Original subtitles

She is arguably the most talked about woman on the planet.

With over 300 million albums sold worldwide,

she is now, quite simply, the top-selling artist of all time.

Every female pop star that has come out, they're always hailed as "the next Madonna."

Her raunchy image and catchy pop lyrics

have captivated fans for nearly 30 years.

That was the game changer.

That was when people were like, "Oh, my God, who is this girl?

She is going to be the biggest star on the planet."

And her controversial personal life

continues to make headlines all around the world.

Can you tell us why you're adopting again, Madonna?

No.

Today, she is one of entertainment's

wealthiest women.

Her ambition apparently knows no bounds.

She is the master of reinvention,

a true Renaissance woman.

Not content with just singing,

she is also a writer, dancer, producer,

director, actor,

and businesswoman extraordinaire.

She went after everything she ever wanted.

She is the one and only...

Madonna.

Right in front of you, please. Right in front of you. Right here.

Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone

was born into a large immigrant family

on August 16, 1958, near Detroit.

Her father, Tony, was of Italian descent,

and her mother, also called Madonna,

was French Canadian.

Both were devout Catholics.

They grew up at a time when Michigan was...

Before it hit the economic skids.

She grew up in a relatively affluent household.

She identified really early on with black culture.

She would love dancing to The Temptations

and would dance with the little girls in her neighborhood,

and she'd tell stories that they would beat her and beat her and beat her,

but all she wanted to do was dance with them, and eventually they were like,

"All right, you can do it."

And that's obviously a theme of persistence that...

I think the one thing that no one can take away from Madonna,

no matter how much you dislike her music, is you kind of have to respect her ambition.

She was one of six children, she was the third of six,

which is interesting, because if you believe in anything about birth order,

usually you think it's the oldest ones who are the high achievers.

But she was a middle child, and maybe that had something to do with

why she was such an extrovert and she sort of had to fight to get attention.

The kind of Catholic upbringing she had

meant that it was rather strict with very enforced parameters,

and there was a lot of religious symbolism in her life.

Madonna said she grew up surrounded by nuns and priests

who were always over at the house,

And, of course, we see the influences of that later on in her career.

Religion was never too far away

from her image, from her lyrical themes,

and from her videos as well.

It got her in a lot of trouble, too.

There's a lot of Catholic imagery

that showed up in very subversive ways in her later work,

particularly and most famously the "Like A Prayer" video

that ended up almost getting banned

and resulted in a controversial fallout with her Pepsi deal.

♪ When you call my name it's like a little prayer ♪

♪ I'm down on my knees I wanna take you there ♪

That video was full of all sorts of Catholic imagery.

She's making out with a black Jesus statue come to life, there's burning crosses,

and in her fashion as well, like the crucifixes she'd wear.

You know, she definitely was kind of like the bad Catholic girl.

To have that kind of schism that young,

where you all of a sudden are forced to question and stop believing,

and that's one of the themes that runs through her music.

"Do you believe or not believe? Are you a virgin or a whore?"

What's right, you know, and what's bullshit?

Then in 1963, when she was only five years old,

came the devastating news that would have

an irrevocable impact upon the rest of her life.

Her 30-year-old mother Madonna

was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Her mother had worked as an X-ray technician.

It was at a time where they didn't really have lead aprons,

making it so you'd block the radiation.

She'd developed breast cancer while she was pregnant with Madonna's younger sister.

By the time she start treatment, it was really too late.

The death of Madonna's mother, she has said over and over again,

was kind of a very pivotal point in her life.

Everything changed from that point on.

Her father pretty quickly remarried.

A woman who'd actually been their housecleaner.

A woman that Madonna detested and fought with throughout her childhood.

I think Madonna's rebellious nature really began from that point.

By the time she was an adolescent,

Madonna's subversive attitude started to shine through.

It was an attitude which would emerge time and time again

in her music.

What's interesting is probably a lot of people would be surprised

to find out that Madonna was actually an "A" student.

Because she has this rebellious side and obviously what she went into,

people probably thought she was someone who was always cutting class and was sort of a truant,

Rizzo from Greasetype of girl.

They say that she wasn't the most charismatic person in the world,

which is weird because you see Madonna now

and you think of her as poised and confident and she knows what she wants.

When you're a teenager, it's not necessarily like that,

and all the things that people would say about her were...

She was a dancer, she got straight A's,

she went from a cheerleader to dance team,

but no one ever pegged her for stardom.

By 1977, Madonna had made it clear

that she couldn't wait to get out of Michigan.

New York, the mecca of art and culture beckoned,

and it wasn't long before she got the opportunity to move there

on a six-week scholarship to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

She knew that she had to be in New York.

It was the year The Ramones are coming out.

The following year in England The Sex Pistols blow up,

and everyone knows about that.

And then you have The Ramones, you have the Talking Heads,

you have Blondie, you have all these bands at CBGB's in New York.

It's this mecca. It's cheap, it's grungy.

She got started the way a lot of, unfortunately, young women

had to get started,

which was, you know, to maybe do some, you know,

photography she may not have been proud of,

to do some dancing that she might not have been proud of,

just really ingratiating herself in the disco and dance scenes

in New York City.

By 1979, Madonna was dating Dan Gilroy

from the pop punk band Breakfast Club,

and not surprisingly, it wasn't long before she joined the group.

It's pretty amazing to think, just knowing what we know about Madonna,

that she actually played drums and guitar in that band.

They may have been lovers, but Gilroy didn't pull any punches

when it came to Madonna.

There's a famous quote where he goes to her,

"You're all naked ambition and no talent."

And it goes, again, back to Andy Warhol.

He was talented, but no one's gonna be like, "Andy Warhol's a great painter."

But he had big ideas, and he knew how to wrap them in a pop format,

and Madonna had the same thing.

But eventually she decided to go out on her own

and move away from the rock and punk thing she was doing

as a sort of, like, you know, New York punk person,

and go into dance music.

And she connected with Stephen Bray,

who was a fellow student of hers at University of Michigan,

and they went on to do a million hits.

Her big hits like "Into the Groove" and "Express Yourself," you know.

He was one of her primary songwriters for years.

New York music producer Mark Kamins

then helped her to get a record deal with Sire Records,

and with the help of Stephen Bray, she wrote her first hit, "Everybody."

♪ Come on

♪ Everybody, come on, dance and sing ♪

♪ Everybody, get up and do your thing ♪

"Everybody" is still one of my favorite Madonna songs.

It's really funny 'cause I recently read that the video she did for that song cost $1500.

I'm like, "It cost that much? It looks like it cost five dollars."

But it's great. It's just her.

She's not even looking as sexy as she later did.

