just five. It was this loss that also sowed the seeds for Madonna Ciccone to become Madonna. Driven to seek out the love she was craving from an absent mother (and that she couldn’t get enough of in such a big family where every sibling got lost in the shuffle) by eventually finding it in millions of worshipful fans that could still probably never fill that void.
Even so, Madonna the Pop Icon has made do with her substitute for (maternal) love the best she can. And, like many women, no matter how old they get, she’s still just that “little girl lost in a storm.” Forever Madonna Ciccone at heart.
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Genna Rivieccio
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