There will never be anyone like her ever again! Lady Madonna at 60.

Back in school in early ’84 I still had no idea who Madonna was despite the fact that she was ‘burning up’ the charts with her debut album. It took an image of Madonna on the cover of the UK edition of Smash Hits in a lime green sweater for me to eventually take notice of her. By the time I scrounged up enough money to buy her debut album Madonna (1983), Like A Virgin was just beginning to race up the charts. Seriously, I just couldn’t keep up with the Madonna onslaught on the charts and in the media. Almost every girl at school wanted to be Madonna and there wasn’t a month that didn’t pass that she wasn’t on the cover of some sort of music magazine publication. There wasn’t only a dance pop revolution going on in music in the mid ‘80’s with Madonna singlehandedly taking the lead, but she was also at the forefront of bringing sex out in the open often to the dismay of many conservatives. In short, Madonna would go on to transform pop culture with her single-minded drive and fierce independence.

In an impressive (almost) four-decade-long career Madonna has managed to reinvent herself seemingly over and over again. There is no one like her and there will never be anyone like her ever again. In the ‘80s and 90’s she was the biggest pop star of her generation who has outlasted almost everyone. At 60, we are still talking about her and one of those reasons why we still do is because she never seems to shy away from controversy or the spotlight. More recently, she apparently let slip that she believes that today’s music all ‘sounds the same.’ I suppose, it’s typical of Madonna to still be pushing people’s buttons, even after all these years, in an attempt to stay relevant. After all, she is I’m told gearing up to release her first album in three years.

Love her or hate her, and despite some of the cruel age-shaming that Madonna seems to attract nowadays, she is in no hurry to disappear. Late in 2016, Madonna began to fight back and take aim at those critics by saying, “People say I’m controversial. But I think the most controversial thing I have ever done is to stick around.”

Madonna has appeared on the cover of hundreds of magazines since she first hit the charts in the early ’80’s. This small fraction of Madonna memorabilia I have sporadically collected over the years has become increasingly collectible.

To celebrate the pop icon’s 60th birthday, I hope you will stick around, as I reveal my favourite Madonna song of all-time. But first let it be said that while the idea of singling out just one track, from her extensive back catalogue that incredibly spans 13 studio albums (and various compilations and soundtracks) and a little over 80 singles, might seem totally insane, in truth the seemingly daunting exercise was really a labour of love. And so, without further ado, my favourite Madonna song of all time is Into The Groove.

You couldn’t escape this song even if you tried! It is infectious, lively and arguably Madonna’s greatest song. In short, it was originally released as a non-album single in 1985 and appeared in the movie Desperately Seeking Susan as the background music in the disco scene. What’s it about? Well Madonna once said that the inspiration for the song came her love of dance. “The dance floor was quite a magical place for me. I started off wanting to be a dancer, so that had a lot to do with the song. The freedom that I always feel when I’m dancing, that feeling of inhabiting your body, letting yourself go, expressing yourself through music. I always thought of it as a magical place…”

Photo credit: The collage created from various magazines with Madonna on the cover was assembled and photographed by the author from a personal collection of Madonna memorabilia. I am not the uploader of You Tube clip embedded here.