Released 06.07.18
Madonna's second album from 1984 was her breakthrough, thanks principally to two massive hits: the sinuous Like a Virgin, with its taboo-busting metaphor for that fresh, clean new-love feeling, and the cutesy, Betty-Boopsy Material Girl. Other standouts include Over and Over, and Pretender - which adds a bit of gossamer delicacy to the mandatory bounciness. Dress You Up is a Madonna classic, an insubstantial dance-pop delight bedecked in synthesized bells and replete to the beat with kinky suggestions. And there's a sign of greater depth to come in her cover of Rose Royce's elegiac ballad Love Don't Live Here Anymore, a heartfelt vocal supported by a subtle, gorgeous arrangement helmed by producer Nile Rodgers and his two key Chic instrumental compatriots, Bernard Edwards and Tony Thompson.