People often ask: what is the true Madonna? There is a common stereotype that portrays Madonna as a greedy vamp, while for most women she is a symbol of feminism. Her songs are clear and simple, although she herself is a complex and changeable person. She absorbed the influences of thousands of different cultures, bringing them together into a single whole, and became the best-selling singer in the history of music. All her albums are stages of a great journey. Experiencing drama and loss, she used music as a way to confront pain and looked for new sources of joy in it. Her style is contradictory, her vanity is boundless, and yet she constantly turns her life into a mesmerizing work of art. An impartial study by British music journalist Lucy O'Brien is the most complete biography of the queen of the pop scene.