| | Madonna Like A Virgin CD Madonna Discography of CDs
 (7 Customer Reviews)
Includes rare 12" dance remixes previously unavailable on CD.
Digitally remastered by Ted Jensen (Sterling Sound, New York, New York).
Madonna had already made serious waves with her 1983 self-titled debut, springing her irresistibly exuberant, sexy dance-pop onto an unsuspecting public. But it was 1984's LIKE A VIRGIN that exhibited the calculated pop mastery that would define the singer's career. Everything from the cover art (which features Madonna splayed out provocatively in a wedding dress) to the sleek production from Chic's Nile Rogers announced Madonna's arrival as the queen of pop.
If only for the album's two gargantuan smash singles, the bouncy, coy, gold-digging ode "Material Girl" and the racy title cut, LIKE A VIRGIN would go down in pop history. The dominating force of both songs, their videos, and their subject matter helped make Madonna a household name. The rest of the album delivers too. The energetic shimmy of "Dress You Up" and "Angel" are infectious dance floor workouts, and her cover of Rose Royce's "Love Don't Live Here Anymore" is sharp and compelling. LIKE A VIRGIN still shines as an indispensable `80s dance-pop classic.
Madonna had hits with her first album, even reaching the Top 10 twice with "Borderline" and "Lucky Star," but she didn't become a superstar, an icon until her second album, Like a Virgin. She saw the opening for this kind of explosion and seized it, bringing in former Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers in as a producer, to help her expand her sound, and then carefully constructed her image as an ironic, ferociously sexy Boy Toy; the Steven Meisel-shot cover, capturing her as a buxom bride with a Boy Toy belt buckle on the front, and dressing after a night of passion, was as key to her reinvention as the music itself. Yet, there's no discounting the best songs on the record, the moments when her grand concepts are married to music that transcends the mere classification of dance-pop. These, of course, are "Material Girl" and "Like a Virgin," the two songs that made her an icon, and the two songs that remain definitive statements. They overshadow the rest of the record, not just because they are a perfect match of theme and sound, but because the rest of the album vacillates wildly in terms of quality. The other two singles, "Angel" and "Dress You Up," are excellent standard-issue dance-pop, and there are other moments that work well ("Over and Over," "Stay," the earnest cover of Rose Royce's "Love Don't Live Here"), but overall, it adds up to less than the sum of its parts -- partially because the singles are so good, but also because on the first album, she stunned with style and a certain joy. Here, the calculation is apparent, and while that's part of Madonna's essence -- even something that makes her fun -- it throws the record's balance off a little too much for it to be consistent, even if it justifiably made her a star. [The 2001 reissue cuts "Into the Groove" (which was pasted onto the original CD release anyway) but adds remixes of the title track and "Material Girl"] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Personnel: Madonna (vocals); Nile Rodgers (guitar, Synclavier); Lenny Pickett (saxophone); Rob Sabino (synthesizer); Bernard Edwards (bass); Tony Thompson (drums); Jimmy Bralower (programming); Curtis King, Frank Simms, George Simms, Brenda King (background vocals).
Personnel: Madonna (vocals, background vocals); Nile Rodgers (guitar, Synclavier); Lenny Pickett (saxophone); Robert Sabino (synthesizer, bass synthesizer); Jimmy Bralower (drum programming); Curtis King, Frank Simms, Brenda King (background vocals).
Audio Mixer: Jason Corsaro.
Audio Remixers: Michael Hutchinson; Jellybean.
Photographer: Steven Meisel.
Arranger: Nile Rodgers.Q (7/01, p.131) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...The record that propelled her into the stratosphere - and rightly so. The songs are smart, funny, sexy and irresistible..." Madonna Like A Virgin Songs Like A Virgin Music Review Average Rating: (4.9 out of 5 stars)   List All Reviews Ohhhhh!
One of the best albums of the 80's. Hits Material Girl, Like A Virgin, Into he Groove are incomparable. Non-single songs Angel and Pretender were fantastic!
You must own this album
Submitted by Irina (Ternopil, Ukraine)
Was This Review Helpful? Yes No Madonna rocks!!!
Like a Virgin will always be a great album. This gave Madonna the megastardom and all the songs are very good. I like specially Dress You Up that unfortunately she stopped singing and Angel that was available on the first tour but she didnt record the alive version. This album is a must!!!
