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Madonna is still one of todays biggest and well known music stars, but her singing career began back in the 1980′s. I must admit that I always thought that Madonna was just a stage name, but it is in fact her real name. She was born Madonna Louise Ciccone on August 16th, 1958 in Michigan and raised in a strict Catholic family, which probably accounts for her backlash against Catholicism that was evident in some of her work.
Madonna initially trained to be a dancer, first learning ballet and then receiving a dance scholarship at the University of Michigan, which she left before completing her course after her ballet teacher persuaded her to pursue a career in dance. She travelled to New York to start her new life, where she worked as a dancer before forming a band called Breakfast Club with her boyfriend at the time, Dan Gilroy. This started her on the road to music, and ultimately led to her releasing her first single, Everybody, in 1982. Her first album followed the next year, entitled simply Madonna. This album was originally produced by Reggie Lucas, a successful producer of R&B songs. Madonna was not happy with the music tracks put to her songs, so turned to her then boyfriend John “Jellybean” Benitez, who reworked the songs and added one, Holiday, which is probably one of Madonna’s best known early hits.
The album Like A Virgin appeared in 1984, which of course contained Like A Virgin, but also Material Girl and Into The Groove, which was part of the soundtrack to the film Desperately Seeking Susan, her first well known acting role. Her love for film was evident in the fact that her music videos became much bigger and grander. In 1986 she released her next album, True Blue, which contained the titular True Blue but also Papa Don’t Preach, Open Your Heart and La Isla Bonita. Most of these songs had beautifully filmed videos to accompany them, but this is also where Madonna really began her attack on Catholicism.
Her final album of the 1980′s was Like A Prayer, which also featured the hits Cherish and Express Yourself. After this Madonna started to enter a sequence of reinventing herself. Her work became more experimental and more sexy, swapping her old wardrobe of lacy edged skirts and knee length leggings for unfeasibly pointy bras, corsets and stockings. As the years have gone by she has courted controversy by kissing other female artists (most notably Britney Spears and Christina Agueleira), married movie director Guy Ritchie, joined the Kabbalah (an offshoot religion based in Jewish mysticism) and been involved in the scandal over her “adoption” of David Banda, a child from Malawi.
Duran Duran were one of the biggest bands of the 1980′s, but have never disbanded and are still recording today. The band had a string of hits including Girls on Film, Rio, Hungry Like The Wolf and the James Bond theme A View To A Kill, and were initially part of the New Romantic scene, dressing flamboyantly and with crazy big hair styles. They also have the honour of being named Princess Diana’s favourite band!
Chas and Dave were one of those fun musical acts that you would struggle to find in the pop charts these days. You really don’t seem to get many comedy songs being popular any more, which I feel is a great shame.
I always felt that Shakin’ Stevens was kind of a British equivalent of a young Elvis Presley. With his greased quiff hair style, denim jeans and jacket and those crazy dance steps, Shaky, as he was nicknamed, had that kind of an air about him. The style of songs he sang also had an element of The King about them too, being good old fashioned Rock ‘n’ Roll, with a real emphasis on the Roll.
Everyone must remember Adam and the Ants if only for the fact that lead singer Adam Ant (real name Stuart Leslie Goddard) always seemed to have a white line drawn directly across his face, under his eyes and over the bridge of his nose. They were a punk band around during the early 1980s who dressed in a very flamboyant manner, looking like pirates who had been caught in an explosion in a paint factory, but otherwise kick-starting the New Romantic movement.
The first time I heard of Culture Club was one evening when they appeared on Top of the Pops. Said show was on TV, and Culture Club were playing their first big hit “Do you really want to hurt me?“. My Dad walked in and, never being one to mince his words, said, “That’s a bloke singing!“, referring of course to Boy George. Of course, being still of primary school age both my sister and I refused to believe him, since the person on TV was clearly a woman in our eyes, what with the heavy make-up and wearing what appeared to be a white dress.
Black Lace are responsible for more heinous music than you can shake a big stick at, and whilst 
Suggs and co., seen here doing their trademark too-close-together walk, are one of those bands whose songs you’ll instantly recognise whenever you here one. They have been variously categorised as a Punk or Ska band, but according to Wikipedia they are neither of these, but instead something called 2 Tone, which is a fusion of the two aforementioned musical styles. So there you are fact fans! Now you know!
