Wow!
Today we celebrate our fourth full year of sharing with you — and each other — what Madonna did today in her own career or personal history. Time goes so fast .. 4-years!
We want to thank you for sticking with us — sharing our page with your friends (please do if you haven’t already), LIKING our Facebook posts, re-Tweeting our Tweets — and commenting on our work.
We appreciate it all!
We look forward to another year of the same .. Many thanks, Justin and Jay
On January 20 1988, Madonna’s You Can Dance remix album was certified platinum in the USA for sales of 1,000,000 copies.
Patrick Leonard had this to say about working on the album:
“Remixing is a form of secondary creativity. Dance music elevates the DJ and the mixer to being almost on a level with the musician. In my opinion this is false. Manipulation of pre-recorded sound sources may be creative in a secondary sense, and may be valid in its own field, but it is pseudo musicianship. That’s why we tried to have a fresh approach to the songs for You Can Dance, as if we were developing and composing them for the first time.
On January 19 2017, Madonna participated in a discussion about feminism with Elizabeth Alexander, Marilyn Minter and the director of the Brooklyn Museum (where the discussion was held), Anne Pasternak, in New York City.
Here’s how the New York Times reported on the discussion:
At the talk Thursday night — which was introduced by Anne Pasternak, the director of the Brooklyn Museum, and moderated by the poet and essayist Elizabeth Alexander — one of the most interesting discussions surrounded the topic of sexuality and aging.
Ms. Minter — who collaborated with Madonna on a video piece for the singer’s 2008 “Sticky and Sweet Tour” — said that it is considered acceptable for women artists to talk about their sexuality as they get older, so long as they make themselves the brunt of a joke, like “Phyllis Diller.”
On January 18 1999, Madonna appeared on the cover of People magazine with the headline, “The New Pop Divas.”
The new pop divas. By that definition, say hello to the latest wave of pop divas: Celine Dion, 30; Whitney Houston, 35; Mariah Carey, 29; Madonna, the old-timer at 40; Janet Jackson, 32; Shania Twain, 33; and Jewel, 24—with divas-in-waiting Brandy, 19; Monica, 18; and LeAnn Rimes, 16, warbling in the wings. All certainly have the requisite lung power. Houston, whose Top 20 album My Love Is Your Love marks her first studio release in eight years, can rattle roof beams, Carey skips octaves with the ease of a kindergartner at jump rope, and Dion (who, like Carey and Twain, sang with Franklin on VH1) belts out “My Heart Will Go On,” the Oscar-winning Titanic theme, with chest-thumping majesty. And, with all due R-E-S-P-E-C-T to Aretha and company, these superdivas are richer and wield more power. True, some of their pre-MTV forebears dabbled in movies, but were they also best-selling authors a la Jewel? Did they, like Madonna, run their own record labels? Even divette Brandy has her own TV show.
On January 17 1996, Madonna accepted David Bowie’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction on his behalf.
During her speech, Madonna described how as a “normal, dysfunctional, rebellious teenager from the Midwest,” a David Bowie concert in June 1974 at Cobo Arena in Detroit changed her life for good:
“I don’t think that I breathed for two hours. It was the most amazing show that I’d ever seen, not just because the music was great, but because it was great theater. Here’s this beautiful, androgynous man, just being so perverse … as David Byrne so beautifully put it … so unconventional, defying logic and basically blowing my mind. Anyway, I came home a changed woman, as you can see, and my father was not sleeping and he knew exactly where I went, and he grounded me for the rest of the summer. But it was worth every minute that I sat and suffered in my house that summer.”
On January 16 1988, Spotlight entered Billboard’s Airplay chart at #37. The track would reach a peak of #32 three weeks later before falling to #40 in its final week.
Although Spotlight was not actively promoted to radio by Warner Bros. in the North America, radio’s eagerness to spin the cut regardless serves as a good indication that it likely would have continued Madonna’s hit streak at the time if it had been granted a proper single release.
On January 15 2012, Madonna and co-writers Julie Frost and Jimmy Harry won a Golden Globe for Best Original Song for Masterpiece (from the film W.E.) at the Golden Globe Awards.
