Madonna and Bay City: A 40-Year Grudge With Her Hometown
British outlet Far Out Magazine has revisited a long-running, unresolved tension between Madonna and her birthplace: Bay City, Michigan. The pop star, born there in 1958, spent her first two decades in the city, where her family history goes back to a scrap-metal business her grandfather ran starting in 1908. Yet to this day, Bay City has no official permanent memorial to its most famous native. The rift traces back to a revoked "key to the city" in 1985 and a TV remark two years later calling it a "little smelly town."
1985: The Key to the City That Wasn't
In the summer of 1985, then-mayor Timothy G Sullivan proposed awarding Madonna a symbolic "key to the city," and the local community publicized the planned homecoming. According to Far Out Magazine, Sullivan reportedly reached out multiple times to Madonna's grandmother, Elsie Mae Fortin, to help arrange it.
But nude photos Madonna had shot early in her career in New York resurfaced around that time, confirmed for publication in Playboy. The conservative mayor withdrew the proposal, and the homecoming honor fell through.
The "Little Smelly Town" Remark — and the Clarification
Two years later, in an interview with Jane Pauley on NBC's The Today Show, Madonna described Bay City as a "little smelly town," souring relations further.
Weeks later, however, while performing at Michigan's Pontiac Silverdome during the Who's That Girl World Tour, she clarified on stage that she'd meant the smell from a nearby Dow chemical and cracking plant close to her grandmother's house — not a comment on the town's people.
Still No Official Recognition
Madonna's ties to Bay City aren't purely negative. After her mother's early death, she grew close to her grandmother Elsie Mae Fortin. She was one of six siblings, of Italian and French-Canadian descent. In 1978 she flew for the first time in her life to New York with just $38 in her pocket, later signing a two-single deal with Sire Records founder Seymour Stein — "Everybody" and the double A-side "Burning Up"/"Physical Attraction" both charted on Billboard's Hot Dance Club Songs.
Despite this history, Bay City still has no official landmark or monument honoring her. What exists is grassroots: a "Birthplace of Madonna" marker on the old City Market building, and a small display of memorabilia at the Historical Museum of Bay County.