FEATURE:
No Longer a Pretender
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna during an MTV interview in 1984
Madonna's Iconic Like a Virgin at Forty
_________
ONE of the most important albums…
of the 1980s turns forty on 12th November. Like a Virgin is the second studio album from Madonna. It followed a year after her eponymous debut. I am going to get to some feedback and reaction to the album. Produced by Nile Rodgers, the album is one of the most important and iconic of all time. Like a Virgin’s title track was Madonna’s first number one single; Material Girl reached number two. I want to open things with a bulleted interview that appeared in the May 1985 issue of SPIN. It is a fascinating insight into Madonna’s career and life at that time:
“Trash
I like to look the way Ronnie Spector sounded: sexy, hungry, totally trashy. I admire her tonal quality. I don’t have a deep, throaty voice or a womanish voice when I sing. I think my voice sounds innocent and sexual at the same time. That’s what I try to tell people, anyway; but they always misconstrue what I mean when I say “sexual innocence.” They look at me and go, “innocent, huh?” They think I’m trash.
Sexcess
I couldn’t be a success without also being a sex symbol. I’m sexy. How can I avoid it? That’s the essence of me. I would have to have a bag over my head and over my body; but then my voice would come across, and it’s sexy.
Idols
My first pop idol was Nancy Sinatra. Go-go boots, miniskirt, blond hair, fake eyelashes — she was cool. My first movie idol was Marilyn Monroe. The movie character I identified most with, though, was Holly Golightly; because when I first came to New York, I was lonely, lived by myself, was going to parties and not fitting in. I loved Brigitte Bardot, especially in Contempt. She kept saying, “Do you love me? Tell me what is beautiful about me.” I can relate to that totally because I really care abut the way I look. I wanted to look like Brigitte Bardot. I wanted to make my hair blonder and wear pointy bras and go out with Roger Vadim. I also wanted to look like Jean Seberg in Joan of Arc. I was religious, in a passionate, adolescent way. Jesus Christ was like a movie star, my favorite idol of all.
Look-Alikes
If I were a girl and knew me, I’d want to dress like me. If I were a guy, I’d dress either like Gregory Peck, when he was really young, or James Dean. I’d either wear ripped jeans and a T-shirt or a suit and tie.
Eating Out
At one point I was living in New York and eating out of garbage cans. Actually, it was not a garbage can on the street; it was the garbage can in the Music Building on Eighth Avenue where I lived with Steve Bray, the guy I write songs with. (He’s Useful Male #2 or #3, depending upon which article you read.)
I had been squatting in a loft, living there illegally, but it burned down. There was no heat or hot water, so I had all these electric space heaters around this little piece of carpeting I slept on. I woke up in the middle of the night surrounded by a ring of fire. One of the heaters had set fire to the rug and it was spreading. I jumped up and dumped water on the fire, which made it spread more. Then my nightgown caught fire. So I took it off, got dressed, grabbed a few things, like underpants and stuff — all my important things like tapes and instruments were already over at the Music Building three blocks away — and I went over to the Music Building and started sleeping there.
I had a band at the time and was playing places like Max’s and C.B.G.B.’s. All the money we made paid for the van that transported our equipment. We shared our rehearsal loft with another band, so they practically paid the rent for us, and all our equipment was in that one room. Steve and I slept between amplifiers. We budgeted what little money we had to about $1 a day. We had credit in all the Korean delis within a five-block radius of the Music Building and with our dollar we’d get some yogurt and peanuts. Then Steve and I would fight over whether we should mix the peanuts with the yogurt. He liked to eat them together and I liked to eat them separately. When we’d run out of money, I’d pass by the garbage can in the lobby of the Music Building, and if it smelled really good — like if there was a Burger King bag sitting on top that someone had just deposited — I’d open it up, and if I was lucky, there would be french fries that hadn’t been eaten. I’m a vegetarian, which is why I didn’t eat the burger.
