Madonna "Excited" Second Malawi Adoption Has Been Approved

Malawi's highest court has ruled that Madonna can adopt her second child from the African nation, stating the Queen of Pop has a genuine interest in helping the country's orphans and that the four-year-old girl in question, Chifundo "Mercy" James, would have a better life with the star. Madonna told her lawyer she was "excited" by the decision, the BBC reports, which was an appeal she filed in April after being told she had to establish residency in Malawi for 18 months in order to adopt Mercy. Madonna adopted David Banda from Malawi in 2006 and faced a firestorm of criticism when the boy's father stepped forward to protest. She founded the charity Raising Malawi in 2006 to aid the country's orphans living in poverty, and produced the 2008 documentary I Am Because We Are, which documents the harsh conditions parentless children — many of whom suffer from HIV or AIDS — endure there.

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter