Madonna: Like a Virgin [SIRE/WARNER]

Why you'll love it

This edition comes on 180g vinyl, pressed in Germany, with a printed lyric inner sleeve. Like a Virgin was Madonna's first No. 1 album, the first by a female artist to sell five million copies in the US, and it has sold over 21 million worldwide.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Printed lyric inner sleeve
• Pressed in Germany

About the album

Madonna loved David Bowie's Let's Dance, so for her second album she went straight to the man who produced it, Nile Rodgers. She picked every song herself, wrote five of them (four with Stephen Bray), and cut the record at the Power Station in New York with Rodgers' Chic bandmates Bernard Edwards and Tony Thompson as her rhythm section.

"Material Girl" opens the album with that bouncing synth bass, the title track became her first Hot 100 No. 1, "Angel" and "Dress You Up" are irresistible dance-pop, and she gives Rose Royce's "Love Don't Live Here Anymore" a dramatic ballad treatment. Rodgers' clean, punchy production makes it all snap.

It topped the charts in the UK, Germany and beyond, and the RIAA later certified it diamond. Forty-odd years on, "Material Girl" still sounds like the smartest person at the party, and so, frankly, does Madonna.

Also at Kops: more Madonna on vinyl · browse Pop

Tracklist

Listen

On Sire (cat# R1-25157), a reissue of the 1984 album.