Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3400903 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Customer Reviews

The Best Madonna Book with Complete Discography
This is by far the best book ever written about Madonna, Many pages of color and B&W photographs as well as a complete recording discography, which is great for collectos of her music., 256 pages with a complete index, overal a very nice book.

Empty "Madonna"
Andrew Morton will always be known as the guy who wrote a groundbreaking biography of Princess Di. And he will be known for nothing else, apparently. At least, he won't be remembered for "Madonna," a quickie biography that covers no new ground and -- horrors! -- makes a once-controversial pop icon... boring.

Madonna Louisa Ciccone started off as a motherless child, whose mom (also called Madonna) died of breast cancer. But she rapidly turned from pitiful to outrageous, travelling to NYC to become a dancer. Instead, she became a blossoming singer, an aspiring actress, and one of the first big stars to grace MTV.

But more than her music was the controversy that surrounded her: Madonna dated men such as Michael Jackson, JFK Jr., Prince, and then-hot rapper Vanilla Ice, and married actor Sean Penn, while still pursuing relationships with other men and women. After their tumultuous union fell apart, she created the then-shocking book "Sex," the peak of her sexually-charged career. But then her life took a more domestic turn, with children, marriage and religion (in about that order).

It's not hard to have an opinion on Madonna -- either you love her or hate her. But if the only exposure to Madonna was through this book, it would be difficult to decide which. Morton paints Madonna in bland hues, describing her exploits, affairs and then-shocking concerts in the most uninspired prose imaginable. However, not once does he reveal anything new -- despite input from lovers and friends, Morton can only add detail to what people already knew.

There are some interesting facets of her rise to stardom, particularly how she and her pals changed the NYC club life, and the odd details of her first recordings. For example, she wasn't pictured on her first album, in the hopes that she would be thought to be black. But once we get back to Madonna's personal life, things get dull.

Morton himself seems to presume too much on his knowledge of Madonna: he constantly claims that she was miserable, depressed, et cetera. Apparently he disapproves of her wild past. Entertainingly, he claims that Madonna is just a "Catholic girl who wants to get married." If that is how "just Catholic girls" live, then I want to know why I'm not having that much fun.

Yet, at the same time, he glosses over most of her present, peaceful, monogamous life -- when she gets involved with Guy Ritchie and has her second child, he loses interest and crams the last several years into a matter of pages. One would think that her first solid relationship and her children would be worthy of a little more attention.

Nobody expected Pulitzer-worthy journalism in "Madonna." But surely Andrew Morton could have done better than a tepid recounting of what her fans already knew.