Smash hit

Chart position: UK No. 1/US Billboard No. 1 Star Power: 9

5 Erotica (1992)

With this song Madonna first unveiled her Dita Parlo character, the S&M dominatrix with a blinging gold tooth. Shameless promotion for her notorious Sex book, it featured Madonna cracking a whip and urging cohorts to “do as I say”. Many felt she had literally become over-exposed. The Erotica album was a bold move into grainy trip hop grooves, but the punters weren’t convinced. Although this single briefly hovered in the Top 5, the parent album has been her lowest-selling of all.

Chart position: UK No 3 /US Billboard No.3 Star Power: 4

Times Archive, 1985: Madonna's 'flirt rock' comes under fire

American feminists accuse the brazen 26-year-old superstar of setting the cause of women back years

• Moving to the music of money

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6 Bedtime Story (1995)

Madona began to resuscitate her career with the Bedtime Stories album, which featured her in a softer, subtler mode. By now she was reaching out to more leftfield producers like Bristol Wild Bunch man Nellee Hooper, who’d worked with Massive Attack, Soul II Soul and Bjork. Keen to gain some artistic credibility, Madonna asked Bjork to write a song for her - and this was the result - an abstract slice of electronica. Bjork later said gleefully, “I loved the idea of Madonna singing the line ‘Let’s get unconscious baby’”. The single bombed in the States, but did pretty well over here, signalling the start of her love affair with Europe.

Chart position: UK No. 3 /US Billboard No. 42 Star Power: 5

7 Ray of Light (1998)

By now Madonna was back on form. A new mother and a student of Kabbalah, she was developing a more spiritual side. She was also exploring electronic textures with William Orbit and writing more personal lyrics. With this headrush of a song, and the accompanying album, Madonna won her first Grammy awards. After years of commercial success she had finally achieved the respect of her peers. “I’ve been in the music business sixteen years and this is my first Grammy (well actually I’ve won four tonight),” Madonna said, blinking furiously, in her acceptance speech at the 1998 Awards Show. “It was worth the wait.”

Chart position: UK No. 2 /US Billboard No. 5 Star Power: 8

8 Music (2000)

Ali G drove the limousine. And Madonna sat in the back seat in white fur, gold jewellery and a Stetson, looking radiant, singing with her homegirls. This was the video for her millennial song Music, a futurist piece of avant disco created with Parisian producer Mirwais. It was a peak in her career - newly married to Guy Ritchie, mother of two children, and re-fashioning the dance-pop that made her. The album Music had an even better critical reception and the Drowned World tour that followed was one of the highest -grossing tours of 2001. It seemed she couldn’t fail.

Chart position: UK No. 1 /US Billboard No. 1 Star Power: 10

9 American Life (2003)

From the sublime to the...confused. Encountering a fortysomething mid-life crisis, Madonna rapped anxiously about her nannies and private planes whilst bemoaning the corrupting power of stardom. Then she dressed up as a Che Guevara-style guerilla, assassinating a crowd of fashionistas. Understandable move there - but then she withdrew the video after the US invasion of Iraq in deference to “the troops”. 'What did she really mean?' one pondered. And maybe Madge herself didn’t really know. Her record label Warner Bros fretted, and even though there were some lovely tracks on her American Life album (notably, Nothing Fails), it didn’t sell well - particularly in the flag-waving US.

Chart position: UK No. 2 /US Billboard No. 37 Star Power: 5

10 4 Minutes (2008)

Back on safe ground with what she does best - grinding her hips with a fresh young buck: in this case the multi-million seller Justin Timberlake. After the miserable sales of American Life Madonna went back to the disco, first with 2005’s Confessions On A Dancefloor, and then the album Hard Candy. With her first single from the latter, Madonna was leaving nothing to chance. Man-of-the-moment Timbaland did a suitably nerve-shredding, phat funky production, while Madonna and Justin sang ebulliently of sex and the apocalypse. Alhough approaching 50, Madonna was in a defiant mood, showing that she had no intention of slowing down or, shock horror, “getting fat. I will never get fat.” Amid the stuttering beats, one gets the sense of a star living on fast-forward - the same chick from early Eighties Danceteria, only even more determined. As a close friend says, “she never reflects, she never looks back.” You have to admire that wonderful resolve.

Chart position: UK No. 1 /US Billboard No. 3 Star Power: 8

Lucy O’Brien’s book Madonna: Like An Icon is out in paperback on 14 August (Corgi, £7.99)

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