Money
The first real money I ever got was $5,000 from Sire Records, and the first expensive thing I bought was a Roland synthesizer. The next big money I got was publishing money for writing songs. I would get $1,000 for every song I wrote. I wrote most of the songs on my first album, so I got what seemed like a lot of money at the time, and I moved to the East Village and got my first apartment. With the next money, I moved to a loft in Soho, which was triple the rent I was paying in the East Vil-lage. These were all necessary things. The most extravagant thing I ever bought — that I felt really guilty about buying — was a color TV. I never had a TV before in the seven years that I had lived in New York. When I grew up I didn’t have a color TV. So I got a color TV, a VHS machine, and a push-button remote control.
Belly Buttons
My favorite button is my belly button. I have the most perfect belly button: an inny, and there’s no lint in it. I never wore a jewel in my belly, but if I did it would be a ruby or an emerald, but not a diamond. When I sticky my finger in my belly button, I feel a nerve in the center of my body shoot up my spine. If 100 belly buttons were lined up agaisnt a wall, I could definitely pick out which one is mine.
Crucifixes
Crucifixes are sexy because there’s a naked man on them. When I was a little girl, we had crucifixes all over the house, as a reminder that Jesus Christ died on the cross for us. Crucifixes are something left over from my childhood, like a security blanket. I liked the way they look and what they symbolized, even before they were fashionable. I buy mine in Spanish bodegas, where they have rosaries in lots of colors. I have a really long one that looks white in the light, but glows in the dark. Every new-wave designer has crucifixes in the their line. Calvin Klein doesn’t, but he’s Mr. Mainstream. Girls who buy Calvin Klein jeans don’t wear crucifixes.
Bras
I have to wear a bra. I’m the only one in my family with breasts. Bras that open in the front are the best, and torpedo bras are the sexiest. On my Like A Virgin record cover and in all my photographs, like when i did the MTV show, I’m in my bustier. Bustiers are very restricting.They have ribs that make you feel like you’re suffocating and zip up the back. They’re tight and squeeze you in. I wear them because they’re very 19th centuryish. They have that really svelte look. I like the way it makes my body look. It’s very sexual. I have about five of them. I go to a regular lingerie store and get the basic nylon bustier, with no frills, and have it customized with lace or tulle. I wish I was flat-chested and didn’t have to wear a bra. It’s one extra piece of clothing to worry about.
Returning Calls
I used to call different management companies, agencies, A&R people, club owners, you name it, and no one ever returned my calls. If someone did, ten-to-one it was some horny old man who was in charge of listening to tapes and when he’d hear my voice, he’d want me to come in and bring the tapes, and then he’d put the make on me. Now when I call people they come right to the phone. Everyone except John Peters, the big Hollywood producer who did Flashdance, and my movie Visionquest. He’s a real schemer — wheeling and dealing all the time — and the only one who doesn’t call me back.
Sister Madonna
If I wasn’t doing what I’m doing, I would be a nun. The reason I’m not a nun is because you can’t take your own name. How could I change my name? I have the most holy name a woman can have. But if I had to change my name, I’d use my confirmation name, Veronica. I chose her because she wiped the face of Jesus, which I thought was really dramatic.
Physical Attractions
I dig skin, lips and Latin men. I’m attracted to bums. When I went to Paris, I hung out with Algerians and Vietnamese guys who didn’t have jobs, who just drove around on motorcycles and terrorized people. I’ve always been attracted to people like that, because they’re rebels and they’re irresponsible and challenge the norm. I try to rehabilitate them. I’m just trying to be the mother I never had.
Virginity
I wouldn’t like to sleep with a guy who was a virgin. I’d have to teach him stuff and I don’t have the patience. I’d rather deal with experience. When I say virgin, like in my song, I’m not thinking about sexual virgin. I mean newness. Even after I made love for the first time, I still felt like I was a virgin. I didn’t lose my virginity until I knew what I was doing.
Monogamy
The longest monogamous relationship I’ve had was two-and-three-quarter years, right before Jellybean, with someone who never wants to see me again. He’s the guy trying to run me over in my “Burning Up” video. It wasn’t just because I was seeing someone else. Our relationship was deteriorating anyway. But I’ve had my heart broken, too. All my boyfriends hurt me in their way, by lots of thing, but I’m not telling you.