Her hair's short, it's brown. She's dressed in these clothes from like Newsies.

Like these baggy earth-tone clothes.

It's just her dancing with two people in the background, as low budget as it can get,

but it's like a totally compelling video, and the song is great.

♪ Dance and sing Get up and do your thing ♪

It's not a very deep song.

It's not gonna bring about world peace,

but it set the template that she is great at doing these upbeat,

let's throw caution to the wind, let's not give a crap about tomorrow,

let's dance all night party songs.

It was perfect for a single. Wasn't one of her bigger singles.

I think some of the stuff on her first album is some of the best stuff she ever did.

♪ Get up and do your thing

"Everybody" proved the springboard to success for Madonna,

and in 1982, one of her first performances ever

was filmed at the hip New York club Danceteria.

And now "No Entiendes" is proud to present...

the world premiere of Sire recording artist

Madonna!

♪ Everybody, come on, dance and sing ♪

That was a legendary club where LL Cool J was the elevator man,

the Beastie Boys and Keith Haring are dishwashers.

It would go from 8:00 to 8:00 every night in New York,

and she would just dance there.

She'd dance at all the gay nightclubs. She was going out every night.

She was seeing these cool girls and kind of able to steal their style a little bit,

and she was able to mold herself into the idea of the person that she wanted to be.

Buoyed by the success of "Everybody,"

Madonna convinced Sire to give her an album deal,

and her eponymous album broke the music market in 1983.

Few realized at the time

that the girl with the new poppy sound

would go down in history as one of music's most famous female artists.

It was a disco diva record

at a time where there wasn't a whole lot of disco music going around.

And she managed to write songs that were commercial enough...

Co-writing with good partners...

So that they stood out as songs as well as dance chart items.

The second single off the album was "Holiday,"

and it really put Madonna in the spotlight

as a force to be reckoned with.

♪ Holiday

♪ Celebrate

"Holiday" was Madonna's first big hit single,

and it did so well that it kind of launched her,

because she got on the hit TV show American Bandstand with Dick Clark,

which was really afternoon appointment viewing on the weekends.

And is she hot. This is Madonna!

She got a little interview with Dick.

We are a couple of weeks into the new year.

What do you hope will happen, not only in 1984 but for the rest of your professional life?

What are your dreams? What's left?

To rule the world. There you go.

It was such an unusual thing to say, because at that time, nobody knew who she was.

She had one hit single to her name.

But looking back on it, it's certainly interesting,

and it came true, to some degree.

The first time I heard Madonna was on radio, top-40 radio.

It was "Holiday," and I'm gonna admit I thought she was black.

I thought it was an R&B black artist.

I think a lot of people thought that.

When they later saw the image that she had... that she was blond and Italian...

People were surprised.

Then "Borderline" came out,

which is one of her best songs ever

and the song that broke her through.

♪ Stop playin' with my heart Finish what you start ♪

♪ When you make my love come down ♪

Everything was very much tied to image.

I always will associate all those early Madonna songs in my mind with the video.

And in that video, I actually literally found a striped hat that my mom had,

and I found a bow and glued it on and put it on my head

so I could have the hat Madonna had in that video.

♪ You just keep on pushing my love over the borderline ♪

Madonna's early pop songs, no matter, like, whether you hate Madonna now,

whether you are the biggest Madonna fan ever,

you kind of can't deny those songs.

Because still to this day, almost 30 years later,

you put on "Borderline" and girls will dance to it.

At the end of the day, that's kind of the general barometer for pop music.

If you can get girls to dance to it, you will be popular.

There was something about her that, even now, was what I think I liked about her.

From day one, no one told her, "Wear rubber bracelets," or "Dress like this,"

or "Roll around on the floor."

I always felt everything about her image...

The way she presented herself,

the songs, whether she wrote them or not,

the songs she recorded and chose to record...

Was 100 percent her.

I always felt she was authentic.

It was completely coming from her.

♪ You just keep on pushing my love over the borderline ♪

I was, like, "I want to be this person,"

and I think a lot of little girls wanted to be her

in a way that I don't think girls necessarily wanted to be Britney Spears

or even Katy Perry.

Madonna just always seemed like...

she came up from the streets and she turned into, like,

the biggest pop star on the planet.

It's like the ultimate rags-to-riches story.

Madonna's arrival on the pop music scene

coincided with that of another great musical icon,

one that would change the face of entertainment forever.

Right place, right time.

Television wants movement,

and Madonna is the first great female mover in videos.

They're not songs. They're mini epics.

Because the videos are what ends up people remembering.

Those are the things, and they're playing on MTV all the time.

She would appeal to everybody.

I remember going to parties when I was eight or nine years old,

and every eight or nine-year-old girl would sing every Madonna song.

In hindsight you're like, "Oh, my God. These songs are so, like, sexual."

And if I was a parent, I'd be freaking out,

but kids don't even know that, 'cause all they know is that Madonna was pretty and cool

and danced well and had good songs.

And ever courting controversy,

Madonna released the provocatively titled Like A Virgin in 1985.

The album launched her into the music stratosphere.

♪ I made it through the wilderness ♪

♪ Somehow I made it through

"Like A Virgin" was a top number one hit single for Madonna,

and in the video, of course, we see her in Venice in a gondola.

♪ Like a virgin, hey

♪ Touched for the very first time ♪

Having her in the "Like A Virgin" garb...

with all of those bangles and bracelets and crucifixes

and frilly clothes,

would have looked pretty silly over 90 or 105 minutes,

but for four minutes, it's charismatic.

And all of those image changes that she went through

were perfect for four-minute films.

♪ I'll be yours till the end of time ♪

♪ 'Cause you make me feel

It's a really ambivalent song.

Like, this relationship makes me feel brand-new and fresh,

but Madonna in her,

I guess her ability to manipulate and be controversial,

used the imagery in her favor.

Just the use of the word "virgin" set people on edge.

♪ Like a virgin, hey

♪ Touched for the very first time ♪

Obviously there was a total uproar.

She knew what she was doing. She was a provocateur.

And I think, in America, if you can provoke, if you can create headlines,

you can create controversy, she knew that it would sell.

She was able to tap into these themes, and she's always said

that she loved to play cat and mouse with traditional gender and cultural stereotypes.

And that's sort of what really "Like A Virgin" is.

A queen of music and motion,

and every biker's dream guest rider,

Madonna!

There was the MTV performance that did it.

The best, coolest, craziest

VMA performance of all time

was when she performed at the very first one, opening the 1984 awards.

♪ I made it through the wilderness ♪

♪ Somehow I made it through

That was the game changer.

That was when people were like, "Oh, my God, who is this girl?

