Product Description

Madonna is the biggest female pop star in the world yet there is no serious biography of her, and no biography at all by a woman. Existing books are either gossipy style manuals or rehashes of press cuttings and they all end in 2001 with Madonna's marriage to Guy Ritchie. Yet her story hardly ends there, as evinced by her two record breaking world tours since then...Lucy O'Brien's extensive and well-researched biography will look at Madonna the artist, giving detailed analysis of her music, complete with revealing interviews with musicians and producers.It will focus on her cultural impact and the way she uses cinema, photography, visual art, theatre and dance in her work. It will take an in-depth look at how - and, more to the point, why - Madonna has reinvented herself through her twenties, thirties, forties and will no doubt do so again in her fifties. It will also look at the wider context and include interviews with similarly crusading female artists like Tori Amos, Laurie Anderson, Jeanette Winterson and Tracey Emin. This will be, quite simply, the definitive Madonna biography.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #149029 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

From the Inside Flap
Madonna Ciccone is the highest-earning female singer of all time, one of our greatest living pop icons and possibly the most famous woman in the world.
Now, in Madonna: Like an Icon, Lucy O’Brien tells the complex story of an artist who has reinvented herself time and time again, and continues to top the charts almost thirty years after the release of her first single. Complete with detailed analysis of Madonna’s music, and revealing interviews with her intimate inner circle – her dancers, backing musicians and producers – we follow Madonna from her difficult childhood, to those frenetic early years in New York, through the shocks and scandals of the 1990s Sex era, to her twenty-first-century incarnation as an English Lady of the Manor, and the controversial Malawian adoption saga.
Providing fascinating insight into Madonna’s life, her relationships, and what motivates her as a woman and as an artist, here at last is the definitive biography of one of the biggest stars in the world.

From the Back Cover
Madonna Ciccone is the highest-earning female singer of all time, one of our greatest living pop icons and possibly the most famous woman in the world. She has reinvented herself time and time again and continues to top the charts. In 2008, unbelievably, she is hitting her 50th birthday.

Complete with detailed analysis of Madonna’s music, revealing interviews with her intimate inner circle – her dancers, backing musicians and producers – Lucy O’Brien follows Madonna from her difficult childhood, to those frenetic early years in New York, through the shocks and scandals of the 1990s Sex era, to her twenty-first-century incarnation as English Lady of the Manor, and the controversial Malawian adoption saga.

Providing fascinating insight into Madonna’s life, her relationships, and what motivates her as a woman and as an artist, here at last is the definitive biography of one of the biggest stars in the world.

About the Author
Writer and broadcaster Lucy O'Brien is the author of the award-winning She Bop, a definitive history of women in popular music. She has also published bestselling biographies of Dusty Springfield and Annie Lennox. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies including Rock 'n' Roll Is Here to Stay, and Punk Rock, So What? She teaches Media & Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London. Lucy lives in London with her husband, a musician, and their two children.

Customer Reviews

Best Madonna Biography To Date
Most biographies of Madonna so far have been lightweight fluff, but this one is different. Though it's unofficial, it does have the advantage of being objective.

It goes through every phase of her career and tells you about the process of making each album and tour. Some bits I've read before but there was a lot of new stuff too, and I found this fascinating.

It does cover Madonna's personal life but not in an intrusive way, and is much more focused on her career than any other bio I've read. O'Brien does analyse Madonna's work from a feminist perspective, but she's not heavy-handed with it at all.

O'Brien is sympathetic to her subject and counters a lot of the tabloid myths, giving a more balanced picture of what she's really like. At the same time, she doesn't put M on a pedestal and shows her as a real woman, not skirting her human flaws.

'Madonna: Like An Icon' is an intelligent biography which gives Madonna the respect she deserves as an artist.

A brilliant book that takes Madonna seriously as an artist, at last!
'Like An Icon' is a brilliant overview of Madonna's life so far. It's easy to read and very informative especially with regard to what matters most, Madonna's music. O'Brien uncovers the truth, that most of us Madonna fans knew already, that Madonna is the driving force behind her songs, both in production and songwriting. The reason this book shines out above all the other M biographies is because O'Brien critiques each album in detail and although she does discuss Madonna's personal life too, it's not written in a tabloid sensationalist style, it is instead at long last a real biography, an analysis that Madonna and her catalogue of hits deserve. It also shows why she has remained at the top of the charts, and top of the music world's A-list for more than 20 years. If you've got a friend or family member who loves Madonna, this is a must buy gift.

Madonna: Psychoanalysed
As a Madonna fan, I read J. Randy Taraborrelli's Madonna: An Intimate Biography and loved it. Sensational, trashy and in bite size pieces, I devoured chapters at a time.

O'Brien's biography of Madonna is completely different to Taraborrelli's. Her work seems more academic in it's written style, and as a former university student this is apparent when you read that O'Brien is an academic herself. And the opening chapters tell us of her own personal fascination with Madonna as opposed to Taraborrelli's journalistic endeavours.

The biography itself charters Madonna's life up to present times, from her beginnings to the now settled adoption saga of David Banda. If you're a Madonna fan this will all be pretty familiar.

A biographer should not be afraid to critique their subject and this aspect is what made the book for me. O'Brien took a step back from the fly on the wall documentation used by Taraborrelli and psychoanalysed and critiqued Madonna, what made her the person she is now, and possibly where she is going next.

A thoroughly modern and mature read about Madonna.