Stepped-on Men
All those men I stepped all over to get to the top, everyone of them would take me back because they still love me and I still love them. I wish I was a million different people so I could stay with each boyfriend while moving on to another one. I learn more, want more, and suddenly — that person isn’t enough. The problem is, after you start to love someone, you start to hurt them. I get interested in somebody else and I latch on to that interest to get me through the other one. It’s awfully painful, but then I have this new guy to look forward to.
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1984/PHOTO CREDIT: Tabak/Sunshine/Retna UK
Records
The first song I remember hearing was “The Twist” by Chubby Checker. The first record I ever bought was either “Incense & Peppermint” or “Give Me a ticket for an Airplane.” I don’t remember if there was music playing when I lost my virginity, but the best music to make love to nowadays is anything funky or soulful, like the Gap Band, Prince or the Isley Brothers. The best music to wake up to is “Moments in Love” by Art of Noise and the best music at the moment to workout to is anything by Prince, Lime, Bronski Beat or Bruce Springsteen. My first album was a total aerobics records. I make records with aerobics in mind. When I’m mad or have a fight with my boyfriend, I work out.
Bad Press
I get so much bad press because people associate a girl who’s successful with a bimbo or an airhead. Sexy boys never get bad press. Do you think they’d bug Prince if he pulled out his dick on stage? If I ever did something like that, I’m the slut of the year.
Fights
Most of the fight I have with boyfriends are how I’m not paying enough attention to them or I’m always off doing things for my career. Of course, I disagree. I have a lot of shit to do right now. I’m always surrounded by people. I have a very visible career. I got to go out West and audition guys to be in my videos and I got to kiss guys in my movies. But I always say it’s the quality of time and not the quantity of time. If you spend the time that you do have together not fighting, you might enjoy each other.
Little Madonna
I was never a Girl Scout, but I was a Campfire Girl and a Brownie. Campfire Girls had the cooler uniform. I was never good at being part of an organization. When I was a Brownie, I ate all the cookies. When I was a Campfire Girl, I’d camp out with the boys and get into trouble.
Fantasy Photo
Of all the great photographs in history, I’d most like to have been in one of me having dinner with John Kennedy, with Marilyn Monroe sitting next to him, singing “Happy Birthday”.
I want to move to a feature from Entertainment Weekly from 2022. I did not know that an ex-manager of Madonna suggested Like a Virgin sound like Michael Jackson’s Thriller. You can see why there was this feeling. A commercial album that is one of the all-time greats, it was a bit of an awkward moment. In the end, what we hear on Like a Virgin is timeless and individual:
“The Queen of Pop always got what the Queen of Pop wanted — even when she was still a rising princess fresh on the scene.
Madonna has revealed that one of the most memorable eras in her career was preceded by a "frustrating" period of conflict, as she battled high expectations after her meteoric rise to stardom and a manager attempted to retool her sound while they prepared to release her second studio album, 1984's Like a Virgin, with superstar musician-producer Nile Rodgers.
"I thought there were so many great songs on the record, and then suddenly my first album [1983's Madonna] started to become popular. I mean, it was a good thing. It was a good thing, but also frustrating," Madonna said in a new conversation with Rodgers in Paper magazine, with the Chic band co-founder and iconic David Bowie collaborator explaining that the pair finished work on Like a Virgin while her self-titled debut LP was "still the focus" for promotion.
"I was irritated that another song of mine was doing so well and now I had to wait to put something out that I was so excited about," Madonna continued. "Not that I didn't love Reggie Lucas and 'Borderline' and my first record, but the thing is, when I put out my first record it didn't really do that well. People didn't know who I was and then they weren't sure who I was, so it kind of had a resurgence right at the time we were going to release [it]."