She is going to be the biggest star on the planet."

♪ Like a virgin, hey

♪ Touched for the very first time ♪

Her performance of that song at the MTV Video Awards

is not just the definitive moment for Madonna

but for MTV and for pop culture as well.

♪ Oh, oh, oh

♪ Oh, oh, oh

When she rolled around on the floor in her underwear...

That's kind of weird, the way I'm talking about it now,

"Oh, she rolled around on the floor in her underwear."

It sounds tame now because pop stars have done so much more since then.

Lady Gaga, who's obviously one of her logical successors,

But back then it was shocking.

She just was fearless. Like, she was letting it all hang out literally.

I think at that point people realized,

"Actually, no, this girl is going to be around for a long time."

If she didn't have that unerring belief in herself,

if she didn't have that ability to know what is a hit and what would work,

then I'm sure it would have gone to somebody else.

If you look at pop history, it's really...

It's not necessarily who writes the best songs but who gets the best songs

and who knows what to do with them and market them.

That's one thing no one had to teach Madonna.

She was a marketing genius from square one.

Within weeks of the release of the album,

the Madonna look was being mirrored by teenage girls all around the States.

Her lace lingerie, large crucifix necklaces

and fingerless gloves

became the fashion statement of the moment,

and Madonna had achieved one of her most ambitious goals:

she had become a trendsetter.

1985 and 1986

proved incredibly successful years for Madonna,

and the hits just kept coming and coming and coming.

"Material Girl" is a song where Madonna, even more so than ever,

really establishes control of her identity and her persona.

♪ Some boys kiss me, some boys hug me ♪

♪ I think they're okay

♪ If they don't give me proper credit ♪

♪ I just walk away

If "Like A Virgin" was kind of Madonna renouncing her Catholic heritage,

then "Material Girl" was Madonna kind of putting forth her credo

of what she values and what's important in life.

Because you'd be hard pressed to look at Madonna's personal life and financial decisions

and not say that this is a very greedy woman

who really enjoys amassing tremendous wealth.

♪ We are living in a material world ♪

♪ And I am a material girl

It was a subversive song in just saying, like, you know,

it was the '80s where, you know, the "Me" decade

where people... You know, greed is good.

And it was still, for one thing, a major hit,

but it gave a lot of people a lot to talk about.

There was, you know, a lot more weight to it than what were typical pop stars at the time.

The video for "Material Girl" is her... It's ironic.

She is being wooed by a Hollywood director

who's trying to buy her with money and gifts,

and she doesn't want him, so he impersonates a poor person to get her.

♪ Material girl ♪ Material

♪ Living in a material world

♪ Living in a material world ♪

I never was the Material Girl then.

It was meant to be ironic,

but no one ever seems to understand my sense of irony,

except, possibly, the French.

You know, as life goes on, you begin to understand and appreciate

things that are not material.

Still, I have to live in the physical world,

and so, um,

you know, when I said I am the Material Girl

when I sang that song in the early '80s,

it was very... you know, I considered it tongue in cheek.

In 1985, she made her first movie appearance

in a film called Vision Quest.

Its soundtrack contained her number one hit single

"Crazy For You."

♪ Swaying room as the music starts ♪

"Crazy For You." My friend lost her virginity to "Crazy For You."

Not me. My friend.

♪ ...bodies become one

Madonna recorded "Crazy For You" in 1985,

and it was for a film that no one remembers called Vision Quest,

and that was notable 'cause it was her second big single

but also 'cause it was her first ballad.

♪ What I'm dyin' to say is that I'm crazy for you ♪

I don't think a lot of people, especially who knew her from the early hits

like "Holiday" and "Lucky Star" thought she'd ever go into ballads.

I mean, let's face it, she's not Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey.

She's not known for having great vocals, compared to some of the other pop divas,

but it did open the doors for her.

I think it was a different Madonna than we expected.

She wasn't this kind of pop provocateur.

Rather she was singing this heartfelt ballad where this kind of unrequited love.

♪ Because I'm crazy for you

♪ Touch me once and you'll know it's true ♪

♪ I never wanted... There's something

about her vocals, I think, that she was able to convey emotion.

You know, she is, you know...

She might be capable of being one of the unemotional people on the planet,

but I think when it comes time to go into the vocal booth,

she knows how to kind of get that kind of mixture of yearning or regret or sentiment,

and she knows how to wring it out.

♪ I'm crazy for you

♪ Crazy for you, baby

And, again, it just established her as something more than just a one-trick pony,

some who could be versatile and have different types of music and different types of looks

and was gonna have a lasting career.

And then came the low-budget motion picture Desperately Seeking Susan,

a film theNew York Times called one of the top ten movies of the year.

Prince had just done Purple Rain. It was a massive hit.

Obviously the logical extension is Madonna was the closest thing to a female Prince,

let's make her a movie star.

The Susan character was clearly a Madonna character.

She actually doesn't have that huge a part in the movie,

but when she is on the screen, she lights it up.

She's just like so raw and so earthy and so sexual

and just so real and, like, you know, just a girl that guys would lust after,

but like a girl you might actually know from around the way.

So different from her image now.

The Madonna we know now would not be blow-drying her armpits

or, you know, putting her feet up on the chair

while she eats popcorn with her mouth open at the movie.

She was just, like, not a very classy girl but a very cool girl.

And I will tell you that the idea of having an iconic leather jacket

that you wear everywhere...

I spent years trying to find the perfect leather jacket for me,

and it completely came from the the fact that... it wasn't Fonzie.

It was the fact that Madonna had this perfect jacket in that movie.

For me, at least, and for a lot of girls who grew up with Madonna,

it was so much about her style, and she just had the cool style.

Anything she wore, I bought, or I would go into my mom's closet

and then cut up with scissors to make look like something Madonna wore.

And in that movie, the defined early iconic Madonna style,

the Wayfarer glasses, the huge hair with the bow,

the cool jacket, the layered, tattered clothes...

The idea that she just sort of, like, took her entire suitcase

and it vomited on her, and here she is in all these layers of clothes and she looks amazing.

It definitely came from that movie, and it definitely established her as an icon,

I think a fashion icon as well as just an all-around star.

It also produces the song "Into the Groove."

Becomes another one of her huge hits,

and it's kind of one of her last New Wavey kind of freestyle kind of songs,

but it's a catchy dance smash.

♪ Get into the groove

♪ Boy, you've got to prove your love to me, yeah ♪

It did point, I guess, to her disco background.

It's not a disco song per se,

but it's a song that, you know, it's about dancing that's a dance song.

So that always plays well, and it really tied into the movie itself.

♪ We might be lovers if the rhythm's right ♪

Another Stephen Bray collaboration.

