On December 21 1985, Madonna was awarded seven Billboard Music Awards, reflecting her significant impact on the Billboard charts in the preceding year:
On December 16 1989, Dear Jessie debuted at #9 on the UK Singles Chart.
The single would climb to its peak position of #5 on December 30th, where it remained for three weeks before beginning its descent.
On December 15 2005, the second of a two-part interview with Madonna conducted by Molly Meldrum aired on Australian morning show Sunrise on Channel Seven.
Meldrum had been one of the earliest champions of Madonna’s music in the land down under, with his influential music video show Countdown playing a significant role in Burning Up reaching #13 on the Australian singles chart in 1984.
Madonna returned the favour by granting Meldrum exclusive interviews throughout the 80’s and 90’s, culminating with this 2005 interview to promote her album, Confessions On A Dance Floor.
On December 8 2003, Love Profusion was released as the final U.K. single from the American Life album. The track was written and produced by Madonna & Mirwais.
On December 7 1990, Madonna’s Justify My Love was released as the first-ever video single, priced at $9.98.
The music video was considered too sexually explicit for MTV and was banned from the network. Madonna responded to the banning: “Why is it that people are willing to go and watch a movie about someone getting blown to bits for no reason at all, and nobody wants to see two girls kissing and two men snuggling?”
On December 3, 1990, ABC’s Nightline played the video in its entirety, then interviewed Madonna live about the video’s sexual content and censorship. When asked whether she stood to make more money selling the video than airing it on MTV, she appeared impatient and answered, “Yeah, so? Lucky me.” She also expressed during the interview that she did not understand why the video was banned, while videos containing violence and degradation to women continued to receive regular airplay. The video was then released on VHS, and became a bestselling “video single” of all time.
The Justify My Love maxi-single was an especially memorable one, featuring remixes by future songwriting collaborators William Orbit and Andre Betts, a Q-Sound mix, a remix by Madonna & Lenny Kravitz titled The Beast Within which featured Madonna reciting passages from the Book of Revelations, and a new Shep Pettibone remix of Express Yourself.
A second Justify My Love remix by Andre Betts, titled The English Mix, was sadly shelved but eventually surfaced on bootlegs and the internet, in varying degrees of quality.
On December 2 2000, Madonna’s Don’t Tell Me single was reviewed by Chuck Taylor in Billboard magazine.
Don’t Tell Me was Madonna’s final single to be released on cassette in the U.S. In the U.K., Warner Bros. issued Madonna’s next two singles in the format, with the last being 2002’s Die Another Day. In Canada – the first market to regularly issue Madonna’s singles on cassette (beginning with the cassette maxi-single for Angel in 1985) – her final cassette single was 1995’s Bedtime Story, while her final cassette maxi-single was 1994’s I’ll Remember.
On November 30 1980, Madonna’s band, Emmy, recorded a four-song studio demo which was later distributed on TDK cassettes around New York City.
Band member and songwriting partner, Stephen Bray, was asked to describe what he remembered from these songs in a 1998 interview with Bruce Baron for Goldmine magazine, and he commented on each this way:
Today In Madonna History 