Months before Madonna took off into the stratosphere with Lucky Star and other hits from her self-titled debut album — released 40 years ago on July 27, 1983 — the then-24-year-old hopeful had received some clairvoyant reinforcement regarding her future as the Queen of Pop.
“She had actually gone to a psychic, and she told me, ‘Just watch what’s gonna happen,’ ” Paul Pesco — who played guitar on both Lucky Star and Burning Up — told The Post.
“She told me this in rehearsals one day, and it was like the equivalent of Bette Davis saying, ‘Fasten your seatbelts …’ I mean, she kind of knew it.”
That would give prophetic meaning to I Know It — one of five songs that a young Madonna Louise Ciccone of Michigan wrote by herself for an eight-track classic that would get generations of future dance-pop divas into the groove.
Possessing neither the gospel grandeur of an Aretha Franklin or the folky feels of a Joni Mitchell, Madonna — who was set to commemorate the 40th anniversary of her debut with her Celebration tour launching on July 15 until the Material Girl, 64, was sidelined by a serious bacterial infection two weeks ago — made her own path, as the mother of a pop reinvention.
After the so-called death of disco as the ’70s twirled to an end, Madonna reclaimed the dance floor in a whole new way.
“We really felt that if we were to combine disco and R&B and new wave, we would have something really cool,” said Michael Rosenblatt, Madonna’s original A&R man at Sire Records. “We invented a format.”
“Madonna had a dance background. Dancing was her baby,” added her longtime publicist Liz Rosenberg, who repped Madge from the beginning of her career, all the way until 2015.
