Tag Archives: People Magazine

Today in Madonna History: December 11, 1989

December 11, 2025 By in 1989, December Tags: , , 1 Comment

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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.

Today in Madonna History: August 29, 2005

August 29, 2025 By in 2005, August Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

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On August 29 2005, Madonna appeared on the cover of People Magazine with the caption: Bone Breaking Fall.

Madonna had planned to celebrate her 47th birthday on a warm summer afternoon at her country home outside London, relaxing with her husband and children and horseback riding with her assistant.

And then: boom.

On Aug. 16 the singer took a spill on an unfamiliar horse, suffering three cracked ribs and a broken collarbone and hand. Her husband, Guy Ritchie, drove her to a local hospital, where she was treated and released a few hours later. Fortunately she’s almost finished wrapping up her new album, which she shot cover art for last Thursday and is due out in November. That said, “I’m sure she’ll be very restless,” says rep Liz Rosenberg. “She’s usually doing lots of things at once: Pilates, riding her bike. I think it will be tough on her.” At the very least, she can count on the neighbors to pull her a sympathetic pint or two. “She is well-liked by the locals round here,” says Tim Birks, landlord of Madonna’s local pub the King John Inn. “A lot of people will be wishing her a speedy recovery.” So will she get back on the horse and ride again? “Knowing her, she’ll be riding next week,” says Rosenberg. “She is a fearless girl.”

Today in Madonna History: August 28, 2000

August 28, 2025 By in 2000, August Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

On August 28 2000, Madonna appeared on the cover of People magazine with the headline: Labor Days! With Their Men Standing By, Madonna, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Iman Give Birth to New Little Scene-Stealers.

Here’s a snippet of the article inside:

August is often the busiest month for the nation’s maternity wards, but this year it was certainly the most glamorous. On Aug. 8 actress Catherine Zeta-Jones gave birth to son Dylan, with fiancé Michael Douglas nearby. Three days later, reportedly under more urgent circumstances, pop diva Madonna and film director Guy Ritchie welcomed son Rocco. And on Aug. 15 model-actress Iman and her husband, David Bowie, celebrated the arrival of daughter Alexandria. Here, the stories of those joyful beginnings. A Rocky Ride for Madonna’s Rocco There are limits even for those who like to have it all. With daughter Lourdes, 3, underfoot and another child on the way—an addition that she has said will add to her battalion of “nannies, housekeepers and assistants”—Madonna decided that life was getting a bit too hectic, shuttling between homes in Los Angeles, New York City and London, where she most recently shared a $15,000-a-month, four-story townhouse with Baby No. 2’s father, British director Guy Ritchie. Three weeks ago the Material Mom gave away two of her three Chihuahuas, letting Lourdes keep Evita while farming out Chiquita and Rosita to actor Glenn Shadix. “I e-mailed our mutual friend Rupert Everett in Italy to help convince Madonna that I would give the girls a proper home,” says Shadix, who owns two female terriers. “All four girls get along fabulously.”

Today in Madonna History: May 13, 1985

May 13, 2025 By in 1984, May Tags: , , 1 Comment

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On May 13 1985, Madonna was featured on the cover of People Magazine.

The headline: That Man-Smasher Madonna! On Tour

Once Madonna was expected to fizzle, but with a hit film and a sold-out tour, she’s now the hottest item in showbiz.

Today in Madonna History: December 28, 1992

December 28, 2024 By in 1992, December Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

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On December 28 1992, Madonna was named one of the 25 Most Intriguing People In The World For 1992 by People magazine.

Here’s what People had to say about Madonna in 1992:

The Movies! The Album! The Naughty Pictures! Once Again Madonna Was Everywhere, Shouting, “Look at Me—Every Inch of Me!”

Intriguing: suggests an air of mystery. Madonna: does everything in public but floss her teeth.

Intriguing: wrapped in enigma. Madonna: not wrapped in anything.

Intriguing: means doesn’t appear on-camera in romantic encounters with Evian water bottles. Madonna: does.

OK—so what’s so intriguing about somebody who lets you know that her lovers require a five-cent deposit?

For one thing, she made ya look. Consider Sex, the photo book in which she had her picture taken doing everything but blushing. Besides proving that a naked Madonna could arch backward over a pinball machine without mussing her hair, it also pushed the envelope out to the size of a circus tent. And when the crowds came pouring in, there she was at center ring, cracking her whip.

