![]() True Blue was dedicated “to my husband, the coolest guy in the universe.” 1 in nine countries, earning Madonna more than $8 million in royalties. This was no meager feat, as Like a Virgin had yielded three immense single hits (“Material Girl,” “Into the Groove,” and the title cut) and risen to No. Her last album, True Blue, released in July 1986, surpassed its predecessor, Like a Virgin, in international sales. The true heart of her talent, the true heart of her gift, may be just that: She illuminates masks well. Unknowable - if, indeed, there is anything to know she enthralls, in a way that flesh in the hand never could. At times, it has seemed that she is nothing more than a series of masks illuminated from behind and it has been the mercurial mystery of that elusive radiance behind the masks that has captivated. Divine Monroe reborn, peepshow floozy, suffering grisette in gingham, virgin and whore, little girl and bride, saint and man-eater, angel and sinner she has swept through all these guises and more. In the two years since Penthouse showed her as the world had never seen her, more than a few of those opposites have come to light. “There are about a million opposites living inside of me,” Madonna once said. It was a ring through the nose and a blown kiss, the beginnings of a liaison that has just gotten hotter and hotter with the passing of time. She and the world-it was not merely a matter of a quick fuck between them. But she proved herself to be much more than just a phosphorescent flash of platinum-blond body heat. The world was ready for it, the appetite was there and she was there, bless her, to give it what it wanted. More than that, the world was ravenous for it: the return of the blonde goddess, the renewed snap of the great magical garter more powerful than a thousand E.R.A.’s barreling headlong down the vast sexless water slide of Judeo-Christianity. It was her fate, her destiny, her luck, her fortune cookie from the Big Chinese Waiter whose name and the wind over Weehawken are one. In little more than the span of four seasons, she had gone from being Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone, formerly of Bay City, Michigan-cute, unknown, scuffling - to being simply and spectacularly and sublimely Madonna, the sweetheart and sex goddess of the Western, and the Eastern, world. At the time, her fame, immense as it was, still bore the blush of its bloom. It was exactly two years ago this month that Penthouse published its first sensational portfolio of Madonna photographs. She got what she wanted, and the world, too. ![]() ![]() Fame and fortune, she said, are all she wanted from the world.
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