NAMES IN THE NEWS : Madonna Tells How It Started

Even in 1969, Madonna longed to be noticed.

During talent night at a Detroit area school, then fifth-grader Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone went on stage in a barely there bikini, covered with green fluorescent body paint.

“I was practically naked,” the singer said in an interview in Sunday’s USA Weekend magazine, “but the talent show was my one night a year to show them who I really was and what I could really be, and I just wanted to do totally outrageous stuff.”

Since that night 21 years ago, Madonna has had 18 Top 10 hits; appeared in Playboy and Penthouse spreads; and outraged many with lascivious videos with religious references.

Madonna said her need to be noticed stemmed in part from her mother’s death when she was 6 and her father’s subsequent remarriage.

“I hated my father for a long, long time. And I made a promise to myself that no one was going to hurt me again. I was going to be somebody, I was going to rise above it.”

As for the talent show, she said her mortified, strait-laced father grounded her for two weeks and all the girls in the class refused to talk to her.

But it wasn’t all bad.

“Boys chased me after that,” she said.