On January 5 1991, Madonna’s Justify My Love single hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
I’m open and ready
For you to justify my love
To justify my love
Wanting, to justify
Waiting, to justify my love
Praying, to justify
To justify my love
I’m open, to justify my love
On December 22 1984, Madonna’s Like A Virgin single hit #1 in the USA. It was her first number one single in the USA, and it remained at number one for six weeks.
In 2000, Like A Virgin, was honored by Rolling Stone and MTV, as the fourth song on their list of the 100 Greatest Pop Songs. It was voted ten on VH1’s 100 Best Songs of the Past 25 Years. The song was listed at ninety-five on Billboard’s Hot 100 All-Time Top Songs. In 2003, Madonna fans were asked to vote for their Top 20 Madonna Singles of All-Time, by Q magazine. Like A Virgin was allocated the fifth spot on the list.
On December 3 2005, Confessions On A Dance Floor entered the Billboard 200 album chart at number-one with sales of of over 350,000. It was her third consecutive studio album to reach the top and her sixth chart-topping album overall in the US.
Internationally the album hit number-one in 40 countries, including Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Brazil and Australia.
On November 17 2001, the promo-only remixes for Impressive Instant by Peter Rauhofer climbed to number-one on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart in the US. It remained in the top spot for the week of November 24th.
On October 7 2000, Madonna’s MUSIC album debuted at #1 in the USA with sales of 420,000 copies.
Dimitri Ehrlich from Vibe described the album as “a masterpiece of brilliantly arranged keyboards, futuristic drums, and electronica dressings. With folky acoustic guitars and a vaguely spiritual bend to her lyrics (like those on Ray of Light), it’s a weird and fresh-sounding album.”
On August 30 2012, Turn Up The Radio jumped to the top position on the Billboard Hot Dance/Club Play Chart, earning Madonna a record-extending 43rd number-one single on the chart.
Marking a sign of the times, the single and remixes were sold exclusively to digital retailers and were sadly not given a physical release on any format (aside from scarce promotional copies), in any country. This was the first time in Madonna’s career that an international commercial single was unavailable to record shops and collectors either through domestic distribution or as an import.
We hope that Interscope realizes that there are many old-school Madonna fans who still enjoy collecting physical releases – and we’re willing to pay for them. So what will it be Interscope? Would you like to earn some extra bucks with the singles from Madonna’s next album, or are you going to leave collectors with padded pockets?
On July 26 1986, Papa Don’t Preach spent its third and final week at number-one on the UK singles chart. It was certified Gold by BPI on August 1st, 1986 for shipment of over 500,000 copies, based on certification thresholds at that time. With a chart run extending for 15 weeks, the single ranked #8 overall in the UK’s year-end charts tally.
The song was a massive hit across Europe, topping the Eurochart for an incredible eleven week stretch from August 2nd through October 11th, 1986 when it was finally overtaken by none other than Madonna herself with the follow-up single, True Blue.
Although Justify My Love is often cited as being the first-ever video single, it is interesting to note that it was actually not the first Madonna music video to be marketed commercially as a single. Possibly an attempt to cash-in on the success and controversy surrounding Papa Don’t Preach or more likely as a means of testing out new marketing possibilities for a hybrid laserdisc/cd format, Warner issued limited quantities of Papa Don’t Preach as a CD Video in the US, UK and Japan containing three audio tracks along with the music video. Perhaps anticipating the limited appeal of the format, Warner did not bother modifying the track-listing to include the appropriate b-sides in either the UK (Ain’t No Big Deal) or Japan (Think Of Me), instead opting to issue the US b-side (Pretender) on all three pressings. Stranger still was the release date – 1988 – two years after the standard single hit stores. Needless to say, this early attempt to market a music video single did not stir public interest the way it would in 1990, and the concept went into hibernation mode until Madonna gave audiences a video single they were willing to pay for.
