I was transfixed. Not by the song, which I hated. Not by her style, which I found kinda silly. But there was something about this strutting, bouncing popster—something frighteningly, enticingly mesmerizing.

When the song ended, Dick Clark asked Madonna what her hopes and ambitions were—what she wanted from life.

"To rule the world," she said.

Turns out, she wasn't kidding.

Material Girl
In the decades since that Saturday morning, Madonna Louise Ciccone has done far more than turn her first name into a branded icon. She's come to rule the world of pop music with a leather-wrapped fist—refashioning that world in her own image even as she constantly refashions herself. At 49, this Detroit-born diva has outlasted new wave, grunge, boy bands and four U.S. presidents. And her sex-drenched style has launched a thousand wannabes.

Oh, yeah. She's sold a few records, too—including this year's Hard Candy, her seventh No. 1 album.

"I'm fascinated by Madonna," Darren Hayes of Savage Garden once said. "Of all the famous people I've ever been introduced to, she was the only person who had that thing you imagine that Elvis or Marilyn Monroe had—where you walk into a room and all the oxygen disappears in their direction."

Her fame, arguably, outstrips her talent. She doesn't have Mariah Carey's pipes or Joni Mitchell's songwriting chops. When she arrived on the scene, most folks thought she'd be a one-note wonder, here and gone, while '80s rival Cyndi Lauper (blessed with a four-octave vocal range and lauded songwriting ability) was expected to have the 20-year career.

But Madonna brought to the stage a savvy understanding of what she can sell and what others will buy. She was, and is, a tireless worker and a cynical businesswoman, eager to learn and willing to exploit sex, spirituality and even herself to reach the top.

"I don't think being good has anything to do with your octave range," she told MTV in 2004—about the time Rolling Stone ranked her among the 100 greatest artists of all time.

Causing a Commotion
Madonna was playing nice when I first saw her on American Bandstand. Not so when she performed at the first-ever MTV Video Music Awards. Her song "Like a Virgin" became the year's biggest hit, and Madonna put on a show that changed the face of music.

"Madonna wore a lascivious reinterpretation of a wedding gown—a white bustier and a shredded white tutu—accessorized with lace gloves, dangerously high heels, clunky necklaces and a tulle veil that didn't stay on her head very long," wrote Rolling Stone in a 2004 rundown of rock's most important moments. "She started her performance dancing on top of a giant wedding cake and ended it by rolling around the stage at New York's Radio City Music Hall, humping her veil and revealing her panties to a live TV audience."

This was not an impromptu stunt: Madonna planned it and practiced it, knowing it would establish her as pop music's baddest bad girl.

"She knew what was going on with the medium of television, and we clearly didn't," rock star Huey Lewis told Rolling Stone. Added John Sykes, the awards' executive producer, "That became part of the planning from that point on. What would be the moment picked up around the country the next day?"

But that was only the beginning.

In 1985, nude photos of Madonna surfaced in Penthouse and Playboy—something which would've brought down many a pop star. Her response? "So what?" In 1989, her "Like a Prayer" video mixed sex with Catholic symbolism, drawing an angry reaction from the Vatican. Pope John Paul II called for a boycott of Madonna's 1990 Blond Ambition tour, during which she simulated masturbation onstage. In 1992, she unleashed the pornographic book SEX alongside her CD Erotica. The subsequent Girlie Show World Tour featured topless dancers and showcased Madonna as a whip-bearing dominatrix. That same year, she starred in Body of Evidence, a film containing graphic depictions of sadomasochism and bondage.

Madonna didn't just exude sexuality: She used it, methodically, clinically and cynically. Women in film and music were already used to being objectified. Rather than rebel against that objectification, as some others had done, Madonna embraced it. Cherished it. Bedded it.

"I saw losing my virginity as a career move," she's reported to have said.

Vogue
Welcome, then, to the 21st century. You might live in it, but Madonna owns it. The setting is once again MTV's Video Music Awards. The year is 2003. There, onstage, is a giant wedding cake. The distinctive baseline of "Like a Virgin" echoes through the auditorium. But instead of one shocking starlet performing the sexual anthem, there are two—Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.