It's just like a perfect dance song.

If I hear that anywhere, I will stop what I'm doing and dance to it. I'm not exaggerating.

To me, it's up there with some of the best Michael Jackson songs

like "Rock With You" and "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough."

It's not deep; it's a song about let's dance,

but sometimes all you need is the perfect Saturday night club song.

Never short of admirers,

Madonna had always had a preference for sexy dark men.

In the past, she had dated the likes of graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

But in 1985,

she really got the gossip columnists going

when she hooked up with one of the movie world's most controversial young actors,

Sean Penn.

Amidst a blaze of publicity,

she married Penn on August 16, 1985.

At the time, the couple personified all that was cool and cutting edge in Hollywood.

They'd become, in the nicest possible sense of the word,

a freak show.

Their wedding was covered by helicopter.

Now, usually people are just worried about wedding crashers.

You and me on the street, we get married.

We don't want people to come in that we don't know.

Wait a minute. We don't look to the skies.

Madonna's career continued to go from strength to strength,

and true to form, she continued to shock

with her latest controversial hit "Papa Don't Preach."

♪ Papa, I know you're going to be upset ♪

♪ 'Cause I was always your little girl ♪

"Papa Don't Preach" was a message,

an open letter, really, I think, from Madonna to her father.

You know, the whole thing was about this young girl

who'd sort of gotten herself in trouble sexually, had gotten pregnant

and was having this argument with her dad

about the fact that she didn't want to give the baby up or have an abortion.

She was going to keep her baby.

♪ Please, Papa don't preach I'm in trouble deep ♪

♪ Papa don't preach I been losin' sleep ♪

In 2012, you know, abortion is still a hot-button topic.

Some people don't want to touch it, so just imagine what it was like in the mid-'80s

to have a song which message was, you know, I'm keeping my baby.

♪ I'm keepin' my baby

It got mixed reactions.

There were family groups that praised the song, saying,

"Okay, you know, Madonna is preaching taking responsibility."

Not having an abortion or giving up your baby for adoption,

but if you get pregnant, doing the "right thing"

and marrying your boyfriend and raising the baby.

Other people said, "No, this is glamorizing teen pregnancy."

She couldn't win, you know?

♪ He says that he's going to marry me ♪

It's really just a Romeo and Juliet song,

but she's able to kind of put it in an '80s context.

She wasn't writing a, you know, Janis Joplin kind of song.

She's writing these songs that appeal to American teenage girls.

Madonna dedicated this song to the Pope,

which, as you can imagine, caused all kinds of headlines around the world.

Up until now she'd kind of been less, perhaps not subtly, but taking digs at them

with "Like A Virgin" and some of her Catholic iconography,

but this was kind of an open, all-out declaration of war.

In the video, she was very toned. She had a different look.

She'd cut off her hair and it was very short and blond and she looked very sophisticated.

Sort of that boy toy look that she had before was going away.

It was sort of the first time we really saw Madonna

have one of her million persona changes and body changes.

Madonna's wearing this very provocative black bustier

and kind of bouncing around quite a bit in this sexy outfit.

I was told that this is when Guy Ritchie

actually started to develop a bit of a crush on Madonna,

and he used to watch this video again and again and again,

saying, you know, "God, she's so hot."

So, ironically, he later ended up marrying her,

but it was in that music video that he first, I think, started to really fancy her.

Her career continued with the release in 1986

ofShanghai Surprise,

co-starring her husband Sean Penn.

Penn's popularity in Hollywood had suggested

that the movie would be a huge success,

but the reality was very different.

Desperately Seeking Susan was a hit.

It gave us the number one song, "Into the Groove."

You would have thought, "Wow, film career awaits."

Nope. Duds.

Shanghai Surprise.

I would say that's Madonna's first lead movie, and, um,

that generally was not received very well.

You know, a lot of people wanted to do whatever they could to bring Madonna down.

The fact that Shanghai Surprise was not a good movie at all

allowed people to kind of take their shots at Madonna.

And then a New York Times film critic, Vincent Canby...

wrote the nail in the headpiece, which was,

"Madonna has already made her great films,

and they are all four minutes long."

The movie had raised all kinds of differences, both personal and artistic,

between Madonna and Sean,

and it was around this time that news started to leak out

that the marriage was in deep trouble.

When she got together with Sean Penn,

I didn't think it was forever, because we'd already known

that she'd been through a number of men on her rise to the top.

Sean was incredibly aggressive and violent at that point in his life.

Madonna has actually admitted or it's been reported that he tied her up at one point,

you know, threatened her with a baseball bat.

There had been all kinds of unsubstantiated rumors that he hit her,

that he was violent in the relationship.

It was a very ugly relationship at points,

and I think Madonna who, you know, loves to provoke,

loves to probably fight in her personal relationships,

was like a match to a flame when it came to Sean Penn,

who had very much an out of control temper.

The marriage between Madonna and Sean

had lasted just over two years.

Madonna later admitted at that time,

"I was completely obsessed with my career

and not ready to be generous in any shape or form."

Her next big hit was "Like a Prayer."

♪ Life is a mystery

♪ Everyone must stand alone

Once again, it incorporated all the religious iconography

and references to her Catholic religion.

♪ When you call my name it's like a little prayer ♪

♪ I'm down on my knees I wanna take you there ♪

And once again, it caused controversy everywhere.

This is an example of, you know,

She had gone from being "Like a Virgin" performing at the MTV Awards

and shocking and scaring America,

and America loved her for it, this controversial kind of icon.

By 1989, Pepsi's giving her commercial deals.

She's already starting to become absorbed in the mainstream.

But "Like a Prayer" ends up having this kind of interracial video

and there was like burning crosses in the south

and there was like ideas of Ku Klux Klan.

♪ Just like a dream

♪ You are not what you seem

♪ Just like a prayer

♪ No choice, your voice can take me there ♪

♪ Just like a prayer I'll take you there ♪

Like I said, she's a provocateur.

No matter what the taboo was, she would've tried to break it whether it was right or wrong.

♪ You're here with me It's like a dream ♪

♪ Let the choir sing

♪ When you call my name it's like a little prayer ♪

It was so shocking to a lot of people that Pepsi got shell-shocked

and wanted to cancel the contract.

She never had anyone feeling too comfortable.

And I think as her career has progressed,

I think that's been the problem of why she's had trouble being this figure.

At a certain point, you break every single taboo,

there's nothing left to shock.

♪ It's like a dream to me

For the first 15 years of her career,

there was nobody that could bottle up that combination

of these different themes of sex and lust and rebellion and racial mixing

and all these different things that were kind of like simmering in America,

and she kind of put them out in the light.

