The work of a cultural historian rather than a fan, this meticulous study puts the shape-shifting star in proper context
Louise Ciccone arrived in New York from Michigan aged 19 in 1978, she had a small suitcase, a winter coat and $35 in her pocket. In an interview with the broadcaster Howard Stern years later, she would admit that she was frightened: “The massive scale of New York took my breath away … I was poised for survival … But I was also scared shitless and freaked out by the smell of piss and vomit.”
This self-assurance, ferocious drive and refusal to let circumstances get the better of her echoes through Mary Gabriel’s doorstopper biography. The world is not short of books documenting the life of the queen of pop, though few have attempted it on such a mammoth scale. Coming in at more than 800 pages, the book leaves no stone unturned, and no song, music video, film, TV appearance, friendship or romantic liaison unanalysed, in its quest to understand the woman behind the global icon.
Those who insist Madonna was purely interested in fame may adjust that view when presented with her campaign to educate the world about HIV and Aids at a time when her contemporaries, not to mention politicians, were either silent or loudly disgusted.
co-opting of the ballroom scene with her 1990 single VogueGabriel’s writing is unfussy and direct – the approach of a cultural historian rather than fan – while delighting in details such as Madonna getting fired from her job at New York’s Russian Tea Room for wearing fishnets, or sticking her tongue in Al Pacino’s ear after meeting him as a bolshy 20-year-old.is inevitably contradictory: serious, funny, generous, inconsiderate, hard-working, restless, blinkered, self-possessed, stubborn.
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