In the early 1980s, I found myself on a double bill with a rising singer I'd never heard of; her name was Madonna.
My Motown cover band had equal billing, but that clearly eluded Madonna's team, who saw the downtown club gig as a showcase for her and her alone. Madonna sound-checked with such elaborate precision that my band never got to do so; by the time she was obsessively through with the mic, the doors were opening to the public and we were ****ed.
What's more, after our performance, Madonna's manager didn't want us greeting guests in the joint dressing room, because the apparently demure Madge was getting ready for her set and didn't want to change in front of strangers.
I demanded my rights, while thinking, "This creature isn't going anywhere."
I should have realized then that it was just this kind of aggressive tunnel vision that would rocket her to the pantheon.

Madonna was suddenly everywhere on the club scene, but her first single, the 1982 ditty "Everybody," was so insistently whiny, I still wasn't convinced she had a snowball's chance.
But she made it, with artfully done videos, rampant sexuality, and an ability to charm people's pants off with feisty frankness. She even tried Hollywood, bombing out with stuff like the screwball comedy Who's That Girl? while never letting people see her sweat.
By 1987, I was hooked, so I went to see Madonna promote the movie outside a theater in Times Square, where she told the assembled throngs, "Shut up, so I can talk." The steely determination was impressive.