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Madonna is so famous-for-being-famous that you sometimes have to remind yourself what she's famous for? Well, there's the trailblazing pop music that empowered female teenagers across the world. Check. Pervy books (Sex), featuring our knickerless superstar peering over garden walls? Check. The spiritual healing with her newfound Kabbalah faith? The feminist icon? Oh yes. And now, a mother and all-round Mockney superstar housewife to her equally mockney geezer/husband, film director Guy Ritchie.

No modern pop star has surpassed Madonna's level of fame, and she is perhaps the first star to have control over the manipulation of her media image. She's even survived blips in her career that would have crushed lesser beings. Seducing a black Jesus in the Like A Prayer video probably wasn't a commercially astute move. Or maybe giving a beer bottle a blow job in the In Bed With Madonna movie. 

She even emerged from a relationship with Vanilla Ice with her cred intact! Ultimately, people would probably much rather hear Madonna's music than her many faceted multi-media incarnations. Madonna has continually adapted herself and her music to the times. While Tom Jones was crow-barring himself into a pair of leather pants for an unseemly rendition of the Club-18-30 hit Sex Bomb, Madge was enhancing her sound with the new age cred of producer William Orbit.

Madonna has sold 140m records. Her i-conical bra as worn on her Blonde Ambition tour, fetched £20,000 at auction and even last year in a relatively fallow period, she earned £36m. And now her influence can be seen in the crop of US popstrels like Britney, Pink and Christina Aguilera.

Madonna Louise Ciccone was born on August 16, 1958 in Rochester, Michigan. When she was six, her mother died of breast cancer. She claims she has been searching for a reason for her existence ever since. As a teenager she won a scholarship to the University of Michigan where she trained as a dancer. She moved to New York in 1978, supporting herself by working as a waitress and the odd nude modelling stint and skin flick (A Certain Sacrifice). 

After a stint in Paris as part of the Patrick Hernandez Revue ( a disco outfit who had a hit with Born To Be Alive), she returned to New York to begin her musical career in earnest. She formed Breakfast Club with her boyfriend Dan Gilroy (with whom she had travelled to Paris). The band were a pop/dance outfit and Madonna played drums. 

She eventually left the group and formed Emmy with her boyfriend Stephen. Then Madonna began singing under her own name, eventually drawing the attention of Sire Records boss Seymour Stein who signed her for her debut single, Everybody. The track became a club hit. Follow up, 1983's Physical Attraction was also a club hit while Holiday, written by her boyfriend Jellybean Benitez, was Madonna's first Top 40 hit.

Madonna's eponymously titled debut album was released in September 1983. MTV soon picked up on the album's tracks, Borderline, which became her first Top 10 hit in March 1984 and Lucky Star, a No.4 US hit. But Madonna's breakthrough to superstar status came with that year's No.1 single and album, Like A Virgin. The song's title was tailor-made for tabloid headlines. 

The attendant video, shot in Venice and featuring Madonna displaying alternately coy and overt sexuality in underwear and a crucifix-adorned wedding dress, sealed her image as a modern pop icon. Next single Material Girl, with its Marilyn Monroe referencing Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend film pastiche video was canny as a declaration of intent.

Her manager Freddie De Mann soon helped her secure a minor role in the movie Vision Quest, followed by a more high profile role opposite Rosanna Arquette in Desperately Seeking Susan. The soundtrack presented Madge with two more No.1 singles, Crazy For You and Into The Groove.

Madonna's marriage to actor Sean Penn on her 27th birthday in 1985 ensured continued tabloid headlines. The four year relationship was stormy from the start and the pair would both star in the box office flop, 1986 flick Shanghai Surprise. With her 1986 No.1 hits True Blue and Papa Don't Preach, Madonna began to win the respect of the rock press. Papa Don't Preach, with its controversial teenage pregnancy subject, showed a leap in Madonna's songwriting and focused on something other than her bosom busting stage wear and outspoken comments.

