Doing a 180: Madonna, Like A Virgin

Rhino has made it a point to reissue classic albums on 180-gram vinyl on a regular basis. This is the latest to get that treatment. You're welcome.

Madonna has most decidedly released some classic albums during the course of her 30+ years as a recording artist, but if you have to nail down the one album that truly defined her sound and helped her make the jump from pop singer to superstar, it’s Like a Virgin.

Even if you set aside the iconic title track, the MTV Video Awards performance of which remains one of the greatest moments in the network’s history, there are still plenty of other reasons to consider it a classic, including “Material Girl,” “Dress You Up,” “Angel,” and the album’s latecomer, “Into the Groove,” which was added to the track listing when Like a Virgin was reissued in 1985.

As J. Randy Taraborrelli wrote in Madonna: An Intimate Biography, “Every important artist has at least one album in his or her career whose critical and commercial success becomes the artist's magic moment; for Madonna, Like a Virgin was just such a defining moment.”