Dolly Parton, the beloved global entertainment icon who sold more than 100 million records and whose songwriting prowess and sure-handed approach to her career reshaped the face of country music, popular music, and the entertainment industry at large, has died. 🕊️
Happy birthday to the gorgeous, mega talented, chart-topping, record-breaking, history-making, top-selling 7x Grammy-winning Singer, Songwriter, Producer, Actress, Global Icon and living Legend, the One & Only #Madonna!👏🎂��🎈🌟🐐👑❤️🔥
Madonna is one of the best-selling Artists of All time, having sold over 400 Million records worldwide! Guinness World Records has long recognized her as the best-selling female recording-artist in history, ranking her behind only The Beatles, Elvis Presley, and Michael Jackson in pure sales. Referred to as the "Queen Of Pop", she is the most influential female pop star in history and a cultural icon of both the 20th and 21st centuries. Madonna is celebrated for continually reinventing her image, sound, and style across decades. Her groundbreaking music videos, provocative performances, and cultural influence helped redefine pop music, fashion, and female empowerment in entertainment! Madonna is the most successful Dance Artist of All time and holds the record for the most #1 hits on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart, with a total of 50. She reached the milestone in February 2020 with “I Don’t Search I Find,” becoming the first artist to score 50 No. 1s on any single Billboard chart! Internationally, Madonna holds the record for the most No. 1 singles by a Female Artist in the UK (13), Canada (24), Italy (25), Finland (7) & Spain (22). Madonna's album 'The Immaculate Collection' is the best-selling compilation album by a solo artist, with over 30 million copies sold worldwide! At the 40th anniversary of the GfK Media Control Charts, Madonna was ranked as the most successful singles Artist in German chart history!
Madonna is widely regarded as a pioneering touring Powerhouse, and was the first female Act to accumulate US$1 Billion in concert revenue, with six of her solo headlining tours grossing over US$100 million each! After her 'Celebration Tour', Pollstar reported her lifetime touring gross at $1.61 Billion from 12 major tours with over 12.6 million tickets sold! Her closing performance of The Celebration Tour, in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro on May 5, 2024, drew over 1,6 Million people, the 3rd largest audience for a stand-alone concert by an Artist in history, surpassing the Rolling Stones' 1.5 million attendees on the same beach in 2006!
Madonna is one of the Most awarded Female Artists in history, having won over 500 Awards out of almost 1000 nominations! She has won 7 Grammy Awards, 20 MTV Video Music Awards, including the 1986 Video Vanguard Award for which she became the first female recipient, 5 Billboard Music Awards, 4 World Music Awards, 4 MTV Europe Awards, 3 American Music Awards, 2 BRIT Awards and 2 Golden Globe Awards among others! Forbes named her the world's highest-paid female musician a record 11 times across four separate decades (1980s–2010s)! The legendary singer was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, her first year of eligibility. Billboard named her the Artist of the Decade (1980s), the Greatest Dance Artist of All Time and the Greatest Music Video Artist of All Time! MTV also named her the greatest Music Video Artist ever and VH1 ranked her as the greatest woman in music! She has also been listed by Rolling Stone as one of the greatest artists and greatest songwriters of all time!
Madonna has been a prominent philanthropist for decades, supporting numerous causes through donations, advocacy, and her own organizations. Her work focuses on AIDS/HIV awareness, she was one of the earliest celebrity advocates in the 1980s, education, and child welfare & education, primarily through her Ray of Light Foundation, founded 1998, and Raising Malawi founded 2006, which supports orphans, schools, and healthcare such as the Mercy James Centre for pediatric surgery! Her work also focuses on women’s rights, and disaster relief, often using her global platform to amplify marginalized issues. She has donated tens of millions, raised additional funds through auctions, concerts, and events, and continues this work into the 2020s with her ongoing Raising Malawi initiatives, grants in recent years, and public advocacy. She has long broken barriers by featuring LGBTQ+, Latino, and Black culture in her music, videos, performances, and fashion via “Vogue,” collaborations, and Pride events. She is widely regarded as the greatest gay icon in popular culture, acknowledging: “Aside from my birthday, New York Pride is the most important day of the year!”!
Madonna has had a major comeback this year and is once again topping major charts on both sides of the Atlantic, rewriting records, and proving the Queen of Pop still reigns! Her 15th studio album 'Confessions II', released on July 3, 2026, a spiritual sequel to her 2005 classic 'Confessions on a Dance Floor', has delivered her strongest commercial and critical performance in well over a decade! 'Confessions II' received universal acclaim upon its release, with multiple critics calling it Madonna's best album since 'Confessions on a Dance Floor' and praising its eclectic production, Madonna's introspective lyricism and her vocals. It debuted at No. 1 on the UK Official Albums Chart, becoming her 13th UK No. 1 and first since 2012’s 'MDNA'! She is now the first American female artist to score No. 1 albums across five different decades in the UK! It also topped the Billboard 200, her 10th U.S. No. 1 album and first of the 2020s! 'Confessions II' scored her biggest streaming week ever for an album and debuted atop the United World chart after reaching #1 in over 18 countries including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, the US & UK! Her latest smash hit single, “Love Sensation” topped the Worldwide, European, UK & US iTunes Charts for multiple days, and debuted at No. 8 in the UK, becoming her highest-charting single in 17 years and her record-extending 65th UK Top 10 hit!
Madonna remains a record-breaking, boundary-shattering icon who continues to dominate charts, pop culture, and philanthropy 5 decades into her legendary career!
Years before Morgan Freeman took the stage to accept an Oscar for his role in "Million Dollar Baby," he served four years in the Air Force specializing in radar repair. His service and professional accomplishments put him on Forbes' list of America’s Most Successful Living Veterans.
Get the full list: https://t.co/MKWav9Flv9
#Forbes250
Photo: Arnold Jerocki via Getty Images
On July 21, 2011, the space shuttle Atlantis completed its final mission, landing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and bringing an end to the Space Shuttle program after more than 30 years. https://t.co/QUNQpH5YBP
Christopher Nolan’s #TheOdyssey has earned $264.1M globally over the weekend, marking the biggest worldwide opening of Nolan’s career
• The epic opened ahead of 2012’s “The Dark Knight Rises” ($249M) and 2008’s “The Dark Knight” ($198M)
• “The Odyssey” opened in 73 international markets, with top territories including the United Kingdom and Ireland with $17.4M, France with $13.7M and Italy with $11.5M
https://t.co/PexzER7FLq
Model, actor, muse, advocate—and now, at 33, pop star: our Summer Issue cover star Cara Delevingne is entering a new chapter, and she's doing it on her own terms. In her cover story, she opens up about getting sober, coming out as a lesbian, and reclaiming her sexuality on a very different kind of magazine cover.
"I don't love the rules. I like doing things differently... it felt like a bit of a 'fuck you' and a rebellious thing to do."
More from Delevingne: https://t.co/Wkmskhv9mr
Photographer: Zoey Grossman
Editor-in-Chief: Phillip Picardi
Creative: Mini Mega Studio
Creative Director: Marie Suter
Styling: Lana Jay Lackey
Hair Stylist: Mara Roszak
Makeup Artist: Shelby Smith
Manicure: Thuy Nguyen
Set Design: Nicholas Faiella
Executive Producer: Taylor Tindall
Production: Crawford & Co Productions
Bookings: Special Projects