It only served her purposes that Sex earned sniffy reviews like “The Empress Has No Clothes” and that it was banned in places such as Japan and Ireland. Coming on the heels of her summer film hit, A League of Their Own, the fuss over her book helped to launch her new album, Erotica, and primed the movie audience for her next assault on their sensibilities, Body of Evidence. Her success at getting the world to subsidize her sexual preoccupations—to say nothing of her mammoth self-absorption—is what makes her worth the $60 million deal she cut this year with Time Warner (the parent company of PEOPLE). Madonna is not the first star to find the bucks in buck nakedness. But no one before her has capitalized so well on human willingness to have our fears and desires repackaged and sold back to us.

Yet this most public of women still strains to be a mystery. This year she went through more faces than Lon Chaney—one minute in Baby Jane pigtails, a cupcake from hell; the next in sour milkmaid gear, Heidi with a mean streak. Her changing gallery of faces is one reason that she’s a sex symbol who inspires a lot of heavy breathing from intellectuals. One landmark of the 1992 publishing list—The Madonna Connection: Representational Politics, Sub-cultural Identities and Cultural Theory. You didn’t get this sort of thing for Petula Clark.

But does she really throw such a mysterious light on our culture? More likely it’s just the glinting gears of a giant publicity machine. Yet the sheer magnitude of her achievement in that regard is, well, intriguing. And the grinding of those gears is surely too loud to be ignored. “I’m a revolutionary,” she once sighed. “And yes. it’s a burden.”

Sometimes it’s a burden for her, we sigh in return, and sometimes for us.

Madonna was a busy woman in 1992! What did you enjoy most? A League Of Their Own? This Used To Be My Playground? Erotica? Sex? Body Of Evidence? 

Today in Madonna History: December 25, 1989

December 25, 2024 By in 1989, December Tags: , , 1 Comment

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In the December 25, 1989 issue of People magazine, Madonna was named one of the 25 Most Intriguing People In The World.

Madonna and Warren. Madonna and Sean. Madonna and Sandra. Madonna and Pepsi. The Material Girl, the Boy Toy, Papa Don’t Preach, the stigmata debacle, a used bustier that sold at Sotheby’s for $3,750…   So what is it about this 31-year-old woman with a mole on her upper lip that aroused such curiosity, even among, for example, Belgians, who bought 62,656 copies of her Like a Prayer LP this year? Only one person can approach that question with both the authority and seriousness that it deserves, and that person, of course, is Dr. Joyce Brothers. “Madonna is a sexy person for our time,” says Brothers. “She’s independent and on her own two feet. Women like her because they don’t feel she’s a victim. Men like her because she’s sexy, but not straight out, like in Penthouse. She is childlike and innocent but at the same time naughty. Madonna,” concludes the good doctor, “is walking that line very successfully.”   Thank you, Dr. Brothers. And thank you, Madonna Louise Ciccone.

Today in Madonna History: December 18, 2000

December 18, 2024 By in 2000, December Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

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On December 18 2000, Madonna appeared on the cover of People magazine:  Madonna and family: A burglar in the house.

In the predawn hours of Dec. 1, the unsettling sounds of an intruder downstairs awoke Madonna and her fiancé, British film director Guy Ritchie, 32, at their rented Victorian mansion in London’s Notting Hill. By the time help arrived, the thief, who police believe had targeted the house at random, had fled with a laptop computer in Ritchie’s year-old black Range Rover. The shock of the invasion aside, little harm was done. The couple’s 4-month-old son, Rocco, and Madonna’s daughter Lourdes, 4, slept right through the excitement, and the SUV was recovered later that day in London.

“On a scale of 1 to 10,” says Ritchie pal and publicist Kris Thykier, “it’s a 1.”   Yet security plainly rates a 10 in Madonna’s mind. Though she recently knocked L.A. by announcing “I feel safer” in London, she was burgled in the same house last June. After that theft, the star shelled out $280,000 to tighten security at the three-story house, which came equipped with a 5-ft. stone wall and iron railings.

Contrary to press reports that she purchased a $10.3 million Georgian property in nearby Belgravia, real estate agents say that Madonna—who has made a second career of shopping for London houses—is still on the prowl to buy a residence.   Meanwhile, jetting off to Rome 12 hours after the heist to promote her new Music album, Madonna, 42, put aside her burglary fears with a 90-minute shopping spree at the chichi Fendi boutique. Shop manager Mariano Manselli, who declines to confirm reports of a $15,000 tab, demurely labels the haul “Christmas shopping.”

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