40 years of “Like A Virgin” – Madonna: Selling yourself, but as expensively as possible

This story doesn’t have a happy ending. Unfortunately. The woman in question was an icon for several decades. Living proof of how to triumph as a singer in a male-dominated industry. She had realized that it doesn’t hurt to take off your clothes at the beginning of a career, but that it’s more important to get dressed again at the right moment. And she had learned that even in sexy lingerie you don’t have to be exposed.

Above all, she had internalized the basic rules of pop. What matters is not where you come from, but where you want to go. Very few people know that Madonna comes from a small town in Michigan and that her mother’s parents were French Canadians. It’s unimportant. What is important, however, is the album with which Madonna Louise Ciccone, born in 1958, finally became the global star Madonna in 1984.

It’s called “Like A Virgin.” Like the single that came out 14 days earlier and became Madonna’s first number one hit in the USA. The cover of the single was from the same photo series as the cover of the album: it shows an adult, provocatively made-up woman. Madonna had presented herself as an object of pleasure, a male fantasy. The belt she wore back then read: “Boy Toy.” Many male teenagers didn’t buy her music just for the sake of it. The album also reached number one in the USA, as well as in England and West Germany, the three largest music markets in the world.

But there was a crucial difference to all those artists who are marketed according to the sex-sells principle: Madonna dictated the conditions under which the sale came about. She emerged from the object of pleasure as an economic and artistic subject, in keeping with the implementation of neoliberalism under US President Ronald Reagan, who had won the elections for the second time a week before the release of the album “Like A Virgin”. At the same time, Madonna became the first globally successful role model of feminist self-empowerment. The covers of the single and the album already made things clear. Madonna’s calculating look at the lascivious pose – calculation can also be understood here in a business sense – revealed that with her nothing would be free.

And anyone who still misinterpreted this photo was given pure wine in the texts. The very first song, “Material girl,” is a rigorous rejection of romantic crushes. “The boy with the cold hard cash is always Mr. Right,” they say bluntly.

What’s fascinating is how the lyrics of this song, which Madonna didn’t write herself (but Peter Brown and Robert Rans), play with the ambiguity of some expressions. “Raise interest” can mean “awakening interest,” but it can also mean “increasing interest rates.” And when Madonna demands “give me proper credit,” it means that the admirer should give her due credit, or it is a request to give her an appropriate amount of money.

Probably the latter. A few lines later she sings: “Only boys that save their pennies make my rainy day.” One no longer asks how the statement that experience has made me rich (“Experience has made me rich”) should be understood. Here the value of love is measured economically. Of course, this fit perfectly into the 80s, when for some people making money had more sex appeal than sex itself.

First also for Madonna. She wanted the big bills. In 1979, she stripped naked for a handful of dollars – she was young and needed the money. However, she would never give up her body so cheaply again. She knew that for a woman in the music business, the looks were useful, but the acoustics mattered more in the long run. She had already shown a golden touch with her debut (which was later titled “The First Album”) by choosing producer John “Jellybean” Benitez. The single “Holiday” caused a breakthrough: number two in England (number 16 in the USA).

For her second record “Like A Virgin” she went one step further. She managed to get none other than Nile Rodgers, one of the two heads of Chic, as producer. A year earlier, the same Rodgers had helped David Bowie achieve the biggest hit of his career with “Let’s Dance”. One of Madonna’s great strengths was revealed here. She had an instinct for working with the right people, with artists who were popular at the time.

These could also be people from the film business. While the album continued to produce hit singles the following year, Madonna recreated herself in the comedy “Susan… Desperately Wanted” by Susan Seidelman. The calculating vamp became a cool bohemian girl.

Further metamorphoses were to follow. In 1986, Madonna transformed herself into a good girl who had become involuntarily pregnant (“Papa Don’t Preach”). In 1989 she combined lust with Catholicism (“Like a prayer”). Church representatives promptly stormed. And in 1992 she also conquered the book industry. She presented erotic fantasies in the illustrated book “Sex,” which sold out in record time. She had achieved her goal: if she took off her clothes for the cultural industry, it was only because she wanted to. She had become her own manager and promoter. Their emancipation movement, which began with “Like A Virgin,” had achieved its goal. For this they celebrated feminists like the professor and cultural scientist Camille Paglia in long essays.

But in the end the youth madness eats its children. In recent years there have been increasing reports that she is not doing well mentally. She, who was able to effortlessly make any character her own, seems to fail in a role that is not intended in the pop world: that of the older woman.