Obviously there was political things going on beneath it,

but no one never dealt with it in a pop form.

You couldn't ignore her. She was able to make you never be able to turn your head away

because if there was a car crash, you'd kind of want to see what happened.

A new man was about to enter Madonna's life,

and this time he arrived in the form

of one of Hollywood's greatest lotharios,

Warren Beatty.

They met while filming Dick Tracy,

a movie written and directed by Beatty,

and their 20-year age gap became the talk of Tinseltown.

She actually did a good job, in which, for the most part

was kind of a disaster in a lot of ways.

It was sort of the beginning of a very weird multimedia time for Madonna

And then came the groundbreaking video

for one of Madonna's most memorable songs, "Vogue."

And with it came yet another brand-new image.

♪ Look around

♪ Everywhere you turn is heartache ♪

♪ It's everywhere that you go

♪ Look around

It was directed by David Fincher,

who would later go on to mastermind such Hollywood blockbusters

who would later go on t asFight Club uch H andSocial Network. s

One of Madonna's greatest skills as a pop star,

a mainstream pop star,

is taking underground trends

or things that are soft of bubbling under

and turning them into mainstream,

and "Vogue" was one of the best examples of that.

♪ And here's what it's for, so ♪

♪ Come on, Vogue

Voguing came out of the 1960's Harlem ballroom dance scene,

mostly underground, mostly gay community,

and she turned it into one of the biggest pop songs in 1989 or 1990,

and made doing this like a thing that like your grandma would do,

even though she has no idea where it comes from.

♪ Don't just stand there Let's get to it ♪

♪ Strike a pose There's nothing to it, Vogue ♪

Everyone knew it was eight years after the fact that Vogue had its popularity,

but I don't think the average person in middle America

knew what Voguing was until Madonna did it.

It was a perfect example of her...

With her ear picking up a frequency that most people weren't hearing

and making it her own.

And it was also another continuation in terms of the video

of her more glamorous, more classy look,

the sort of Marilyn Monroe-thing she started to do,

getting away more and more from the kind of crassly, slutty look

that she had established with her early albums.

They had a very strong black and white video,

very highly stylized

and one of the best meetings of message and music

in Madonna's career.

♪ Get up on the dance floor

♪ Vogue

Not only does she tie it in with these themes of gay liberation,

which are all kind of sublimated,

she's name-dropping Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire,

all these American icons.

♪ Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean on the cover of a magazine ♪

♪ Grace Kelly, Harlow, Jean

She's bringing all these different ideas together

with kind of a subversive idea beneath it,

and then, you know, she's got a catchy video.

And the truth of the matter is, you know, whether or not you know what Voguing is,

it comes down to the fact that everyone remembers Madonna for being the person who Vogued

because it's not necessarily who does it first.

It's always kind of who does it best.

♪ Let your body move to the music ♪

I saw her, what may have been her live peak,

which was the Vogue tour,

and she was just so hot

that the heat of her career was in itself sexy,

which she had a sense for packaging each song

in a production number...

that was perfect for the song itself.

And then they'd move to a different point of the stage

and they'd do something else,

and you couldn't take your eyes off her.

Madonna will always have the sexiest dancers,

the newest fashions,

and she'll take credit for them.

Not because she's being arrogant,

but because everybody will give her credit for it

'cause they don't know who that second beautiful dancer from the left is.

They'll just say it's a Madonna show.

1991 was another epic year for Madonna.

By now she had achieved a staggering 32 top ten hits in the U.S.

and sold more than 17 million albums internationally,

generating an incredible $1.2 billion in sales.

That same year she also founded her own label,

Maverick Records, with Time-Warner,

and brought out a greatest hits album called

The Immaculate Collection.

A documentary about her Blonde Ambition tour

also got the critics talking once again.

In America, it was called Truth or Dare.

In the rest of the world, it had the provocative title In Bed with Madonna

I just think life is unfair. Here I am, this person.

Everybody thinks I have everything I want, right?

But I want you, and I can't have you.

It was the Truth or Daremovie where it was one of the first times

where she went to her mother's grave since she was a little girl.

And if you really want to mark Madonna's career up in the paths or into spheres,

1991 is kind of where she makes the sharp break.

She released The Immaculate Collectionthat year,

and I think you could probably make a case of that was when she finally had gotten

maybe the first bit of degree of peace with her mother's passing.

I never really understood why she was taken away from us.

It just seemed so unfair.

I never thought that she had done something wrong,

so oftentimes I'd wonder what I'd done wrong.

She never wants to leave.

She never wants to live any of her life with the cameras off.

If it was ideal, she'd have the cameras on at all times.

And they talk about her early shows,

where she was one of the first ones to realize that she was like...

She would let the audience be the peeping tom.

The documentary film also highlighted Madonna's

free-thinking attitude toward sexual stereotypes,

revealing her bisexual relationship with another woman.

I don't like her. I don't either. Believe me, it's sickening.

I don't like any of the people I sleep with either.

That's why I sleep with them 'cause they're hideous.

It's very interesting that Madonna...

didn't get more of a reputation for being bisexual.

She famously hung out with Sandra Bernhard as a gal pal.

But that's because she went through so many people

that inevitably a couple of them were gonna be women.

As if the documentary hadn't been provocative enough,

a year later,

Madonna really went for gold in pushing the boundaries

when she published a highly controversial soft-core pornographic coffee book

featuring her in various blatant erotic poses.

The book calledSex sold 150,000 copies

on its release day in the USA alone.

Three days later, all 1.5 million copies of the first edition

were sold out worldwide,

making it the most successful coffee table book of all time.

The one thing I would say that she ever did controversial

that, like, hurt her career what I'd say would be the Sexbook,

which was just stupid and ridiculous.

I will come out there and say it.

Nobody would've said,

"Hey, let's make a $150 coffee table book of explicit photos."

I mean, nobody said that to any pop star ever.

Can you imagine anybody saying that to Barbra Streisand?

To me, I was like, "What are you doing?"

Like it's one thing to be sexual in your videos,

to be sexual in your song lyrics,

but when you're actually doing a soft-core porn book

where you're posing naked, with Vanilla Ice,

with Vanilla Ice and Big Daddy Kane and Naomi Campbell...

I'm proud to buy it. I'm not ashamed.

Once again, you have to realize this was 1991, let's say.

People were more easily shocked then than they were now.

She had a sense of how far she could take it

'cause this could've potentially been a career ender.

And then she knew intuitively when to cut it,

and she let the book go out of print.

It came out, coincided with

what I think is one of her weaker albums Erotica,

which, again, was just so hammering you over the head with the sex thing.

