Madonna
A Rebel Life
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4.0 • 26 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
New York Times Editors’ Choice, One of NPR’s Best Books of the Year
In this “infinitely readable” biography, award-winning author Mary Gabriel chronicles the meteoric rise and enduring influence of the greatest female pop icon of the modern era: Madonna (People Magazine)
With her arrival on the music scene in the early 1980s, Madonna generated nothing short of an explosion—as great as that of Elvis or the Beatles—taking the nation by storm with her liberated politics and breathtaking talent. Within two years of her 1983 debut album, a flagship Macy's store in Manhattan held a Madonna lookalike contest featuring Andy Warhol as a judge, and opened a department called “Madonna-land.”
But Madonna was more than just a pop star. Everywhere, fans gravitated to her as an emblem of a new age, one in which feminism could shed the buttoned-down demeanor of the 1970s and feel relevant to a new generation. Amid the scourge of AIDS, she brought queer identities into the mainstream, fiercely defending a person's right to love whomever—and be whoever—they wanted. Despite fierce criticism, she never separated her music from her political activism. And, as an artist, she never stopped experimenting. Madonna existed to push past boundaries by creating provocative, visionary music, videos, films, and live performances that changed culture globally.
Deftly tracing Madonna’s story from her Michigan roots to her rise to super-stardom, master biographer Mary Gabriel captures the dramatic life and achievements of one of the greatest artists of our time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Biographer Gabriel (Ninth Street Women) fastidiously captures the four-decade-plus career of a boundary-pushing star "who spoke her truth, took shit for it, and kept standing." Ever since her childhood in Michigan, Madonna nurtured a love of music and performance, influenced by Detroit's thriving Motown scene and such "revolutionary" pop girl groups as the Shirelles and the Shangri-Las. In 1978, at age 19, Madonna moved to New York City with $35 in cash and dreams of a dancing career, but later began pursuing music, first performing as the front woman of the band the Breakfast Club, and then going solo in 1982 after she was signed by Sire Records. From the start of her career, Madonna was fueled by an overwhelming determination to do and be more: "I always remembered Madonna as never being happy," one friend recalls. "She always seemed like she was so impatient to move ahead." That grit paid off with such early successes as 1984's Like a Virgin, which debuted to scathing critical reviews but rave audience responses and went platinum after only three months, with three million album copies sold. Drawing on extensive research, Gabriel paints a satisfyingly nuanced portrait of a trailblazing musician who never shied from controversy, whether the issue was her "corsets and push-up bras and garter belts" that scandalized fans and enraged feminists or her 1980s advocacy for AIDS awareness. The singer's myriad admirers won't be disappointed.
Customer Reviews
Amazing!!
Loved every second of reading this book and listening to the audiobook!
Madonna. Mary Gaberial
I’m listening to it free from the library on audio book. 42 hours, i
Use it to listening to, to put me to sleep. It rather boring but it helps to put me to sleep. Her Seattle concert 2012 was the worst concert I ever been to. She totally full of herself. I do like her first few albums.