Madonna

She grew up in Michigan, but at the age of 20 she packed her bags and moved to New York to study contemporary dance. That was in 1978. Before recording anything on her own, she was part of two groups: Breakfast Club and Emmy. In 1982 she signed with Sire Records and the following year her first album, Madonna, was released. What came after was a flood of songs that reached number one in the main markets around the world: «Like a Virgin», «Material Girl», «Papa Don't Preach», «Like a Prayer», «Vogue», «Frozen», «Hung Up» and many more.Madonna Louise Ciccone, known simply as Madonna, didn't stay only in music.

She acted in films with mixed results, but her role as Eva Perón in Evita (1996) earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical. She also founded the record label Maverick, worked as a fashion designer, writer, businesswoman and film director.In numbers: more than 400 million music productions sold, a figure that the Guinness Book of Records records as the highest for a solo artist of all time. She is the artist with the most hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in music history, and the first woman to surpass one billion dollars in tour earnings. The magazine Forbes placed her as the best-paid singer of the year eleven times over four decades.Among her awards are seven Grammy Awards, two Academy Awards, twenty MTV Video Music Awards and seventeen Japan Gold Disc Awards.