In December 1983, a 25-year-old who had paid her dues for years at dance clubs and who worked as a backup singer for Frenchman Patrick Hernandez finally cracked the Top 40 with "Holiday."
Little did anyone know that the career of one Madonna Louise Ciccone would skyrocket in the way that it did.
Then again, when she told Dick Clark on American Bandstand one month after her Top 40 debut that her goal for 1984 and beyond was "to rule the world" and said it in a confident manner, were we to doubt her?By June she had her first Top 10 hit with "Borderline." By October, she had her first Top 5 hit smash with "Lucky Star" and two months later, she had her first No. 1 smash with "Like A Virgin," the title hit and debut song from her latest release.
And that meant there were more smash hits from the album behind the No. 1 title song. Soon after "Like A Virgin" began falling down from No. 1, Sire Records released the song that would become Madonna's moniker for years to come, "Material Girl." Co-written by Peter Brown, the same man who hit in the 1970s with "Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me?" and his Top 10 "Dance With Me," "Material Girl" would zoom up the Top 40 and get to No. 2 by the week of March 23, 1985, but just as it was ready to blast to No. 1 the week of March 30, established superstar Phil Collins leaped over Madonna from No. 3 to No. 1 to get to the top with his first single from his Grammy-Award winning album "No Jacket Required," "One More Night." That song would spend two weeks at No. 1.
A chart setback for Madonna, but a song that had some staying power because of radio airplay and the music video that featured the singer in a Marilyn Monroe persona performing the song in the manner of "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" from the 1953 movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes while singing around of tuxedo-dressed males and co-starring in director Mary Lambert's work with actor Keith Carradine.
But while "Material Girl" was nearing the top of the chart, yet another release, her sixth Top 40 hit in 16 months was debuting at No. 32. This song, "Crazy For You," was not from the "Like A Virgin" album. Instead, it was from the movie soundtrack of Vision Quest starring young actors Matthew Modine and Linda Fiorentino in a wrestling-crazy town about a high school senior wrestler having the goal of taking down the state's best wrestler at his weight class and the trials and tribulations he goes through on and off the mats presented to him when a beautiful young drifter heading to the west coast comes into his life.
And creating "Crazy For You" was more than a process. Setting up the soundtrack for the movie in early 1984, veteran music producer and soundtrack director Phil Ramone was in charge of getting the talent to sing songs from various songwriters hired for Vision Quest. Madonna was on the radar of not only Ramone, but movie producers Jon Peters and Peter Gruber and Ramone wanted to meet the up-and-coming star. So Ramone invited her to dinner at his record studio and she brought him some music videos she had done for the songs that would wind up on her debut "Madonna" album.
They wanted her on board, but it was for something she was not used to doing -- recording ballads. And songwriters John Bettis, a man behind a number of Carpenters songs in the 1970s as well as the Pointer Sisters' 1981 No. 2 hit "Slow Hand," and Jon Lind, were called to do this song in which the two lovers (Modine and Fiorentino) meet in a night club the first time. They bounced ideas off each other and came up with the title of "Crazy For You." When they finished, they sent the song to Ramone, who was blown away.
Madonna was called in to record the song, but not used to singing a slow-tempo ballad, she didn't exactly nail the recording the first time, according to Bettis. They wanted her to do another session, but she was busy promoting and touring. Finally by late spring 1984, Madonna came back to the New York-based studio to cut "Crazy For You" for the second time. But this time, John "Jellybean" Benitez, a club-music producer who, too, like Madonna was not used to a slow-tempo song, called in backup in good friend and composer Rob Mounsey, whose job was to rearrange the backing vocals and original track to make everything sound like it fit in place and this time, had Madonna record the song in "a live setting," unlike having it done with synthesizers and drum machines doing all the work. Though he got no credit for the song, Mounsey, according to Benitez, "really made a hit record out of the song."
Bettis and Lind heard the final recording and were blown away that this dance-music star could nail this beautiful song. So, too, were Peters and Gruber, who had one of their "hit" tracks for their Geffen Records soundtrack.
And the next problem came about. Madonna was on Sire Records and Sire Records president Mo Ostin balked at having "Crazy For You" released as a single as Madonna's star was becoming white-hot with the "Like A Virgin" album. He sent Sire chairman Robert Daly to Geffen offices to request they pull Madonna's appearances from the Vision Quest soundtrack. Now a non-executive advisor to Paramount Pictures, Daly figured throwing his might around and maybe a little understanding would get Madonna extracted from the soundtrack.
Imagine his surprise when he found himself shouted down by Peters, who had fought tooth and nail to get Madonna in on the project, sign her up for it, record the song not once, but twice and believe in the song she was doing for the project because not only was it a hit single, but it was about to help transform this superstar, now 26 and taking off to "rule the world."
Daly cowered. Geffen Records released the song and two weeks after its No. 32 on March 16 Top 40 debut, it zoomed to No. 9. And one week later on April 6, 1985, "Crazy For You" made another bold move from No. 9 to No. 4. One notch above "Crazy For You?" Yup, "Material Girl," which succumbed from the silver-medal spot on the chart for two weeks down to No. 3.
As Casey Kasem would note on AT40, it marked the first time that a woman was in the Top 5 with two songs simultaneously since Donna Summer did it twice in 1979, first in the summer with "Hot Stuff" and "Bad Girls" and then again in November with "Dim All The Lights" and "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)," her duet with Barbra Streisand.
The next week, Madonna would climb to No. 3 with "Crazy For You," while "Material Girl" dropped from No. 3 to 5. On April 20, "Crazy For You" landed at No. 2, but was stuck in the runners-up position for three frustrating weeks behind the ever-powerful "We Are The World" by USA For Africa for four straight weeks. Didn't stand a chance to make it to No. 1.
Then it happened.
On May 11, "Crazy For You" made that one-notch climb to get to the top of the Top 40 chart, her second No. 1 hit and the one that changed the face of Madonna's meteoric rise. And by 1987, "Who's That Girl" became her sixth No. 1 hit, making her the female solo artist with the most No. 1 songs in history, passing up the five that Diana Ross scored between 1970-80. It took Madonna less than four years for that to happen.
She was "ruling the world." And it didn't hurt her fishnet-wearing, cross-bearing style was hitting home with all the young girls who were idolizing the stunning, green-eye beauty, either.
When looking back at what was her rising career, the week of April 6, 1985 on the Top 40 chart was a big week for Madonna Ciccone.
And who knows what may have happened had Jon Peters not told Robert Daly of Sire Records what he thought of his idea of pulling Madonna from the Vision Quest soundtrack? "Crazy For You" may have been a lost track for years.
Madonna has more to thank than just her "lucky stars."
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