{"id":822852,"date":"2026-07-25T11:36:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T11:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/822852\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T11:36:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T11:36:26","slug":"the-iconic-singer-who-changed-madonna-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/822852\/","title":{"rendered":"The iconic singer who changed Madonna forever"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Madonna<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still<\/p>\n

Sat 25 July 2026 1:00, UK <\/p>\n

By the very etymology of Madonna<\/a>, she is a religious experience of her very own kind. Singular, unmistakable, and other-worldly. <\/p>\n

That is, if your choice of sacred text is pop songs and club bangers<\/a>, of course. But in some respects, this somewhat benign label is fairly reductive to the impact that Madonna has had as a whole. This is a woman who set out on a dream in 1978 to make herself the world\u2019s biggest star, and now at 67 years old, she\u2019s still living it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet it has to be said: you don\u2019t get to that goddess status without someone showing you that a heavenly musical inhabitance is possible in the first place. For those teachings, you could pick any number of ethereal rock and roll stars within a lineup. But for the future Queen of Pop, there was one mythic creature who changed her life forever.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The word creature is important here because David Bowie never existed in a space that was entirely human. He was part god, part alien, part animal, and perhaps part something that no one of our mere mortal species could identify. When she saw him live, Madonna immediately recognised that what was standing in front of her was like nothing on Earth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe changed my life,\u201d she said in no uncertain terms. \u201cIt was the first concert I ever went to. I remember just being frozen. Rigid. Like, staring up at this creature thinking, \u2018Oh my God, he\u2019s everything\u2019.\u201d There\u2019s that word again, creature: it proves that no matter whose eyes it was coming from, no one\u2019s perception of Bowie was that he was completely average. <\/p>\n

Describing the rainbow spectrum of everything the Starman ever was, Madonna added, \u201cHe\u2019s male and female and beautiful and elegant and poetic and funny and ironic and\u2026 other-worldly,\u201d with tears even pricking in her eyes at the thought. Someone so real and energetic, but at the same time unknowable and unspecified, was perhaps the greatest muse of all. <\/p>\n

For the budding singer, that was all the flash of inspiration she ever needed<\/a>. \u201cI recognised myself in him somehow, and he gave me license to dream a different future for myself,\u201d she said, with no conception of how that night from when she was 15 years old would remain integral to the course of the rest of her life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n

But Bowie was omniscient, ready and watching every step of the way. Although they never overtly worked together, it was telling that he trusted her to accept his induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 on his behalf, similar to how she belted out \u2018Rebel Rebel\u2019 every night on tour as a tribute after he died.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It spoke to the legacy of a pair who realised their own weirdness and supposed outcast status in society, but instead of creeping into the shadows, they decided to embrace it and emblazon it across the rest of the world. For every freakish kid who was ever out there, here was the example of two people who made it their greatest strength and changed the world all the more for it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> The Far Out Classic Rock Newsletter<\/p>\n

All the latest Classic Rock content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still Sat 25 July 2026 1:00, UK By the very etymology of Madonna,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":822853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[7514,64,63,447,93135,24740,134,24195,11255],"class_list":["post-822852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-1970s","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-classic-rock","tag-david-bowie","tag-entertainment","tag-madonna","tag-pop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}