Madonna is ranked the fourth most successful act in history, and is the #1 female vocalist of our time. After a couple false starts in groups like The Breakfast Club and Emmy, she went solo and dominated the 80s and 90s, becoming the 3rd most successful charting artist of each of those two decades. Even in the 2000s, she was able to change with the music landscape and maintain an impressive chart presence, winding up as the 49th best artist of that decade. She continues to have hits this decade as well, her last top 10 being "Give Me All Your Luvin'" from 2012. Madonna has scored a dozen #1 hits and plenty of #2 hits and top 40 hits and she is still going. "Over and Over" comes from her 1984 sophomore record, "Like A Virgin." It is a peppy dance pop song in all its 80s glory, but has a message that is the secret to Madonna's success.
Ah, my theme song! John Wesley Harding is an English singer/songwriter who gave a nod to Bob Dylan by changing his legal name (Wesley Stace) to Dylan's 1967 album. Inspired by Dylan's songwriting and sounding a bit like Elvis Costello, John Wesley Harding has released 17 albums since he began his career in 1988 with a live recording, "It Happened One Night." Harding made a pretty big splash in the US in the 90s with critically acclaimed albums and plenty of airplay on MTV, mostly their alternative music show, 120 Minutes. In 1989, he gathered some fans with his acoustic rendition of Madonna's hit, "Like A Prayer," which primed the pump for his classic album (and still his best, in my opinion), "Here Comes The Groom." "I'm Wrong About Everything" is a wonderfully melancholic tune that appears on his 2000 record, "The Confessions of St. Ace," but became more widely known due to its inclusion on the soundtrack to the John Cusack film High Fidelity. When he's not busy writing songs, Harding is writing novels (under his birth name).