There was just something about it that I thought seemed very desperate

and very, um... yeah, just trying too hard and silly

and just trying to shock like, "Ooh, look how shocking I am."

By now even some of her most ardent fans believed Madonna

had gone one step too far with her overtly sexual image.

And for about five years, she went under the publicity radar.

But then in 1996 came the momentous news

that she had given birth to a baby girl called Lourdes,

whom she had with her lover and personal trainer Carlos Leon.

Madonna had said numerous times she wanted to have a baby

with a Latin man, a Puerto Rican particularly

'cause she thought they would make beautiful babies together.

As if the birth of her daughter weren't headlining enough,

news also broke in 1996 that Madonna had landed

one of the most coveted roles in show business,

that of Eva Peron

in the movie version of the smash hit musicalEvita.

She said at the time,

"I am prouder ofEvita than anything else I have ever done."

Madonna's not gonna go down in history as being a great actress.

But occasionally she gets married to the right part,

and the reason why Desperately Seeking Susan worked well for her

is because she was basically playing a variation of herself,

and some people could say with Evitashe sort of was, too,

this very ambitious woman who came from nothing,

who is determined to make something of herself.

Some would say Madonna has used men

or used her feminine wiles to get ahead.

Evitawas the great musical hit on stage,

but of the late 70s.

And for some reason, the film didn't get made,

even though an entire generation of star females

were mentioned for the part and seriously considered.

In the film, she plays Evita Peron,

the wife of Juan Peron, leader of Argentina.

And this is a role that she'd always kind of wanted,

and obviously she found, I'm sure, tons of emotional connection

with a woman that kind of got everything that she wanted.

I was extremely passionate about it.

I knew that it was a chance for me

as an actress and a singer

to do things I'd never done before,

and to push myself and to grow.

♪ It won't be easy

♪ You'll think it strange

Doing "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina"

from the balcony of the Casa Rosada,

she was charismatic.

♪ Don't cry for me, Argentina

♪ The truth is I never left you ♪

That was her first big film success,

kind of her only major, major film success,

but I think it proved that she was able to have that kind of...

She was able to have that versatility.

She was able to kind of get in the mind of a very, very powerful woman

who would stop at nothing to succeed, so...

Obviously a huge stretch.

It's an incredible role for any actress to play,

and I felt that I could completely understand her compassion

and her ambition and other things that she experienced.

♪ I love you and hope you love me ♪

I just feel that what's happening to me

is a perfect example that if you just keep on going

and you put your mind to something, you can achieve anything.

♪ Look at me to know

♪ That every word is true

Not long after Lourdes' birth, Madonna joined Kabbalah,

a religion reflecting the more esoteric aspects of Judaism.

Her Kabbalah name is Esther.

And to this day, she remains a firm believer.

In 1998, she released an album calledRay of Light,

which proved a real departure for her.

♪ Zephyr in the sky at night I wonder ♪

Once again, it proved a whole new chameleon-like reinvention of her image.

That was a real change of pace

because it wasn't so much a pop album

as it was an attempt to kind of negotiate

with the electronic music that was going on at the time.

For most people in the music industry, electronica,

that catch always sees the next big thing.

♪ And I feel

The structure is like a dance record.

And she's somebody who really... as even dance music continues to thrive in 2012...

It's probably the biggest it's ever been,

Madonna was the first one.

♪ Quicker than a ray of light

She was the one that kind of was able to do it

in a way with more style than anybody had and more visual flair.

She was the first one to get that it wasn't enough to just be a good singer,

not to have good songs. You had to be an icon.

If you wanted to survive, you had to, you know,

become not just a conversation at the dinner table.

You had to be like the conversation at the dinner table.

♪ Quicker than a ray of light

♪ I'm flying

She won four Grammys forRay of Light,

including Best Video.

Amazingly, it was the first time in Madonna's long career

that the Grammys had recognized her.

I've been in the music business 16 years.

This is my first Grammy, and, uh...

Well, actually, I've won four tonight, but...

you know, it's worth the wait and all that.

The video was directed by Swedish director Jonas Akerlund,

and it also won the MTV Video of the Year.

They want to know if I was difficult to work with.

No. It was great.

That same year, Madonna's constant reinvention continued

when she married British film director Guy Ritchie.

She moved from Los Angeles to London

and later gave birth to their son Rocco John.

I'm looking for a place to live in London,

but only because I go there so much, I work there so much.

I can't stand staying in hotels.

You know, so it would be kind of like a second home.

It wouldn't be my primary home.

For a while, she seemed content with London life,

even writing a children's book calledThe English Roses.

Bizarrely, this onetime sex siren

now started to promote an image of a more wholesome English mother,

even adopting something of a British accent along the way.

How much do you enjoy being married?

Love it. Best thing I've ever done. Thank you.

She reinvented herself as this English rose,

writing a children's book, talking about baking bread and staying at home,

wearing these, like, day dresses.

It's absolutely ludicrous.

The problem with the English roses

was that they were all a little bit jealous

of a little girl in the neighborhood.

I tried out all the stories on my children,

and whenever they got bored and started fidgeting or,

you know, complaining or looking for other things to do,

I knew I had to fix that part of the story.

It's like Madonna thinks that the rest of us have such short memories

that nobody remembers the whole S&M stuff from before

and were happily ready to accept her as this, you know, English rose.

Now, of course what we see more recently is another reinvention,

kind of something in the middle.

She still wants to be sexy.

She wants to prove that she can be 53 and she can rock a body suit,

but at the same time, she's not quite as seedy and naked as she used to be.

I think Kabbalah has played a large role in some of the images we've seen of Madonna.

As she's kind of dabbled... at one time very, very deeply involved in the religion,

I think lately a bit less so...

We've seen the kind of influences of having a spiritual life

and how that has affected her in terms of her public image.

She went on to write several more children's books,

includingYacov and the Seven Thieves.

So my throat is a bit sore,

and I'm supposed to actually not be talking to very much

'cause I have a concert tomorrow,

so Lola has volunteered to read the story to you.

Once upon a time, the rose...

In 2003 came Madonna's ninth studio album

American Life.

With only 4 million in sales,

it was the lowest-selling album of her career.

And a few less successful singles emerged later.

She had a couple of huge flops.

American Lifewas first and foremost the biggest flop of them all.

That's the song where she tries to rap.

And it went about as well as you might imagine.

♪ I'm drinkin' a soy latte I get a double shotte ♪

♪ It goes right through my body And you know I'm satisfied ♪

Madonna's 10th album Confessions on a Dance Floor

was released in 2005.

Confessions on a Dance Floor from 2005

was probably, in my opinion, the last great Madonna record.

We'll see how the new one is, but that was, I think, her last real great record.

