Madonna remembers as the oldest girl in her family, she felt like all her adolescence was spent taking care of babies. When Madonna was small, she loved to hum along to songs on the radio as she helped with the housework. She remembers: "There was always music in our house, either records or the radio or someone singing on the bathtub."( Krupp 144 ) Soon her father wanted her to take piano lessons, because most of the family played an musical instrument and his father was really big on that. This was not to be, Madonna was her father's favorite and persuaded him to let her take dance lessons instead.
In 1977, she went to New York, studying with noted choreographer Alvin Ailey and taking modeling jobs. Two years later, Madonna moved to France to join a show featuring disco singer Patrick Hernandez. There she met Dan Gilroy and, back in New York, the pair formed club band the Breakfast Club. Madonna played drums and sang with the band before setting up Emmy in 1980 with Detroit-born drummer and former boyfriend, Steve Bray ( Leonard 138). Together, Madonna and Bray created club tracks which led to a recording deal with Sire Records. With leading New York disc jockey Mark Kamins producing, she recorded "Everybody", a US club hit in 1982. Madonna broke out from the disco scene into mainstream pop with "Holiday", written and produced by Jellybean. It reached the US Top 20 in late 1983 and was a Top 10 hit across Europe the following year. By now, her tough, raunchy persona was coming across to international audiences and the attitude was underlined by the choice of Tom Kelly an!.
d Billy Steinberg's catchy "Like A Virgin" as a 1984 single. The track provided the singer with the first of her subsequent 11 US number 1s. ( Kamins 36) The follow-up, "Material Girl', included a promotional video which introduced one of Madonna"s most characteristic visual styles, the mimicking of Marilyn Monroe's "blonde bombshell" image.