To a thunderous standing ovation, Madonna rises from the cake behind the two girls, decked out in top hat and tails—a groom for her young brides. The three croon Madonna's song "Hollywood" and dance seductively for the still-standing audience. Sensual kisses between Madonna and her girls seal the deal as the refrain lingers:

"Music stations always play the same songs. We're bored with the concept of right and wrong."

Spears and Aguilera were toddlers when Madonna released "Like a Virgin"; both were in The Mickey Mouse Club when Madonna helmed the Girlie Show. So it was, perhaps, a kind of torch-passing from pop music's most enduring symbol to her heirs apparent.

"I would definitely not be here, doing what I'm doing, if it wasn't for Madonna," Spears wrote for Rolling Stone in 2004. "I remember being 8 or 9 years old, running around my living room singing and dancing and wanting so much to be like her."

Express Yourself
Madonna is often labeled a self-made woman—someone who flaunted the rules and, through a modicum of talent, gumption and sheer force of will, made herself queen.

"I'm tough, ambitious, and I know exactly what I want," she's credited with saying. "If that makes me a b--ch, OK."

Once queen, she set about shaping her serfs. She didn't do it by force of law, but through seduction of body, mind and soul. And she rarely wavered in her message. For all her vaunted shape-shifting incarnations—from "Boy Toy" to cone-breasted dominatrix to "ommm"-chanting spiritualist—her oration has stayed remarkably on point.

Madonna's songs have largely been about three things: sex, freedom and self-belief—often all rolled up together. Many of her most danceable tunes have been unfolding metaphors that have taught millions of adoring fans to a) let loose on the dance floor, b) let loose their sexuality and c) let loose their dreams. "Live out your fantasy here with me," Madonna sings on 1985's "Into the Groove." "Just let the music set you free." That's not too terribly different from some of the songs on her latest album, Hard Candy. Its first single, "4 Minutes," urges, "We only got four minutes to save the world/No hesitating/Grab a boy and grab a girl/Time is waiting."

That lyrical quest for self-fulfillment usually leads to selfishness, unfortunately. Take Hard Candy's career-advice ditty "Beat Goes On" as an example. On it, Madonna sings, "Say what you like/Do what you feel/You know exactly who you are/The time is right now/You got to decide/Stand in the back or be the star."

Have you ever thought very hard about what a song like that—and there are dozens in Madonna's catalogue—really means? What it might look like if tried on for size in your life? Taken to its logical conclusion, Madonna's world without rules is a chaotic place. Just driving to work would be a catastrophe, what with us all ignoring stop signs and speed limits and, perhaps, pedestrians. A world without social or cultural guidelines would be similarly disturbing: People would say outlandish, hurtful things without qualms. They'd treat marriage as, at best, a non-binding, old-fashioned party and, at worst, a hindrance to happiness. Our children would be exposed to profanity and nudity at the earliest of ages. We'd be left adrift without moral moorings, without—

Oh, wait. Our culture, particularly our celebrity culture, looks quite a bit like that now, doesn't it?

Love Don't Live Here Anymore
"Welcome to the age of un-innocence," Carrie Bradshaw says in the first season of Sex and the City. "No one has breakfast at Tiffany's and no one has affairs to remember."

Sex and the City, HBO's lust-and-wealth-obsessed series, is clearly begotten of Madonna's philosophy. Britney Spears, from her early sex-kitten days to her current erratic struggles, is a child of hers, too. Miley Cyrus' provocative photos—and the controversy that surrounds them—harkens back to Madonna's own early-career posturing. Granted, Cyrus' apology was not born of Madonna. The pressure to pose for those pictures in the first place, however, undoubtedly was.

And let's not forget the everyday teens who don't land in the 24-hour press cycle—the teens who send racy photos to schoolmates for a little attention, who grind on the dance floor during prom. Madonna can take a bit of credit for them, too.

Nearly 25 years after the answer to that fateful question from Dick Clark started rattling around in my head, Madonna was again asked, this time on The Today Show, what she wants out of life. She replied, "That my soul reached its true potential. And that I did everything that I was put on this earth to do."

What would that be? Ann Curry asked.

"Well, who knows?" Madonna answered. "We're about to find out."

I think we already have.