Rodgers added that things got worse when Madonna's ex-manager, Freddy DeMann, started pressuring them to make Like a Virgin sound more like Michael Jackson's 1982 masterwork Thriller because label executives were still "a little bit unsure" of her potential for global success.
"I'll never forget when we played the album and Freddy said, 'Can it sound a little more like this?' And he put on f---ing Thriller [laughs]," Rodgers recalled. "And we said, you know, Michael Jackson has been a star his entire life and he worked his way up to Thriller. So he said, 'Well can you put a little more bass on it?' And all Madonna did was just write [the words] 'Bass Up' on the record. We never changed a thing. She just wrote it on the box the next time."
Madonna's intuitions about the album were correct: Like a Virgin would go on to become a defining pop bible for both the musician herself and pop music in general. It received diamond certification in the United States for selling more than 10 million units, and made pop cultural staples out of songs "Like a Virgin," "Material Girl," and "Dress You Up."
Still, as she told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show earlier this week, Rodgers initially wanted the era to kick off differently, with "Material Girl" as the lead single instead of "Like a Virgin."
"Those are the days when I had no say in anything. Can you imagine those days even existing?" Madonna said. "I don't know why [we eventually] chose 'Like a Virgin' because I thought it was quite controversial. But it turned out the controversial thing wasn't the song itself, it was my performance on the first MTV [VMA] Awards. I did that show and I walked down these very steep stairs of a wedding cake and I got to the bottom and started dancing and my white stiletto pumps fell off. I was trying to do this smooth move and dive for the shoe to make it look like choreography, and my dress flipped up and my dress was showing. Those were the days when you shouldn't show your butt to have a career. Now it's the opposite. It happened by accident… when I went backstage, my manager told me my career was over with." (Obviously, her manager was wrong.)”.
The exceptional Like a Virgin still sounds amazing and exciting forty years later. This Billboard article from 2019 ranked the songs on Like a Virgin from worst to best. On an album that is iconic and packed with brilliant moment, it is a hard call ranking the tracks. However, their top three is pretty solid:
“3. “Dress You Up”
On the final single from Like a Virgin — which was the last track added to the album — Madonna promises to dress her man up in some head-to-toe loving. Her fourth top 5 Hot 100 hit off of the LP, it completely captures her in the process of becoming a sex-positive icon. For a song that Madonna didn’t have a hand in writing — Andrea LaRusso and Peggy Stanziale did the honors — it sounds so much like her. Or at least the Madonna she was back in 1984.
2. “Material Girl”
Long before Madame X entered the public consciousness, this was the tune that coined Madonna’s most famous nickname. As with many of her classic ’80s singles, it’s hard to separate the song from the video, but even more so with this one: Her spin on Gentlemen Prefer Blondes established her as a Marilyn Monroe-esque figure in her own right. This was the real beginning of the Blond Ambition era. The song itself may not hold up as well as some of her other early stuff, but this No. 2 Hot 100 hit is still synth-pop perfection.
1. “Like a Virgin”
The title track of Like a Virgin is on the short list of Madge’s best — and biggest — singles. Madonna’s first Hot 100 topper changed the game for her, taking her from the downtown dance diva she was on her eponymous debut to the future Queen of Pop. Written by the ’80s hitmaking team of Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg, the song paved the way for other female pop artists — from Janet Jackson and Britney Spears to Beyoncé and Ariana Grande — to unapologetically explore the sexual wilderness. And 35 years later, it’s still catchy AF”.
Apologies if this is a little bit random and scattershot in terms of information and chronology! There is a lot to discuss when it comes to Like a Virgin. I hope that people celebrate it on its fortieth anniversary on 12th November. Classic Pop wrote how her second studio album turned Madonna from a New York club queen to one of the most famous and recognisable artists in the world:
“As New York’s achingly hip art set gathered at legendary nightclub the Paradise Garage on 16 May 1984 to celebrate artist Keith Haring’s first Party Of Life, the girl who had once dominated the dancefloor with her exuberant moves to Larry Levan’s iconic DJ sets, took to the stage for a special guest appearance in front of the vibrant crowd of which she had once been a part.