1987 saw Madonna star in her third feature film, Who's That Girl, after scoring her fifth No.1 single with Open Your Heart. The film's title track also topped the charts but the film itself, a 'wacky', screwball romantic comedy with Griffin Dunne proved another box office flop. The following year saw Madonna make her Broadway stage debut in David Mamet's play, Speed The Plow. 

Although her personal life was in turmoil at the start of 1989 with a divorce from Penn, professionally, Madonna's next single, Like A Prayer, would prove her most ambitious, controversial and far-reaching. The tabloids had a field day with the accompanying video which featured Madge kissing a black Jesus. It didn't go down too well with the Vatican either. 

The ensuing furore saw Madge's multi-million deal with Pepsi go flat. but the tabloid headlines ensured massive sales for the album, Like A Prayer. With tracks such as Express Yourself and Cherish, the album was Madonna's most mature work to date, exploring her favourite themes of religion and sex.

1990 saw Madonna embark on her massively successful Blonde Ambition World tour. (A film of the tour, Truth Or Dare, was released in 1991.) She stopped off briefly to star in a new film, Dick Tracy opposite her boyfriend, veteran Hollywood star Warren Beatty. A soundtrack album, I'm Breathless, followed as well as a massive selling greatest hits set, wittily entitled The Immaculate Collection. 

The album's new single, Justify My Love ensured more tabloid headlines for our pointy bra'd heroine. Full of Donna Summer-esque panting and heavy breathing, the video featured a stockings and sussies clad Madge cavorting with male and female models in a hotel room. It was banned just about everywhere. 1992 saw Madonna in new baseball comedy flick A League Of Their Own, which featured the hit single, This Used To Be My Playground.

But Madge would take the overtly erotic angle to its conclusion with the release of 1992's Erotica album and book, Sex. The expensive, £30 a throw hardback book was full of explicit soft porn poses and was panned by the critics. But even the negative publicity helped the Erotica album shift 2m copies. And 1992 wasn't all bad. The singer signed a multi-million pound contract with her label Warners to develop her subsidary label, Maverick. Initial signing Alanis Morissette's earthy whines would go on to sell millions of records.

1994's Bedtime Stories album was a far more subdued affair than Erotica and commercially (by Madonna's standards) not as successful as previous albums. Although the album's singles, Take A Bow, Bedtime Stories and Human Nature fared reasonably well in the charts Madonna's blonde sex goddess cache was fading. The critical backlash that had begun with Justify My Love, Sex and Erotica was still lingering. 

1996 gave Madonna a chance, in part for a subtle makeover as she took the lead role as Evan Peron in the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, Evita. Madonna recast herself as an upscale sophisticate, eventually winning plaudits for her role. 1996 also saw Madge give birth to her daughter, Lourdes. The father was Madonna's personal trainer, Carlos Leon with whom she had a two year affair. The birth gave the tabloids a good excuse to use the 'Madonna and child' headline.

Inspired in part by Lourdes' birth, 1998's Ray Of Light album opened up a whole new chapter of creative rebirth. Madge recruited electronic production wizard William Orbit to give the songs a new found, electronic spirituality. The ballad, Frozen, topped the UK charts as did the album. Madge re-invented herself again as urban cowgirl for the electro panorama of 2000's Music album. 

Its Daft Punk-ish tracks Music and Don't Tell Me were inspired by the album's French producer Mirwais. Madonna was once again at the forefront of pop culture. She married film director Guy Ritchie on a remote Scottish castle in the village of Dornoch in the Scottish highlands. A son, Rocco was born in August 2000 but not after Madge had got herself in hot water by referring to British hospitals as "old and victorian."

After recording the theme song to the James Bond film Die Another Day, and starring in the Guy Ritchie directed romantic comedy Swept Away (a US box office flop which went straight to video in the UK) Madonna reunited with producer Mirwais in 2003 for the American Life album. 

The album's title track and lead single saw Madge re-interpret Don Maclean's 1972 hit as an electronic anthem, complete with a bizarre George Bush baiting rap! Madonna described the album as a marriage of acoustic and electronic music.

"It's another step on," she said. And in a neat summation of her career to date, added: "I've never wanted to make the same record or do the same thing twice."

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