On December 11 1990, Madonna’s The Royal Box, a box-set which included The Immaculate Collection CD or cassette, VHS video, postcards and a folded poster of Madonna performing Vogue at the MTV Video Music Awards, was released.
Box sets seem to be a thing of the past. Do you think Madonna will ever release another box set as great or greater than The Royal Box?
Do you wish Madonna had released more box sets when they were actually popular and sold well?
On November 9 1990, Madonna began filming the Justify My Love video at the Royal Monceau Hotel in Paris, France, directed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino.
During a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) segment in September 2013, Madonna told her fans that she considers Justify My Love to be her favourite Madonna music video.
Is Justify My Love the steamiest music video that you’ve ever seen?
On November 6 1990, Madonna’s Justify My Love single was released as the first single from The Immaculate Collection, Madonna’s first greatest hits collection.
In the United States, Justify My Love peaked at number one for two weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. It also topped the Billboard Top 40 Tracks and Billboard Hot Dance Club Play charts.
On October 11 2001, Madonna’s The Immaculate Collection was certified 10x platinum (10 million units) in the USA – the best-selling greatest hits album by a female artist.
On September 29 2009, Madonna and Warner Bros. released Celebration: The Video Collection. The greatest videos DVD collection accompanied the Celebration greatest hits collection.
Celebration: The Video Collection continued on from Madonna’s other video compilations The Immaculate Collection and The Video Collection 93:99.
Celebration: The Video Collection debuted at the top of the Billboard Top Music Videos chart. It was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipment of 100,000 copies across United States.
The cover for Celebration: The Video Collection was created by street pop artist Mr. Brainwash who is best known for “throwing modern cultural icons into a blender and turning it up to eleven”.
The DVD collection was released in two different versions, both are double disc releases:
Keep case — DVD size packaging
DVD Digipak — CD size packaging
This video collection received mixed reviews from critics and fans when it was released. Did you like this release or would you have made some changes to it?
On May 31 1986, Madonna’s Live To Tell hit #1 for 3 weeks on US Hot Adult Contemporary singles chart.
The song was Madonna’s third number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100, and her first number-one on the Adult Contemporary chart.
In an interview about the song, Madonna said, “I thought about my relationship with my parents and the lying that went on. The song is about being strong, and questioning whether you can be that strong but ultimately surviving.”
In a review of the album True Blue, Stephen Thomas Erlewine from Allmusic called it a “tremendous ballad that rewrites the rules of adult contemporary crossover”.
Jim Farber from Entertainment Weekly called the song “her best ballad to date”.
In a review of her compilation album The Immaculate Collection, David Browne from Entertainment Weekly magazine called it “one of her few successful shots at being a balladeer”.
Alfred Soto from Stylus Magazine felt that “the song’s set of lyrics remain her best” and that the vocals “seethes with a lifetime’s worth of hurts which she nevertheless refuses to share”.
Sal Cinquemani from Slant Magazine called the song “striking” adding that it “rewrote the rules of what a pop song was supposed to sound like”.
Edna Gundersen from USA Today called the song “a moody heart-tugger, may be her best song ever.”