And in a way, it was a full-circle achievement.

American Lifehad been kind of a misstep of her trying to be all political,

and she got back to, actually, what she did in the beginning,

her dance roots, her Danceteria roots.

♪ Every little thing that you say or do ♪

♪ I'm hung up

♪ I'm hung up on you

Her last great single was "Hung Up",

- which sampled "Gimme! "Gimme! - "Gimme! "by ABBA.

Brilliantly sampled that.

At that point, she had kind of gotten a reputation as being very self-serious.

And Confessions on a Dance Floortried...

It was designed to be similar to a DJ mix.

And "Hung Up" was one of her biggest hits in a long time.

♪ I can't keep on wait...

♪ But it'll be too late

♪ Every little thing that you say or do ♪

It was a number one song in, I believe, in forty-plus countries,

which made it the most widespread number one single in pop history.

In 2006, Madonna hit the headlines once again

when she funded an orphanage in Malawi, East Africa,

and went on to adopt a boy from the country.

His name was David Banda.

2008 proved another momentous year for the goddess of pop,

not all of it good.

Things were not going well in the Ritchie household.

Madonna and Guy fought a lot.

They had a very difficult relationship,

and I've actually been around them when they were fighting,

and what was interesting was the way that they fought

was very much the way like 14-year-old boys would fight,

like, "No, you're stupid." "No, you're stupid."

It was the most adolescent dynamic I have ever seen in a relationship in my life.

I think what drew Madonna to Guy was like a lot of strong women.

She was looking for someone who was her equal,

who matched her, who wasn't intimidated by her.

And I think Guy's very English upbringing allowed him to be very reserved

and certainly not to show visibly that he thought she was cool or impressive.

Madonna was really drawn to that.

I think Guy mirrored at lot of her own father's demeanor and behavior

in the sense that he was cold, he was remote, he didn't give praise easily.

Madonna was very attracted to that, but later, of course,

I think she felt very hurt by the fact that he wasn't more supportive

or more complimentary of her efforts.

That same year, Madonna had to face the release of aNew York Times' bestseller

written by her brother and once-close confidant Christopher Ciccone

calledLiving with Madonna.

It revealed some unsavory stories about her.

But despite all this, Christopher remained adamant

that he held no ill will towards his sister.

There's no venom in this book. None whatsoever.

I have to face myself every day

when I wake up and look myself in the mirror,

and I do that with...

I can do that with honor and respect held intact.

It became clear from the book and to subsequent interviews

that there was no love lost

between Christopher and Madonna's husband Guy Ritchie.

I don't dislike Guy Ritchie. He disappoints me as a human being,

but I don't dislike him, you know.

It's my sister's husband,

and I have no intention of getting in between that.

As far as him being a wedge between us,

his insecurities led him to behave a certain way with me.

We were very close, her and I,

and that was not an easy thing for him.

Is he homophobic? Probably.

But I think the combination of what I was to my sister

connected with the way that I have sex

is, was difficult for him to deal with.

And, you know, it was, as Rupert Everett said,

sort of, you know, me or him.

Not long after the book's release,

Madonna announced that she and Guy were officially divorcing

after eight years of marriage.

Throughout the pain of Madonna's divorce,

Lourdes, or "Lola" as she's now known,

became even closer to her mother.

Madonna was always a very active mother and a very strong mother,

but then I think as she went through her divorce from Guy Ritchie,

she began to depend more and more on her then, I think, 12 or 13-year-old daughter.

Their relationship now definitely resembles more two girlfriends

than it does mother and daughter,

If you look at Lola's life, she's growing up so fast.

She has a clothing range, a clothing line.

She had a cameo in her mother's movie W.E.

She's been in Madonna's music video.

She's at a performing arts school.

She clearly wants to be a performer,

and it looks like Madonna's almost morphing from this performer herself

into probably the stage mother from hell.

But she's getting to kind of vicariously, I think, relive some things through Lourdes.

As she approached her 50th birthday,

Madonna found herself in Malawi's high court,

defending claims that she had flaunted the adoption laws in the country over David Banda.

I went to Malawi in Africa

thinking that I was going to save children's lives

and make a big difference in their lives,

and I was going to affect change in their lives.

And hopefully I have, but the surprise to me

was how much they changed me.

This adoption essentially created...

It was the beginning of the creation of adoption laws in Malawi.

Up until this time, there wasn't an adoption law.

So consequently I was sort of the template

or the role model, so to speak, for future adoptions.

But she won the case and later went on to adopt another Malawi child,

Mercy James.

It was a tough time for me... I won't lie...

Because the whole adoption period, you know,

going through the bureaucracy of it and everything was exhausting,

and then, you know, to have to go there

and see the palpable suffering of the children

and to feel like you were doing something good,

and then to come home to everyone screaming and outraged

and accusing you of kidnapping.

You know, it hurt, I have to say.

But you know, time has gone by,

and I can look back at it and say, "Well, you know, people didn't understand,

and often people jump to conclusions, and they're not educated,

and they don't know what's going on."

And I knew eventually that people would understand the story

and you know, obviously I had to go through that as well.

It all worked out okay in the end.

How does it feel to back in Malawi, Madonna?

Amazing!

That same year, Madonna released a third greatest hits albumCelebration,

which became her 11th number one album in the U.K.

She now tied with Elvis Presley

as the solo act with most number one albums in the country.

In 2011, Madonna stepped back into the movie business,

this time as a co-writer director onW.E.

It told the story of American divorcee Wallis Simpson,

who brought the British monarchy to its knees

when she won the heart of King Edward VIII,

and he was forced to abdicate.

The movie received mixed reviews.

Basically all the reviews have been universally bad,

apart from the fact that they've said, in terms of the artistic direction,

basically like she was making a music video, it looks good,

but everything else... the script, how the movie flows...

There's a lot anachronistic stuff where stuff from out of time, you know,

they've got Wallis Simpson dancing to some punk song from The Cure,

stuff like that that Madonna thought was very edgy

has been universally reviled by critics.

Today, despite her increasing years,

Madonna's live performances are legendary.

As a live performer, she is fantastic.

I had the privilege of going to a very small concert she held.

I was in a VIP area standing next to Guy Ritchie, and we were very close to the stage.

At the time, she was fantastic.

A lot of energy. She really commands the room.

In fact, she reminded me of Oprah Winfrey in a strange way

because I've been in a situation with Oprah as well,

and she just has to stand there and say anything banal,

and the whole audience is riveted.

Madonna has that same commanding presence.

They remind me of each other.

And she just had the audience in the palm of her hand

from the minute she came on the stage.