Having spent three months holed up in the city’s Power Station studios, Madonna saw the Party Of Life as the perfect platform to premiere two brand new tracks from her recently wrapped second album.
Although she was excited to air her new material for the very first time, the hipster audience remained largely indifferent as she performed Like A Virgin from a bed adorned with white lace before changing into a customised Haring jacket and skirt for Dress You Up.
Only pop culture prophet Andy Warhol had the foresight to recognise the earth-shattering potential of these new songs. “The crowd didn’t really take to Madonna,” recalls artist Kenny Scharf. “But Andy loved her – he told everyone that she was going to be the biggest thing ever.”
Madonna had been working on her second album since the beginning of 1984, penning songs with long-time friend and writing partner Stephen Bray. Her self-titled debut album had been a disappointing experience for her creatively, leaving her frustrated at how little her input and ideas had been welcomed by producer Reggie Lucas.
Despite the moderate success of that LP and Holiday becoming a Top 20 hit, Madonna was keen to move on and start work on her next project – and to do so on her own terms.
Determined not to repeat the mistakes of her debut and to ensure that the album would be exactly as she envisioned it, Madonna informed her label that she wanted to produce the record herself, a request that was immediately vetoed, much to her fury.
Aside from her previous LP not sounding the way she had wanted (with the exception of the tracks she and John ‘Jellybean’ Benitez had remixed before release), Madonna felt that she wasn’t taken seriously, and her talent was being undermined.
She saw the second album as her chance to prove herself. Livid that Warner Brothers didn’t believe in her enough to grant her full creative control, she publicly vented during interviews, detailing her battles against label bosses to who she referred to as “a hierarchy of old men”.
“It’s a chauvinistic environment to be working in because I’m treated like this sexy little girl,” she fumed to Rolling Stone. “I always have to prove them wrong. This is what happens when you’re a girl – it wouldn’t happen to Prince or Michael Jackson. I had to do everything on my own and convince people that I was worth a record deal. After that, I had the same problem trying to convince them I had more to offer than a one-off girl singer. I have to win this fight.”
Refusing to back down, the record label offered Madonna a compromise – the choice of any producer she wanted. Mollified, she appealed to Sire Records boss Seymour Stein for help in a letter in which her frustrations over “the producer predicament” were evident.
“Here I am forced to choose a man once again – help me!” she wrote, listing possibilities such as Trevor Horn, Jellybean, Laurie Latham, Narada Michael Walden and Nile Rodgers before signing off, “Furious love, Madonna”.
Although she had presented a shortlist of ideal collaborators, Madonna had made it clear that Rodgers was her first choice, declaring him a “genius”, citing his production work with Diana Ross, Sister Sledge and David Bowie as examples, as well as his own Chic records which she adored.
A meeting with Nile was arranged during which she played him the demos she’d written with Stephen Bray and told him: “If you don’t love these songs we can’t work together”. Affronted by her bluntness, Rodgers later revealed that he told her: “I don’t love them now, but I will when I’ve finished working on them!”
Satisfied, Madonna accepted her label’s offer to have Nile produce the entire album. Writing in his autobiography, Le Freak, Nile revealed that the fee he earned for producing the album was more than most artists earn from their own records, adding: “I’m pretty sure she hasn’t paid a producer as much since then either!”
The subject of money remained prevalent once recording had begun, with Madonna’s tyrannical manner of communicating with musicians proving problematic. She was in every recording session for the entire duration – whether she was required to be or not and expected similar dedication from the personnel.
If a musician arrived late or didn’t seem to be giving 110%, Madonna barked at them, “Time is money, and the money is mine!”, something which did not go down well with the experienced professionals.
Nile had brought along the Chic Organisation band with him to play on the record, including bassist Bernard Edwards and drummer Tony Thompson, as well as sound engineer Jason Corsaro whose idea it was to record digitally, at the time a new way of recording.
The combination of synths and programmed drums with live instrumentation gave the album its bombastic, dynamic sound, elevating it from the dance-pop feel of Madonna’s earlier tracks which she felt were “weak”.
