Like A Virgin - Madonna (CD 2001)

Because I bought Like a Virgin the same day I bought Madonna, I had always considered them as a set, sort of like a double album but released a year apart from each other. However, while recently hearing them both again, I have to say that her second album is slightly better than her first. Of course, my opinion could reverse itself the next time I play them back to back, but for the time being I prefer this effort which concentrates less on the dance tracks in favour of ear-pleasing pop tunes.

Almost as much as for the title track, 1984's Like a Virgin is famous, or perhaps infamous, for the black and white cover shot of Madonna in a sexy bridal gown wearing a belt that reads "Boy Toy" as well as the back cover photo of a disheveled Madonna getting dressed the morning after. Certainly, Madonna was having some fun at the expense of those who were questioning her sexual morals. Raised Catholic, she was surely playing off that religious image (remember the crucifixes she would dangle from her ears?), the word "virgin," and her name (ascribed to Mary, the mother of Jesus). That she also publicly played up the Boy Toy image certainly didn't convince some people that she was putting on an act.

If her so-called scandalous behaviour wasn't bad enough, she was also a role model to a legion of teenage and pre-teen female fans. Called the "Wannabees," they flocked shopping malls dressed in mid-riff bearing bustiers, black nylon hose, and rag-tag skirts. Yes sir, we were all witnessing the decline of Western civilization, with Madonna at the forefront of sending our youth to hell in a hand basket.

Yet, even if the gossip surrounding Madonna were true and she was a truly rotten person, there is a saying: Love the art, not the artist. The German composer Richard Wagner, to pick a musical figure at random, was an irascible devil who incurred the wrath of many a jealous husband, but he wrote some of the greatest operas ever. Similarly, Madonna, whatever one wants to think of her as a person, made some of the most remarkable dance/pop records of the Eighties.

Neither of the album's two biggest hits that made her a superstar, the title track and "Material Girl," were written by Madonna, and it could be argued that these songs were included as calculated attempts to play off her image. That is quite possible, but they would be remembered as so much pop fluff if Madonna and her producer Nile Rodgers did not make the records so energetic. Rodgers brought on board his ex-bandmates from the disco group, Chic, providing the album with a fresher sound than the studio-canned debut. For her part, Madonna co-wrote five songs on the album. She also interjects more of her personality in the songs, and, if she was still finding her way as a singer, she knew her style well enough to insert a gleeful laugh, hiccup or squeal at the right moment.

"Like a Virgin" is a love song not unlike Aretha Franklin's "(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman." With Madonna's vocals sped up to accentuate her girlie voice, it plays out as a song about a woman's ability to reach orgasm ("Your love thawed out/What was scared and cold/Like a virgin/Touched for the very first time"). This is made more obvious by that throbbing synth riff that pulsates throughout the track. Most of all, it is a song about commitment ("You're so fine/And you're mine/I'll be yours/'til the end of time").

The opening track and second single from Like a Virgin is "Material Girl". The Marilyn Monroe-inspired video provoked comparisons of Madonna as America's next great sex symbol, while the title of the song gave her a tabloid nickname. Again, Madonna makes fun of an image, on record and in the accompanying video, of a gold digger, backed by a robotic, male chorus. Somewhat lost in the shuffle was the song's message, a critique of the consumerism prevalent in the Greed Decade. "Experience has made me rich/And now they're after me/Cuz everybody's living in the material world."

"Dress You Up" and "Angel" were the other hits off the album. Of the two, the former is more sensual and the latter more innocent in content, though both employ a similarly danceable and peppy beat with, gasp, a guitar solo thrown in on "Dress You Up."

The perky, irresistibly catchy "Over and Over" is Madonna at her most optimistic, and contains a soaring intermediate section. "Shoo-Be-Do" has a sultry sound but the vocals find Madonna at her most tender. "When I look in your eyes/Baby here's what I see/I see so much confusion/And it's killing me."

"Love Don't Live Here Anymore" is a slow and impassioned Rose Royce cover song. Though it seems out of place on this mostly feel-good album, it points the way for her future ballad "Crazy For You" and serves as a good blueprint for Madonna's later originals like "Live to Tell" (from True Blue) and the semi-confessional moments on Like a Prayer.

After such a fine set of songs, Like a Virgin closes rather awkwardly. It's not that "Pretender" and "Stay" are terrible; it's just that they are dance numbers that feel like leftovers from her debut album, though their do express a more vulnerable, less hedonistic side to the club scene. Their inclusion also might explain why I always thought that the two albums went together.

Ultimately, Like a Virgin shows progression of material from Madonna, a sure sign that an artist is growing, no matter what the public thinks.