Submitted by shoo-bee-doo (Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil)
Was This Review Helpful? Yes No Great CD
I think this is one of her best CDs.
Submitted by a madonna fan (california)
Was This Review Helpful? Yes No Madonna is, by far, THE BEST ARTIST EVER!!!
I have no words to express Madonna's talent. She is the best singer EVER. Ignore the critics, forget Whitney or Mariah. MADONNA WILL LAST FOREVER!!!
Submitted by JOSHUA SOARS (BRAZIL)
Was This Review Helpful? Yes No Why can't she make music like this anymore??
This as well as her self-titled album prove that most times, the original is still the best. Even the filler is great, some of the other songs (Pretender, Dress You Up) are even better than the ones that were hits. Being an avid Madonna listener, I think she was best when she was considered "contoversial". This album, her self-titled album, & "Like A Prayer" shall reign supreme in the Madonna kingdom (of course, Ray of Light is great also).
Submitted by ppgphreak101 (Southaven)
Was This Review Helpful? Yes No List All Reviews | Have you heard this album? |  |
Purchase Like A Virgin CD To buy, Click on price to add to cart | Madonna CD (1983) Remastered
Like A Virgin album
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Includes rare 12" dance remixes previously ...
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Includes rare 12" dance remixes previously unavailable on CD.
Digitally remastered by Ted Jensen (Sterling Sound, New York, New York).
Not to take away from the two fine party albums that preceded it, but TRUE BLUE is arguably the first great Madonna album, the one on which she discovered that great soul music isn't just a beat; it usually requires delving into one's own soul. As originally released on LP, the album's first side, featuring ...
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When Nirvana and Pearl Jam went through the roof commercially in the early '90s, there was a real "out with the old, in with the new" attitude in the rock world. That was when music loosely defined as alternative rock, or alternative pop/rock, took over in a major way; from then on, most Baby Boomer artists were considered old-school rather than cutting edge. But despite all that early-'90s upheaval, roots rock never went away -- and in some cases, bands have found ways to blend alt rock and roots rock. It isn't necessarily done in a calculated fashion; it's doubtful that most alt rock/roots rock bands that emerged in the '90s or 2000s actually sat down and consciously said, "OK, let's combine ...
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Like A Virgin CD music
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| | Burial CD (2006)
Like A Virgin music CDs
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Wire Magazine honored this 2006 release - ''one of the best of the year.'' This first album on Kode9's Hyperdub label comes from the mysterious Burial. On this stunning self-titled CD debut, Burial carves out a sound which sends the dormant slinky syncopations of UK garage, via radio interference, into a padded cell of cushioned, muffled bass, passing through the best of Pole's Berlin crackle dub. Burial explores a tangential, parallel dimension of the growing sound of dubstep. Burial's parallel dimension sounds set in a near future South London underwater. You can never tell if the crackle is the burning static off pirate radio transmissions, or the tropical downpour of the submerged city outside the window. In their sometimes suffocating melancholy, most of these tracks seem to yearn for drowned lovers. The smouldering desire of "Distant Lights" is cooled only by the percussive ice sharp slicing of blades and jets of hot air blowing from the bass. Listen also for a fleeting appearance from Hyperdub's resident vocalist, the Spaceape unravelling his crypto-biography. In its loud quietness, Burial takes his kitchen crackle aesthetic neither from the digital glitch nor merely from a nostalgia for vinyl's materiality. Instead, as "Pirates" suggests, Burial's crackle mutates the tactile surplus value of pirate radio transmissions. Burial's mix is haunted. Echoed voices breeze in and out, on road to another time. Pirate signals from other frequencies stream in. This is a tidal wave of noise submerging all but the crispest syncopations. The noise is not violent, but caressing, tickling, exciting the ends of your nerves. Utterly seductive.
Burial is the first great dubstep album, legitimizing a style -- a generally dark, emotive, and faceless dub offshoot of 2-step -- that had thus far been confined to 12" vinyl and the underground club scene. Even though a couple of the tracks ("Southern Comfort," "Broken Home") had been previously released on the South London Boroughs EP (2005), Burial doesn't sound like a compilation of one-off ...
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Like A Virgin album
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