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Madonna: Successfully Incorporating Sexuality Into Music Essay

Decent Essays

Madonna

Madonna has been a very influential female "popstar" over the last 20 years: to sell her music she has publicised herself through the media, and through this media she has stuck to the concept that "sex does sell".

Madonna was born on the 16th of August 1958 as Louise Veronica Ciccone, in Bay City, Michigan. She began her journey into the most influential industry and medium by moving to New York to become a ballerina. From this young age she was very aware of the human body and the way it is perceived. She knew that the body needed to be sold in some way, to 'make it' in these types of industries. At this stage of her life she became anorexic in an attempt to become the …show more content…

By using and exploiting her sexuality, with the use of pictures, music, lyrics, and books, her image is almost always associated with the word sex.

Through Madonna's music we see that sexuality plays a large role in many aspects: the context, the names of albums and the lyrics. Examples of these are from her second album "like a Virgin" which was less poppier than the first but sultrier and sexier, focussing on sexual issues.

Her fourth album "Erotica" seemed to continue with this theme, which was one of her most sex-orientated albums.

So how has Madonna used her sexual powers to influence the music industry?

Her first book Sex

She is symbolic for women in our generation, as she is the first female pop star to have such an enormous following, and she broke the conventions of the usual 80's popstar. Madonna seemed to give pop a new dimension, and made the genre and the industry more female orientated. In the 1990's Madonna was the highest paying female artist in the pop music industry, which was highly dominated by men in the 1980s, such as Prince and George Michael.

With each album she seems to reinvent herself, and every second album seems to be sexually orientated, like she is somewhat taking a break in selling "sex". Examples of this trend are within her first few albums. She firstly released "Madonna", a very fun and youthful dance/pop album,

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