On November 6 2000, Madonna’s Music single entered its 9th consecutive week at #1 on the Canadian Top 100 Singles chart in the final issue of RPM magazine, which ceased publication after 36 years as the voice of the Canadian music industry.
Today in Madonna History: November 5, 2014
On November 5 2014, Madonna was a presenter at the Wall Street Journal’s 2014 Innovator Awards, held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
According to The Cut, Madonna stole the show at the WSJ Innovator Awards:
Highlights of the night included Madonna’s delightfully unhinged, meandering speech in honor of dancer Lil Buck. Equal parts irritated mom and supportive mentor, the queen of pop complained, “Buck shows up uninvited at my house for dinner all the time,” but went on to praise his tenacity, grace, and talent. Midway through her speech, she scolded a man in the audience for taking a photo of her at the podium. None of that mattered once Lil Buck took the stage and performed his now-famous “Swan” dance. He received both the Performing Arts Innovation award and a standing ovation from the crowd.
Today in Madonna History: November 3, 2005
On November 3 2005, Madonna opened the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards in Lisbon, Portugal with her first live performance of Hung Up.
Less than three months after suffering several broken bones in a horse riding accident, Madonna’s performance was triumphantly received by fans and the press – not to mention the very enthusiastic audience who attended the show in Lisbon.
Today in Madonna History: November 2, 1992
On November 2 1992, Madonna appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine, with the headline: The Selling of Sex – The New Voyeurism.
Here’s a snippet of the article inside, written by John Leland:
What if Madonna gave a sexual bonfire and nobody came? In the quiet before the inevitable storm a few weeks back, NEWSWEEK asked Madonna about the possibility of failure or, more grievous, inconsequence. What if she released “Sex“—her explicit coffee-table book of erotic photos and writings, celebrating sadomasochism, homosexuality, exhibitionism and other pansexual delights-and the public merely yawned? “If everybody yawned,” she said, armed for this and other contingencies, “I’d say hooray. That means something happened.”
It was one of those neat identity makeovers for which Madonna is justly renowned: after coloring the last nine years with her determination to engage our attention at all costs, here she was, Florence Nightingale, dutiful erotic night nurse, content to slip into the shadows once her services were no longer needed, the patient cured. Now that’s what you call spin.
But for Madonna and for the rest of us, this was no lark. A deft little way to make some money and grab some spotlight, “Sex” also promised our first barometric reading of a turbulence boiling in American culture. Call it the new voyeurism: the middlebrow embrace, in the age of AIDS, of explicit erotic material for its own sake. From Mapplethorpe to MTV, from the Fox network to fashion advertising, looking at sex is creeping out of the private sphere and into the public, gentrified by artsy pretension and de-stigmatized out of viral necessity. Canny marketers exploit it; alarmed conservatives, joined by many feminists, are trying to shut it down. In many ways, as Pat Buchanan asserted at the Republican convention in August, there really is a cultural war going on. “Sex” stood to claim the battlefield. Advance cover stories on the book in Vanity Fair, Vogue and New York Magazine heralded hot like you’ve never seen before.
And from the looks of things last Wednesday morning, “Sex” measured up. Dismissive reviews, splashed across the tabloids like news of Pearl Harbor, couldn’t stop the ambush. Bookstores, record stores, anybody who carried it got swamped. Priced at $49.95 and packaged in a Mylar bag that warned ADULTs ONLY!, the book sold 150,000 copies on the first day, out of 500,000 printed for American distribution. Who says we’re in a recession? Laurence J. Kirshbaum, president of Warner Books, called it “review-proof.” Many stores pre-sold their shipments before they arrived. Others couldn’t restock fast enough to keep pace with demand.
Today in Madonna History: November 1, 1997
On November 1 1997, Buenos Aires peaked at #3 on Billboard’s Hot Dance/Club Play chart.
The promo-only set of remixes by Madonna, Pablo Flores & Javier Garza were serviced to clubs by Warner Bros. Records to promote the home video release of Evita. Produced in the summer of 1996 during the same sessions that yielded the hit remixes for Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, the percussion-heavy Buenos Aires club mixes again featured re-recorded vocals by Madonna and additional harmonies provided by Donna De Lory & Niki Haris.
Today in Madonna History: October 31, 1987
On October 31 1987, Madonna’s Causing A Commotion reached #1 on Billboard’s Hot Dance Club Play chart in the USA.
I’ve got the moves baby, you got the motion
If we got together we’d be causing a commotion
Today in Madonna History: October 30, 2006
On October 30 2006, Madonna appeared on the cover of People magazine with the headline: Madonna’s Adoption Drama.
Here’s a snippet of the article:
Bringing Home David By Karen S. Schneider
As Madonna and Her Husband, Guy Ritchie Welcome Home Their New 13-Month-Old Son from Malawi, Local Human Rights Groups—and Some of the Boy’s Relatives—Raise Questions Over the Legality of the Adoption.
Madonna had only seen a snapshot of David Banda and had learned only basic information about him when she and her husband, Guy Ritchie flew to the African nation of Malawi on Oct. 3. But when the singer arrived at the Home of Hope Orphanage Centre and met the 13-month-old boy, says Madonna’s spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg, “It was love at first sight.” Adds a witness: “The look of pure joy on her face was beyond words, not unlike when her children [Lourdes, 10, and Rocco, 6] were born.”
About a week later—even as a storm of controversy was brewing over the planned adoption—Madonna’s happiness was echoed in a dimly lit room of the High Court in the Malawian capital of Lilongwe. The pop superstar, 48, and her director husband, 38, met, for the first time, with David’s dad, a farmer named Yohane Banda. Through a translator who spoke Banda’s Chichewa language, “she asked lots of questions,” says Banda, 32. “How old I am, what I do for a living, everything.”
Madonna also made promises—to provide Banda’s only child with a loving home, and to bring him back to Malawi to visit. For the singer, the face-to-face with Banda marked a turning point in an almost year-long effort to adopt a child from an impoverished nation where she helps fund six orphanages. (She has also pledged to sponsor improvements through the Millennium Promise program.) For Banda—who ekes out a living farming onions and cabbage, and placed David in the church-run Home of Hope when his wife died—it was a chance to give his son, he tells PEOPLE, “a brighter future.” Adds David’s grandmother Asineti Mwale, 56: “God has heard our prayer. May he bless this kindhearted woman abundantly.”
