Today in Madonna History: November 6, 1984

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On November 6 1984, Madonna’s Like A Virgin was released as the lead single from the album of the same name.  The b-side for Like A Virgin was Stay.

Billy Steinberg reflected on the recording process and commented that:

“When Madonna recorded it, even as our demo faded out, on the fade you could hear Tom (Kelly) saying, “When your heart beats, and you hold me, and you love me…” That was the last thing you heard as our demo faded. Madonna must have listened to it very, very carefully because her record ends with the exact same little ad-libs that our demo did. That rarely happens that someone studies your demo so carefully that they use all that stuff. We were sort of flattered how carefully she followed our demo on that.

Today in Madonna History: September 14, 1984

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On September 14 1984, Madonna performed Like A Virgin and was nominated for Best New Artist Video (Borderline) at the 1st annual MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall, New York, NY.

Madonna recalled the infamous performance in a 2012 interview on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno: “I was standing at the top of a wedding cake, as one does, and I walked down these steps, which were the tiers of a wedding cake. And I lost my shoe. I lost my white stiletto. And I thought, ‘Oh god, how am I going to get that? It’s over there and I’m on TV.’ So I thought well, I’ll just pretend I meant to do this and I dove on to the floor and I rolled around and I reached for the shoe. And, as I reached for the shoe, the dress went up. And the underpants were showing and uhm, I didn’t mean to…” To which Leno chided: “And it became the greatest night in television history.”

We’re not too sure about Madonna’s recollection of the performance. Looks like the shoes came off quite intentionally to us. Check out the video and let us know what you think!

Today in Madonna History: March 16, 1995

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On March 16 1995, Madonna’s The Immaculate Collection was certified 6x platinum (6 million units) in the USA.

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine (allmusic.com):

On the surface, the single-disc hits compilation The Immaculate Collection appears to be a definitive retrospective of Madonna’s heyday in the ’80s. After all, it features 17 of Madonna’s greatest hits, from Holiday and Like a Virgin to Like a Prayer and Vogue. However, looks can be deceiving. It’s true that The Immaculate Collection contains the bulk of Madonna’s hits, but there are several big hits that aren’t present, including Angel, Dress You Up, True Blue, Who’s That Girl and Causing a Commotion. The songs that are included are frequently altered. Everything on the collection is remastered in Q-sound, which gives an exaggerated sense of stereo separation that often distorts the original intent of the recordings. Furthermore, several songs are faster than their original versions and some are faded out earlier than either their single or album versions, while others are segued together. In other words, while all the hits are present, they’re simply not in their correct versions. Nevertheless, The Immaculate Collection remains a necessary purchase, because it captures everything Madonna is about and it proves that she was one of the finest singles artists of the ’80s. Until the original single versions are compiled on another album, The Immaculate Collection is the closest thing to a definitive retrospective.

Today in Madonna History: November 24, 2003

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Today in Madonna History: November 22, 1984

On November 22 1984, Madonna graced the cover of her very first Rolling Stone magazine with issue 435. Playing with the success of Like A Virgin, the headline read: Madonna Goes All The Way. Madonna went on to achieve the most covers of any female between 1984 and 2009.

 

Today in Madonna History: November 10, 1984

On November 10 1984, Billboard magazine reported that Madonna’s Like A Virgin music video had been added to MTV’s playlist, immediately earning heavy rotation status on the network.

Filmed in Venice, Italy, the video marked Madonna’s second collaboration with director Mary Lambert. Lambert later recalled of the shoot:

“For Like a Virgin I said ‘Lets do it in Venice!’ The idea of Madonna singing in a gondola was the most outrageous thing I could think of. And Madonna dug it, because she has the whole thing with the Catholic Church and her Italian heritage. It turned into a huge party.”

Today in Madonna History: July 25, 1990

On July 25 1990, Warner-Pioneer released Madonna: Blond Ambition Japan Tour 90 on VHS and laserdisc, exclusively to the Japanese market.

The release captured one of Madonna’s performances in Yokohama, Japan in April, 1990 and had previously been broadcast live on Japanese television. Due to heavy winds, no curtains were lowered to hide set changes during this particular open-air concert.