Like A Virgin

And an icon is born . . . all because her shoe flew off. 

Kicking off the album with a one-two drum punch from drummer Tony Thompson, “Material Girl” is as shrink wrapped as pop ever got.  Like A Virgin isn't exactly what I'd expect from a Madonna-fronted Chic album, although that's pretty much what it is. Instead of those glorious sweeping strings and long grooves we associated with Chic, Like A Virgin is all sinuous synthesizers and taut basslines. Tony Thompson absolutely slams those drums like a machine - reportedly his drumming was so forceful it destroyed a couple of microphones. 

The synth work is also pretty good and sounds fantastic, even the sampled stuff, probably because they used a Synclavier instead of a Fairlight. The Fairlight has a distinctive sound and certainly is a big part of the sound of the '80s (think “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” by Tears for Fears), but that airy/gauzy and sometimes harsh, distorted sound would throw something of a fog over the crisp, clear sound of Like A Virgin.  The Synclavier in contrast has a more natural - almost hyper-natural really - sound to it, and none of that fuzziness or noise. That’s because the Synclavier sampled at full-CD rates, 16-bits, 44kHz, unlike the early Fairlights, and had superior analog stages as well.  This was another smart production choice from Nile Rodgers, who was flying high off the success of Let's Dance and was about to go into orbit when Like A Virgin took off.

A vintage Synclavier.  One of the first digital samplers, it also supported 8-bit FM/additive synthesis and had a 32-track memory recorder.  So it could not only sample, but also function as a very-sophisticated synthesizer, and record it all in memory, like a kind of player-piano roll recorder for the digital age.

Apart from "Material Girl", I'm not sure the lyrics on this one are anywhere near as strong as on the debut. Some of her street attitude seems to have evaporated as well, although it would come roaring back for Desperately Seeking Susan and "Into The Groove". Maybe that's because of the burgeoning cast of songwriters and musicians - Like A Virgin is a much more polished, expensive affair, and finds Madonna trying to morph into something of a soul balladeer on her cover of "Love Don't Live Here Anymore". I don't think she quite has the voice for it, but it's a good effort at least and I like the song. 

These bitches owe us money...

The Belinda Carlisle-esque warbling on "Material Girl" and "Dress You Up" is new here too, and perhaps a bit too chipmunk - it dates the record and in fact the album to me seems much less timeless than Madonna. I think the album's weaker cuts - "Over & Over", "Pretender", "Stay" - are weaker than its predecessor's slow patches as well. And I've never been a huge fan of the title track, even if it is the song that made her a superstar. Hall & Oates should have gotten royalties for all the tunes that ripped off their rhythm from "I Can't Go For That", including this cut, "Caribbean Queen" and of course "Billie Jean".

The title cut did provide her with one career-defining moment, when she performed it at the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards.  Madonna appeared in full bridal regalia atop a huge layered “wedding cake” platform . . . and lost a shoe onto the stage below as she descended its layers.  Wanting to retrieve her shoe once she made it to the stage, she improvised, writhing on the floor and in the process flashing her panties to the audience.  Her manager was furious, but her performance was all anybody could talk about from the ceremony, and it catapulted her overnight into superstar status.

Mmmm...panties 'n stuff!  That'll have 'em talking in homeroom tomorrow...

The "minor" hits from this record - "Dress You Up" and "Angel" - are better I think than the title cut, and always welcome when they pop up on some playlist.  To a degree they exhibit something of the spirit found on her debut.  "Dress You Up" was improbably penned for Madonna by a pair of middle aged New Jersey housewives; it’s loaded with the kind of delicious innuendos we don’t get anymore in this era of “Anaconda”.

"Shoo-Bee-Doo" is the odd duck on the album, kind of an early-'60s Motown throwback.  It’s perhaps a preview of where she'd head on True Blue, although virtually all of the cuts on that record are better-written.  Vocally though it is one of her more successful attempts to branch out on the record, so it has that going for it at least.

And of course there's "Into The Groove", recorded during this period and arguably her signature song - it's certainly one of the greatest dance tunes by anyone, ever. The piano solo alone is one of the most electrifying moments in pop music I think.  Unlike Europe, we didn't get "Into The Groove" on the album here in America and it stupidly wasn't released as a single (the label went with "Angel" instead). Warners didn't want two Madonna singles - "Angel" and "Into The Groove" - competing on the charts at the same time. They thought sales of "Material Girl" and the Like A Virgin album itself had been suppressed by the chart success of "Crazy For You". They really screwed the pooch on this one - I've always thought they should have held the song back and released it separately after "Angel". It was arguably the best cut she recorded during this period (though I've always been fond of "Material Girl" too, which I just thought was really creative and has a very unique sound). 

