Taken from an article on telegraph co.uk website. The article features Joe Henry whose new cd 'Civilians' is out on Monday

In the mid-1980s, Henry married Melanie Ciccone, sister of Madonna, and the couple have two children. It's odd to contemplate that this marginal musical maverick has a sister-in-law who is one of the planet's biggest pop icons.

"I've known her since I was 15 and she was 17, longer than I've known my wife," he reports. "We have had a great relationship, and part of that was because I never needed anything from her. I recognised that we were in two different occupations. Not to disparage one ounce of her musicality, I was always of the belief that her persona was her career.

"Whether she was making a movie or writing a song or punching a photographer, it was all pushing a persona forward, and that was the real body of work. I was never tempted to slip a song to her at thanksgiving."

Then in 2000, Madonna reworked his twisted tango Stop into the hit Don't Tell Me.

"People think what I do is idiosyncratic, so that was a really great vindication. The song has a very odd lyric but I was at a show once when she did a breakdown and it was just her and 20,000 people singing it, and I thought, 'Am I allowed to rest my case at this point?' What I do is not so limited to my interpretation of it."

Source: Drowned Madonna