Tara Hanks

'Like A Virgin', 1984

The cover art makes it clear – Madonna isn’t just another singer. Steven Meisel’s lush, sepia photography, and the icy stare of his muse, dressed like a punk bride complete with ‘Boy Toy’ belt, suggest an ambitious starlet making a stab at immortality. The inside sleeve shows Madonna in the same white wedding dress, admiring herself in a dressing-room mirror, while the back cover strips her down to just a black slip, sipping coffee on the edge of an unmade bed.

For her second album, Madonna left her dance-diva roots behind and headed straight for the top. She chose a hot-shot producer, Nile Rodgers (ex of Chic, who had recently engineered David Bowie’s comeback with Let’s Dance.)

From the outset, their collaboration is pure pop. With her squeaky, Betty Boop vocals, Madonna has never sounded more sugary and processed. Her opening gambit, ‘Material Girl’, sung over a military beat, is a tongue-in-cheek ode to the eternal gold-digger.

The video, directed by Mary Lambert, recreated Marilyn Monroe’s ‘Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend’ number from the 1953 musical, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Madonna aimed to be as famous as her predecessor, but their auras could not be more different. While Monroe had a shimmering, ethereal presence, Madonna’s is hard and glittering – befitting the times perfectly.

‘Angel’, written by Madonna and her college pal, Steve Bray, is a sweet, uplifting love song. The lyrics are simple but beautiful – ‘Walking down a crowded avenue/All the faces seem like nothing next to you/And I can’t hear the traffic rushing by/Just the pounding of my heart and that’s why’. The track fades out with the euphoric phrase, ‘Clouds just disappear…’

‘Like A Virgin’, the lead single, follows. Madonna performed it at the first MTV awards ceremony, bursting out of a wedding cake. The song is one big tease, its risque lyrics provoking teen hysteria and parental outrage. It works because Madonna’s delivery is at once bold and childish, speaking directly to a predominantly young audience.

‘Over And Over’ is a light, catchy dance tune, its assertive lyric placing it firmly within the go-getting heyday of the mid-1980s – ‘Got past my first mistake/I’ll only give as much as I can take.’ The album as a whole epitomises that decade which Madonna made her own.

‘Love Don’t Live Here Anymore’ is a cover of a Rose Royce ballad from 1978 (the year Madonna first arrived in New York.) Its theme of rejection and abandonment is one that would often surface in Madonna’s later, more personal work. But the low-key charm of the original does not suit the form of a power ballad, and Madonna seems to be trying too hard to show off her technical range.

‘Dress You Up’ brings back the party mood, and is one of Madonna’s more underrated hits. Like ‘Like A Virgin’ and ‘Material Girl’ it was written by someone else, but looking back, it’s hard to imagine anyone else singing it. It touches on two of Madonna’s favourite things – fashion, and sex. The lyrics are fun and suggestive – ‘Feel the silky touch of my caresses/They will keep you looking so brand new’, taking the raunch of Prince and Girlschool and somehow rendering it wholesome.

‘Shoo-Bee-Doo’ is another ballad, and rather forgettable, but Madonna’s vocals are strong. Once again she shows a softer, romantic side. Then comes ‘Pretender’, where she explicitly appeals to her female fans: ‘I know that I should take my friends’ advice/But if it happens once, you know it happens twice’. Every schoolgirl will be familiar with her tale of a no-show boyfriend.

The closer, ‘Stay’, goes one better. Madonna follows her stark, obsessive plea, ‘But if you go I’d rather think of dying instead/I never want you to leave’, with a frothy scat fade-out, ‘Then we can sco-sco-sco sco-dely-be-bop, yeah…’

Some later European editions of the album contain an extra track, ‘Into The Groove’. Written and produced by Madonna and Steve Bray, it featured on the soundtrack of her breakthrough movie, Desperately Seeking Susan. The song plays as Madonna mingles at the Danceteria, one of her real-life old haunts. A case of art imitating life, removing the bubblegum veneer that pervades most of ‘Like A Virgin’.

An insistent hook and flirtatious, beseeching lyric appeal both to lonely teens and nightclub veterans – ‘Only when I’m dancing can I feel this free/At night I lock the door where no one else can see/I’m tired of dancing here all by myself/Tonight I wanna dance with someone else’. ‘Into The Groove’ became an instant dancefloor classic, and remains so to this day.