Despite the band having a wealth of experience between them, working across genres and with a myriad of artists, Madonna had no qualms about telling them if she didn’t like the way they were playing something or suggesting alternatives.
Whether it was because she’d been burned by the experience on her debut album and felt the need to overcompensate to make her ideas heard or was just plain rude, the band did not appreciate someone they saw essentially as a rookie being so abrasive and disrespectful towards them.
On one occasion, after she furiously berated a musician for taking a toilet break, Nile walked out of the studio and told her he was leaving the project, forcing Madonna to apologise and rethink the way she communicated from that point onwards. Though it wouldn’t be the last time they would have disagreements, they were resolved cordially.
When Warner’s A&R Michael Ostin played the pair Like A Virgin and Material Girl, songs he felt would work alongside Madonna’s own compositions, she instantly loved the former, immediately taken with the provocative title as well as the song itself.
Rodgers wasn’t initially sold on the track and felt Material Girl was the better song, but Madonna was adamant that Like A Virgin was going to be the first single and would also be the title of her second album. Nile reminded himself that it was ultimately her decision as it was her name on the LP cover.
With work on the record complete by May 1984, Madonna was readying it for a summer release, but once again faced pushback from the label who decided to delay it due to the sudden success of her debut album.
Thanks largely to heavy rotation on MTV, Borderline had just become her first Top 10 single in the United States and the album was climbing the charts on the back of that, approaching one million sales. Though she was desperate to release her new material, Madonna relented and agreed to postpone its release to November.
The restless singer utilised the time that she had originally planned to be promoting her album by flying to Venice to shoot the video for Like A Virgin and signed on to star in her debut film, Desperately Seeking Susan. She also worked with stylist Maripol and photographer Steven Meisel on a series of photoshoots which would become the cover of the album and singles.
While some of her peers slammed the brazen sexuality of her performance as trashy and cheap – her manager Freddy DeMann was backstage furious thinking her outrageous set was career ending – the appearance could not have garnered better publicity for Madonna, whose rebellious spirit endeared her to legions of teenage girls across the US. With her name on everyone’s lips, the timing was perfect for the unveiling of the single and album in November 1984.
“It’s a lot more grown up than my first album,” the proud star told MTV. “It’s more well-rounded, style-wise. My first one was termed a dance record and was all up-tempo dance music, but this one has a lot of different sounds. There’s stuff that sounds like old Motown, there’s stuff that’s very high-energy, some songs are very English-sounding, very techno, there’s lots of synths, and two ballads. Ultimately, it shows my growth as a singer and as a songwriter.”
The album received mixed reviews from critics but was a commercial smash, transforming Madonna from pop star to pop icon, sparking ‘Madonnamania’.
It reached No.1 around the world and dominated the charts for most of 1985 thanks to its four hits (its singles run was punctuated by Crazy For You and Gambler from the Vision Quest soundtrack as well as chart re-entries of her older singles), the Virgin Tour of the US and a show-stopping performance at Live Aid.
In the UK, the album was re-released to include Into The Groove (taken from the soundtrack to Desperately Seeking Susan), extending its success even further, leading to eventual sales of over 21 million copies worldwide.
In January 1984, Madonna had shocked the world when she announced to Dick Clark on American Bandstand that she wanted to rule the world. Just 18 months later, thanks to the astounding success of Like A Virgin, she was well on her way to achieving it”.
On 12th November, we celebrate forty years of Madonna’s Like a Virgin. Such a huge album, I don’t know if I have even scratched the surface! You can read more about it here. Madonna followed Like a Virgin in 1984 with 1986’s True Blue. That was a big move forward in terms of sound and her image. Ranking highly in polls like this and this, I think that Like a Virgin is even stronger and more important than it is given credit for. On 12th November, 1984, Madonna released an album that would soon change Pop. It turned her into a superstar. Everything changed. Rather than it being an album of its time, it is still relevant, powerful and hugely affecting…
FORTY years later.