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Los Angeles (ANTARA News) - Madonna was to cap an amazing career later Monday night with her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, completing a remarkable transformation from a lightweight disco doll to the certified diva of rock.

Along the way she has also adopted many other titles - from fearless sexual provocateur to Kabbalah devotee, and from children's rights advocate to style queen.

Rock purists may well object to including the glamorous show-woman into the pantheon of the genre's all time greats. But that ignores the broad definition the Hall of Fame has given to Rock N' Roll, which stretches from the hip-hop of Grandmaster Flash to the pure pop of Madonna.

Seen in those terms there can be no doubt that Madonna belongs.

Since her debut in 1982, Madonna has sold more than 200 million albums worldwide.

Her 2006 Confessions Tour holds the record for the highest grossing concert tour by a female artist. She is the top earning female singer in the world with an estimated net worth of over 325 million dollars.

She holds the record with Elvis Presley of 36 top 10 hits in the US, and according to the Recording Industry Artists Association, she was the top selling female artist of the twentieth century.

That's not bad for a little Catholic girl, one of six siblings born to a middle class family in Michigan in 1958, whose mother died of breast cancer in 1963. A talented teenage dancer, she dropped out of college to pursue a dancing career in New York when she was 19, but it didn't take her long to start performing in dance music bands and make a name for herself on the city's night club scene.

After her first singles were hits on the US dance charts, she released her first album, Madonna, in 1983, which spawned hits such as Holiday, Lucky Star and Borderline and peaked at number 8 on the US album charts. Perhaps more importantly it established Madonna as a fashion star - her lacy tops, Christian-themed jewelry, fishnet stockings and Capri pants set off a 1980's fashion trend.

Her following albums built on that success while her videos established her as the first superstar of the MTV generation.

Like A Virgin marked her move deeper into controversy when she writhed on stage while performing the title track at the 1984 MTV awards. It became her first number-one album in the US and also included the hit Material Girl that defined her early career.

The next albums True Blue and Like A Prayer saw her continue to develop as an artist. Her singing and production improved, and her videos developed a distinct narrative style. Her video for Like A Prayer was so controversial that Pepsi felt forced to drop an endorsement deal with her - allowing her to keep the 5 million dollar fee.


Peak of controversy

She hit the peak of controversy with her 1992 album Erotica which coincided with the release of her coffee-table book Sex showing her in a series of racy and dominatrix poses.

She then portrayed Evita in a musical film about the Argentine political icon, and released what many see as her most accomplished album, Ray of Light, in 1998,
perfectly blending pop and techno styles.

Later albums Music, American Life, Confessions on a Dance Floor and M by Madonna were also commercial successes and set the stage for a series of record-breaking concert tours that cemented her status as the world's leading female music act.

She also confirmed her status as one of the most savvy businesswomen around - signing a record-breaking 120-million-dollar deal last year with mega-promoter Live Nation that capitalized on her touring success while recognizing the fall in album sales due to the internet.

Taken together, these achievement make Madonna a natural for the Hall of Fame honour in Cleveland, Ohio. The ceremony was to be held at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York.

"She created the template for the post-modern female pop star," says Lucy O'Brien, author of "Madonna: Like an Icon," a biography published last year.

"She is still a musical and cultural icon," says Rick Krim of the music TV channel VH1. "She's always finding a way to impact culture and changing with the times. She's not settling back and relying on what she's done in the past. She's always looking ahead." (*)

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