Hey Millennials, This Is Who Madonna Really Is

Madonna might have a Rebel Heart but it’s not what we know her for. She is the one who taught us how to bump and grind, showed us how to make it through the wilderness.

She was in a league of her own. In your face, hard core, the material girl. She made what Vanity Fair dubbed “perhaps the dirtiest coffee-table book ever published” and, in its coming-together, held casting calls got that saw her French kissing New Yorkers in underground bars, pumping gas on Miami beach in nothing but black lace leggings, and hitchhiking down a LA freeway in little more than that.

“I don’t have the same hang-ups that other people do,” she told Vanity Fair in 1992 on the eve of the the launch of Erotica and her book – the biggest international book launch ever seen. She wasn’t shy, that was for sure. But if you’ve got it, she taught us, you flaunt it.  

She knew what she wanted and she was the woman to get it. She had an art curator – and her own Picasso’s – from day one. She dated Warren Beatty and married – if only for a little while – Sean Penn.

“There is no ‘too far’ for Madonna,” wrote Carrie Fisher when she interviewed the Queen of Pop for Rolling Stone in ‘91. Back then, the pair went to the same shrink so had plenty to bond over (that interview is well worth a Google). Madonna rocked up to meet Fisher in a gold negligee. Anything but predictable, she wasn’t always blonde, but she did have the most fun. She rocked distressed flannel, torn jeans, Calvins and laced-high Doc Martens on minute, leather and latex the next.

So, we’ve trawled for the shots we love her the most for. Welcome to our Madonna: 12 of her Greatest Hits.