“Like a Virgin” by Madonna

"Like a Virgin" was the title song and lead single of Madonna's second album, released in November 1984, and producer Nile Rodgers dresses it in dance-rock, riding a synth-bass groove over guitar and drums, with Motown and his own band Chic running through it. Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly wrote it, Steinberg drawing on the rush of a fresh start after a hard breakup, and the song treats virginity as a metaphor for feeling new again, with enough double meanings to read it either way.

Madonna rolled around the stage in a wedding dress to sing it at the first MTV Video Music Awards, and Mary Lambert's video, shot mostly in Venice, cuts between a bride in white and a sexually assertive woman, with a lion prowling through. It became her first number one on the Hot 100, staying there for six weeks.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.