‘Like A Virgin’ At 40: A Guide To Every Song On Madonna’s Career-Making Album

As shown by this track-by-track guide to Madonna’s ‘Like A Virgin’, the album was a titanic release in what might be pop music’s finest year.

Back

Mark Elliott

12 November 2024

The album that sent Madonna’s career into the stratosphere, Like A Virgin is a gloriously crafted example of premium pop, with a Nile Rodgers production that elevated its nine songs, from different writers, into a fully cohesive whole. Still Madonna’s best-selling album in her homeland, Like A Virgin contains classic after classic – so much so that even the album tracks are familiar cuts that could have been singles.

Let’s face it, in the mid-80s, everything Madonna touched turned to gold, but this record is a testament to her determination to make it onto pop’s front bench, and her insistence on a top-name producer illustrates the legendary career discipline that has powered her well into the 21st century. It was the ongoing success of her self-titled debut album that pushed Like A Virgin’s release back many months to November 1984, making it a closing-moments addition to arguably pop’s finest year – as shown by this track-by-track guide to each of Like A Virgin’s songs.

Listen to ‘Like A Virgin’ here.

‘Like A Virgin’: A Track-By-Track Guide To Every Song On The Album

Material Girl

The song Nile Rodgers thought should have been the album’s first single, Material Girl is an arch statement on 80s values that Madonna intended as provocative parody but which became perceived as her de facto mission statement (at least until people understood her better). The song was written by disco pioneer Peter Brown in collaboration with Robert Rans, and the nagging synth production and rich bass made this a club and pop-radio smash, with Top 3 chart placings on both sides of the Atlantic. Its classic promo video, with Madonna restaging the Marilyn Monroe Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend sequence from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, is as familiar as the song itself, and it remains one of the best Madonna promo videos of all time.

Angel

By the time of Like A Virgin’s third single release, Madonna’s career had become so intense – The Virgin Tour was taking her across North America for the first time – that she had no time to shoot a promo video for it. Angel was paired with new soundtrack song Into The Groove as a single in many markets, but this sweet, uptempo love song went Top 5 in its own right in the UK and US. Into The Groove would be added to later editions of Like A Virgin in Europe after the song topped the UK charts

Like A Virgin

When Madonna rolled around on the stage of the first MTV Video Awards in September 1984 during the premiere of Like A Virgin’s title track (then still two months from release), she became the talk of her homeland. The performance was sexy, joyful and completely without precedent – and that was without going near the song’s then shocking lyrics. Viewed from today’s more enlightened perspective, it’s hard to imagine what all the fuss was about, but those were simpler, less sophisticated times. Like A Virgin’s thumping bass and the gorgeous, Mary Lambert-directed promo video (shot in Venice that summer) made it a radio and MTV fixture from the get-go. The song vaulted up the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed at the top of the charts for six weeks, igniting the “Queen Of Pop”’s record-breaking run of chart-topping singles. Madonna; the US Christmas No.1: it was a fresh blasphemy all of its own!

Over And Over

This percussive dance cut echoes most closely the material from Madonna’s first record, and its relentless intensity made it an instant earworm. In Italy, the track was issued as a standalone single and is now one of the rarest releases for Madonna collectors to find (if anyone has one for sale, please let this writer know!). Over And Over was the only Like A Virgin song included on Madonna’s first remix album, 1987’s You Can Dance.

Love Don’t Live Here Anymore

The sole cover on Like A Virgin, this reworking of the 1978 Rose Royce hit benefitted from a breathless, sophisticated pop treatment that gave Madonna her first experience of working with a live orchestra. She breaks down at the end of the track, which illustrates just how raw a performer she was at this time – you can’t imagine such a thing happening today. Japan issued Love Don’t Live Here Anymore as a single back in 1986, and, a decade later, it was included on the ballads collection Something To Remember, leading to a belated single release (in remixed form) in some markets and a Jean-Baptiste Mondino-directed video shot on a day away from the Evita set, in Argentina.

Dress You Up

This stirring Andrea LaRusso and Peggy Stanziale classic was the final Like A Virgin single – and what a way to close the album’s campaign. Nile Rodgers beefs up the production into a stomping pop-rock standard that was promoted with a video performance from The Virgin Tour (Dress You Up opened the show). For many British audiences, the first time they saw the clip was as a promotional item (alongside Material Girl) at cinema screenings of Desperately Seeking Susan, Madonna’s hit movie with Rosanna Arquette from that summer. Dress You Up went to No.5 in the US and the same position in the UK that Christmas, crowning a year like no other for the “Queen Of Pop”. Madonna-mania – as it was dubbed – was by then a global phenomenon.

Shoo-Bee-Doo

Perhaps the most laidback moment on Like A Virgin, Shoo-Bee-Doo is a gentle pause before a blistering close to an album that was designed to be played on loop (most likely on cassette back in 1984 and ’85). This lush, midtempo love song showcases one of Madonna’s earliest vocal triumphs, revealing that she could give contemporary dance-and-soul acts such as Stephanie Mills a run for their money.

Pretender

Longtime collaborator Stephen Bray created this powerful song with Madonna (he’d go on to write hit tracks such as Causing A Commotion and Express Yourself). It’s an urgent synth throbber, perhaps a distant relation to the RAF/Laura Branigan classic Self Control, but has never been performed live, making it a fan favourite ripe for rediscovery.

Stay

Another Bray co-composition, Stay had been knocking about in demo form since 1981 but was radically reworked for Like A Virgin. It’s another urgent, synth-heavy number absolutely of its time, but there’s no slight in that. Then rival female artists such as Kim Carnes or Sheena Easton would likely have accentuated its pop top notes, but Madonna and Nile Rodgers lean into the drama and give the song an almost Hi-NRG intensity. Another exquisite 1984 timepiece to close one of Madonna’s very best albums.

Buy Madonna box sets, vinyl and more at the Dig! store.

Madonna

Dig

‘Like A Virgin’ At 40: A Guide To Every Song On Madonna’s Career-Making Album

Listen to ‘Like A Virgin’ here.