Her most recent live performance was at the Super Bowl in 2012,

where she wowed an audience of over 114 million viewers

with her highly energetic and ever raunchy routine.

♪ Look around

♪ Everywhere you turn is heartache ♪

♪ It's everywhere that you go ♪

I thought Madonna's performance at the Super Bowl was a great spectacle.

It's a great show, which is what Madonna is famous for.

If you looked at the way the stage was lit and all kinds of...

You know, amazing graphics and visuals and dancers and choreography.

It was very well done.

There was, for example, this man on a tightrope.

There's a particular name for what he did,

and he's the first person to get national television doing that

because she was clever enough to spot, "Hmm. This is new.

Get him to do this tightrope thing, dance on a tightrope."

♪ Dance with me, baby

She knew that M.I.A. was of a different ethnicity,

so that would expand the audience, as Nicki Minaj did.

And she knew she was controversial

because that's how they became famous in the United States

was through controversy.

♪♪

She had Nicki Minaj, she had M.I.A. there.

Those were her handpicked kind of children.

You know, it was kind of a slap in the face.

I think Lady Gaga and I'm sure Katy Perry would've killed to have had that,

but it's interesting that Madonna picked Nicki Minaj and M.I.A.,

and I think if you really want to study her career, that's not surprising at all

because she identified all the stuff that she was taking

was from African-American, you know, Caribbean culture.

She was taking all of these different things.

You have somebody like M.I.A. who's originally from Sri Lanka,

and her dad was Tamil Tiger.

She's a rebel, and she's flipping off the camera, whether that was planned or not.

You have Nicki Minaj, who's from Queens.

She's a rapper, she's a girl, and she's still stealing everything from...

I mean, everyone steals everything from Madonna.

If you saw Nicki Minaj's recent Grammy performance,

you know, she going against the Catholic Church.

The funny thing about it was everyone, you know,

there was a priest there, and she was playing all these different things,

and she's going wild, and she's doing these sexual things,

and you're supposed to be like, "Oh, my God. That's so awful."

But it's not awful because, like, everyone saw that 20 years ago.

♪♪

When M.I.A., you know, gave the middle finger,

it really irritated Madonna.

She said she felt it was unnecessary.

The energy had been so positive.

But let's be honest. That's not the reason.

The reason it irritated Madonna is that people were talking

about that obscene gesture the next day instead of Madonna's performance.

If anybody's gonna shock, if anybody's gonna provoke,

it has to be her.

If you looked at her alone,

uh, the voice, some of the dance moves,

the fact that she was actually holding cheerleading pompoms at one point

was a little bit silly.

♪ Gimme all your lovin'

♪ Gimme your love

♪ Gimme all your love today

I think there is a fine line between being an older woman

and being a fantastically sexy performer and looking ridiculous.

And I think at points she carried it off

when she came in as the gladiator,

then at other points when she was a cheerleader, it did look a little bit silly.

Nonetheless it put her single into the top ten for the first week.

Incredibly, her latest albumMDNA

reached number one in 43 countries

through iTunes preorder before it was even released.

First of all, the title MDNA is amazing.

It's a very clever title, and it also gives a nod to rave culture

and shows that she's again going in the dancey direction.

And "Gimme All Your Luvin" is the new single.

It has M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj.

♪ I see you comin' and I don't wanna know your name ♪

♪ L-U-V Madonna

Madonna's very good about surrounding herself

with people that are young and cool and will get her attention.

She's done duets with Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears,

people like that.

It was a way for her to just kind of re-establish, like,

"Hey, um, I'm still the queen of all this stuff."

Ever contentious, Madonna's love life continues to fascinate

an ever-greedy and voracious media.

Most recently, she's been linked with much younger men

like 26-year-old Brazilian model Jesus Luz

and 25-year-old Brahim Zaibat.

You name a big male star of the late 20th century,

and Madonna probably had some affiliation with him in some way.

And if not, he wanted it, you know, because she took men like trophies.

Despite being the most famous woman in the world,

Madonna still manages to lead a fairly private personal life.

So what is she really like?

When you meet Madonna, the first thing that strikes you

and kind of shocks you is how little she is.

She has this larger-than-life persona and this huge iconic reputation,

and so when you see this woman who's barely 5'4", this tiny little figure,

you find it hard to believe that so much power came out of such a small being.

Madonna is not particularly warm or friendly.

There's kind of a frostiness about her,

and you have to work for it, you know, to get her approval.

She notoriously hard on people.

She expects her staff to be available to her at all hours, day or night,

for whatever she needs or desires.

Additionally she expects them to be in good shape.

She expects everyone to take care of themselves or else.

But at the same time, I don't think her standards

are any less on herself than they are on other people.

She's a classic perfectionist, and she demands that kind of stuff from everyone around her.

Another thing about Madonna was like never into drugs.

She never really drank. She would drink ginger ale.

And I think people thought she was weird.

And I think it probably strikes back to the fact that she never wanted to be out of control.

She never wanted to feel weak or imperiled.

And when you drink or you smoke, it's to lose yourself,

and I think the story of Madonna is somebody who loves herself.

I know someone who had a meeting with Madonna not too long ago,

and she arrived in her pajamas. She just doesn't care.

Another thing about Madonna is a lot of people don't realize

all her friends and family, they never call her Madonna.

It's always "M," so it'll be like,

"Well, where's M? What time is M getting home?

Are you at M's house?"

It's kind of her personal nickname.

Madonna actually doesn't really like the "Maj" nickname.

That came from the British tabloids: Her Majesty.

I've been told she actually hates it.

I'm quite positive that although she's called that frequently in the press,

nobody would dare to call her that to her face.

People have been wondering what the future holds for Madonna forever.

I remember when she turned 30, people were like, "How long can she keep doing this?"

When she turned 40, it was like, "Come on, you're already 40.

Can she still keep doing this?"

Now 50's behind her. She's 53 years old,

and she's about to release another album,

and she already has a song that's a top 40 song,

and she's collaborating with Nicki Minaj.

What does the future hold for Madonna? I don't think she's ever gonna stop.

At the end of the day, I love fancy clothes and sparkling diamonds

and parties and dressing up

and, you know, all of those things,

but I don't need them to be happy, and I never did.

She will never stop trying to be the best.

She will never stop trying to stay on top.

Her ambition apparently knows no bounds.

I don't see Madonna ever stopping until nobody wants to go see her anymore.

You know, her tickets, very controversial for her new tour,

is something like $300. And when she was asked,

"How do you justify, in this economy, asking these kind of prices?"

And she said simply, "I'm worth it."

And I think as long as she has that kind of confidence,

that kind of self-belief,

and that kind of, you know, incredible ability to captivate a room,

she's gonna keep going.

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