Madonna in the Limelight

Madonna has been dubbed an enigmatic dominion in the world of pop music. The music she made in the 80s has left an iconic legacy to us all.  The tours she performed attracted intense audience impact, a versatile mix for fame and social acceptance. Despite the factional negative and positive opinions surfacing between the lines, these tours have incited sheer controversy and it cannot be denied that her stage performance stints around the globe have been performed with pervasive exuberance. Her album “Like a Virgin”, released in 1984, entrenched her into popularity and fame, as those other albums which she released consecutively for years until the 1990s at her career heights in the music industry and beyond. I remember those days whereby specific songs she composed and sang engraved an indelible mark communicating critique messages with unique audience impact, theme significance andoutbound imagery.

   The album, “Like a Virgin” elicited dichotomous attitudes within the public domain,between reception and critical discrimination inciting controversy with discriminative opinion and cosmopolitan fad. Certain songs in this album impacted to extent particular social groups who condemn the morale behind the message it brings forth.For example, “Material Girl” inculcated with enigmatic magnetism in its launch emerging a unique cosmopolitan image towards worldly idealism but promoting adversity in moral aspects. Materialism outweighs as an insurmountable value surfacing a distinctive fad the song is trying to communicatetoward a target to gear down social values to vulnerability.Regardlessof the odds, Madonna made her limelight stint to a hallmark icon establishing a reputative foothold imprinting throughout modern music history across the series of widescale tours made across the United States, Europe and Asia. Despite the odds, “Material Girl” earmarked an indelible success for her debut breakthrough in her music career over the more subtle projections she sported in her preceding debut albums. More culminating to institutional criticism, she pervaded so much widespread controversy in her, 1987 single,”Like a Prayer,”  constituting her image defamation by the Vatican associating Catholicsymbolism with sexual perversion. This led to widespread boycott against her promotion tours in Italian cities the Catholic Church encouraged to do, attribute to her Italian descent.  The music video presenting the song sports a luminous devilish setting that sensualized a pontifical reaction to a resulting religious degrade and negativism through a creative character of burning crossesthe darkness surrounds within as the attention eye catcher.  The single “Like a Virgin” promotes a sexually overt subculture dubbed to embrace premarital sex activity among the female teenage fan baseto preempt commonly social values among female teenagers vindicating sheer criticism.These particular songs supports to evade the universal social values criticalin a modern era.

However some songs in the same album project Madonna a distinct, wholesome image while maintaining a characteristicdiversity. An everchanging Madonna presents the world in a stancewith a makeover image to reverse into a neoconservatism level with a cosmopolitan accent. She attempts to imprint a universal image to compound socially common classes to evade criticism received following release of “Material Girl.” This time, the following year in 1985, petty values associate to love relationships dominate a message propaganda to envelop a reflective change in philosophy in “True Blue,” “Dress You Up”, exceptsporadic sexy images sporting G strings popped out to boldly unfold the highly controversial exposure in the infamous pornographic photoshoots in Playboy and Penthouse magazinesin the courseof this profile migration. In 1986, “Live to Tell”persisted with the same consistency in low key and subtle statures. The more  multipurpose yet cultural image maintaining the same image in the immediate precedent years reveal in “La Isla Bonita” and “Who’s That Girl?,” depicting as a Spanish Senora or punching Spanish translations in between the English lyrical lines. Madonna purportedly becomes provocative to attract the Spanish culture in America and the world as the second dominating culture in the world, part of her propaganda for fame.

     After more than 25 years it seems a phenomenon these songs retain their original value over the years as all-time favorites most generations remember about the unique 80s which brings into being a monumental legacy. Madonna remains an iconic legend in pop music. Though she continues to sport a wholesome profile, she will always be remembered to be a sexually overt icon that brought her name to fame.