Madonna

The 1984 VMA performance of Like a Virgin started with a shoe falling off. She rolled across the stage floor. Her publicist recalled people saying her career was over before it started. Like a Virgin spent six weeks at number one, and the album moved 21 million copies, the first by a female artist to crack 5 million. She didn't just survive that night. She made it the blueprint.

She's been declared finished so many times the rumor has lost its teeth. The Celebration Tour ran from October 2023 through May 2024, grossing over $225 million, and closed with a free show on Copacabana Beach that drew 1.6 million people. The tour was supposed to start in July but she spent part of June 2023 in an ICU with a bacterial infection. The ICU stay didn't slow the retrospective. It just postponed it.

Her mother died of breast cancer when Madonna was five. She won a dance scholarship to the University of Michigan before dropping out and arriving in New York in 1978 with $35, reportedly having never taken a taxi or boarded a plane before. The Catholic upbringing she spent decades provoking was real. She has said she wanted to be a nun before she found the dance floor.