On December 17 2014, Madonna responded to the leak of songs from her forthcoming album with this statement to her fans:
“Thank you for not listening! Thank you for your loyalty! Thank you for waiting and if you have heard please know they are unfinished demos stolen long ago and not ready to be presented to the world.”
On December 16 2010, Madonna released a special statement to her fans:
“It’s official! I need to move. I need to sweat. I need to make new music! Music I can dance to. I’m on the lookout for the maddest, sickest, most bad ass people to collaborate with. I’m just saying……”
Madonna’s search would result in the creation of her twelfth studio album, MDNA.
On December 15 1990, the LA Times printed a feature article by Robert Hilburn, about Madonna’s forth-coming laser-disc release of the Blond Ambition tour.
Can Madonna sell laser-disc players as well as she sells herself? Pioneer Artists, the nation’s leading distributor of music-related laser discs, hopes so. In a move virtually unprecedented in the video industry, Pioneer has just released Madonna’s Blond Ambition World Tour Live exclusively on laser disc. Normally, video packages of this nature are released on videocassette two to six weeks before they are released on laser-disc. In this case, however, Blond Ambition won’t be released on videocassette for at least a year. Steven Galloway, president of Pioneer Artists, said he hopes the fact that an artist of Madonna’s stature would release a video only on laser disc will send a signal to millions of potential laser customers that the new format has finally come of age.
Galloway said that the laser exclusive with Madonna grew out of an agreement last spring for Pioneer, the electronics hardware and software giant, to sponsor her tour.
“I contacted her manager, Freddy DeMann, long before the tour started in hopes of getting the laser-disc rights to any video that was going to be shot in association with the tour,” Galloway said. DeMann was meeting with potential corporate sponsors at the time, Galloway said, and he asked if Pioneer would be interested in sponsoring the tour. The company apparently jumped at the opportunity.
“Madonna is the ideal artist to reach the new demographics that we are hoping to attract with the new, low-priced combination CD and laser players . . . the young, hip 18-35 audience,” Galloway said.
“Until these low-priced players arrived, laser discs were considered something just for the high-end market . . . a rich man’s toy. But that has changed and Madonna seemed the ideal artist to drive that point home.”
And what about the Blond Ambition package itself?
The video is based on the same concert in Nice that HBO broadcast live last summer, but the new, edited laser version offers much more of the vitality and charm of the show itself than the HBO special.
On December 14 1985, Dress You Up peaked at #5 on the UK singles chart.
It was Madonna’s eighth UK Top-5 hit of 1985:
On December 13 1984, Madonna performed Like A Virgin on BBC1-TV’s Top Of The Pops in London, England.
Madonna wore her signature Boy Toy belt, a Keith Haring jacket and a vibrant pink wig. She wore the same pink wig during a performance on Like A Virgin on Solid Gold.
On December 11 1989, Madonna was featured on the cover of People magazine as one of the best-dressed celebrities of 1989.
Topping the list of the best dressed were Princess Diana, Kevin Costner, John Candy, Jacqueline Onassis, Mick Jagger, Angela Lansbury, Madonna, Marlon Brando, Michelle Pfeiffer and Mel Gibson.
People listed Bruce Springsteen, Kim Basinger, Sean Young, Elizabeth Taylor, Rod Stewart, Roseanne Barr, Jerry Hall, Geena Davis, Kathleen Sulilvan and Prince Andrew as the worst dressed.
On December 10 1991, Madonna was honoured with the Award Of Courage by the American Foundation For AIDS Research (AMFAR) at a Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel dinner, in Beverly Hills, California.
At the event, Madonna discussed the rumours that she had tested positive for AIDS:
“When the rumors surfaced that I was HIV-positive, I thought, well, someone’s really bored today . . . let’s make up a real juicy story. I tried to ignore it but it wouldn’t go away. . . .
Instead of pointing the finger at people and having witch hunts and ostracizing each other for lifestyles and sexual preferences, we should all be uniting to fight this disease . . . but we’re not. Because we’re afraid. We’re scared out of our skins to face the truth that AIDS is not a gay disease, it’s a human disease.
Now I’m not HIV-positive, but what if I were? I would be more afraid of how society would treat me for having the disease than the actual disease itself. If this is what I have to deal with for my involvement in fighting this epidemic, then so be it.
I’m not afraid to be associated with people who are HIV-positive, and I am not afraid to love people who are HIV-positive. Because their ordeal is more important than mine, because their courage is larger than mine, because what they’re facing is real. And if we can learn to deal with real, and our fears, then I’m hopeful that we can conquer this disease.”
The event drew 850 guests, and raised $750,000 for AmFAR. Performers included Patti Austin, k.d. lang, Barry Manilow, Michael McDonald, David Pack and Rosie O’Donnell, who did a hilarious send-up of the Madonna’s Vogue.
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