What amounted to little more than a cameo became Madonna's starmaking film performance.

As a result, "Into The Groove" was sort of Madonna's "Erotic City" here in the US - didn’t appear on an album, wasn’t readily available on CD for years, didn't sell boatloads, but everybody heard it and loved it and it became her signature tune, particularly in the club scene.  In fact, some might argue "Into The Groove" is her greatest recording, period.

It’s clear from interviews with Madge she doesn't think all that much of the song though and doesn't quite understand why people love it as much as they do.  But then, if memory serves she didn't think all that much of "Vogue" either - Warners actually had to press her to release it as a single.

She cut her second #1 hit "Crazy For You" before sessions for Like A Virgin commenced, but it didn't come out until '85 - Warners didn't want it to compete with the album’s singles. It's too bad it didn't get included on the album, because I think it would fit in well and - more to the point - it's a much better ballad for her voice than any of the ballad-y cuts on the record. A slightly countryfied affair, it established Madonna as a singer who could do more than slutty and more than helium-voiced warbling. I think it dramatically broadened her base, opening her up to adult contemporary radio and proving she could thrive on more than just controversy. The Wikipedia article on it is an interesting read - it's kinda surprising the song was given to her in the first place, and the initial recordings did not turn out well. A reworking by composer/arranger Rob Mounsey probably saved the track and made it into a monster hit.

This was the era of peak MTV, and Madonna delivered a set of image-defining videos that set the pace for several years to come.  “Crazy For You” was a combo of film clips from the movie Vision Quest and a “live” Madonna club performance - a shrewd move for an act that might have come across as too manufactured.  “Into The Groove” meanwhile had its video built on clips from Madonna’s other image-defining performance, in the film Desperately Seeking Susan.  “Like A Virgin” got the budget though, with a Venice-shot video replete with gondolas and a lion.  Because.  It was clear the label was serious about promoting her, and it garnered heavy MTV rotation, but I always found it obvious and calculated.  There’s no denying it worked, though.

The best of the bunch was the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes takeoff crafted for “Material Girl”, in which ironically Madonna is seen rejecting the notion that diamonds are a girl’s best friend.  It’s maybe the most subversive message she’d delivered to date, wrapped in a beautiful glossy package, but of course it flew right over the heads of most people and she got eternally branded as the “Material Girl”.  This was the moment though where I started taking her seriously - it was clear she was in a different league from most of her pop rivals.

Madge understood how powerful an icon Monroe was...

Sonically, Like A Virgin is much crisper than its predecessor and the mix is a bit hot I think. It isn't shrill though, like so much to come later in the decade, in spite of being an early digital recording. And the glassy noiselessness of the record helps to counteract the busier mix, making it more sonically and stylistically consistent with Madonna than it might have been otherwise. I've always thought the bass was a bit weaker on this one, but playing recently I was surprised - the mid-bass is a bit thin, but there's an incredible amount of really, really deep bass grounding this record. The miracle of early digital no doubt - they didn't need to hold back anymore. My impression of thinness probably comes from hearing the vinyl played by radio at the time (or from hearing so many of the cuts on MTV via tinny TV speakers).

By 1984 the labels had naturally begun their quest for the next Madonna, while existing singers also adapted their sound to align with Ms. Ciccone's. Everyone from the aforementioned Belinda Carlisle to Stacey Q would soon be warbling and slutting their way up the pop charts over a danceable, New Wave inflected electronic groove.  Most of them weren’t worth one of Madonna’s flicked bridal shoes, and didn’t do as good a job aping Madonna as the legion of Madonna-wannabes who sprouted up across the landscape, sporting layered ensembles and scads of bracelets and necklaces.

The look that launched a billion copycats.  Madonna quickly became a cultural phenomena, representing an aggressive new female sexuality.

While it’s not quite as charming or as consistent as its predecessor, Like A Virgin is certainly no sophomore slump for this Material Girl.  With 21 million copies sold worldwide, it launched her into the rarified atmosphere inhabited by Michael Jackson and Prince, and made her one of the three biggest stars of the ‘80s. 

Well, she told Seymour Stein when she met him in 1982 she wanted to "rule the world". By the end of 1985, she did.



Here's a link to my review of her first album, Madonna.