Track #46 - “Vogue” by Madonna (1990)

From the album I’m Breathless

Music & lyrics by Madonna and Shep Pettibone

Performed by:

Madonna – lead vocals

Shep Pettibone – mixing & programming

Fred McFarlane – keyboards, bass, programming

Donna De Lory – background vocals

Niki Harris – background vocals

N’Dea Davenport – background vocals

US Billboard Hot 100 - #1; US Dance Club Songs - #1; US Adult Contemporary - #23; US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop - #16; Billboard Year-End Hot 100 - #5

All you need is your own imagination

So use it, that’s what it’s for (that’s what it’s for)

Go inside for your finest inspiration

Your dreams will open the door (open up the door)

It makes no difference if you’re black or white

If you’re a boy or a girl

If the music’s pumping it will give you new life

You’re a superstar

Yes, that’s what you are, you know it

When Madonna appeared on American Bandstand in January of 1984, her eponymous debut album had been out about six months. There was buzz, but she was not yet a household name, and certainly not yet the pop megastar she would become. The first two singles, “Everybody” and “Burning Up”, were big club and dance singles, and the third, “Holiday”, was a #1 hit on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart for five weeks in August of 1983. “Holiday” has the distinction of being Madonna’s first #1 song on any chart, anywhere, and it would eventually peak at #16 on the Billboard Hot 100. This could be considered success for any new artist just starting out, especially a female solo singer with a knack for writing dance hooks and a charisma that forces you to keep watching her no matter what she’s doing. But Madonna had bigger aspirations. Best of all she had grit and drive and swagger and unbridled confidence and that ever-present charisma that made you think she was going to steamroll over everyone to get what she wanted. So, when she lip-synced and danced her way through “Holiday” on American Bandstand in January of 1984, it almost seemed the audience had been just standing there waiting for her to arrive for weeks and weeks. As he was about to chat with her after the performance, the ageless host of American Bandstand Dick Clark even commented that “…we have waited awhile for you to get here, this is a real treat…” He actually bowed to her as he approached her onstage. And there’s Madonna, breathless and sweaty after her performance (she was lip-syncing after all, so she was able to pour all her energy into dancing), and the audience won’t stop cheering and clapping and “woo-woo”-ing, and Dick Clark is playing with the crowd, practically begging them to quiet down so he can ask Madonna a couple of questions before he has to go to commercial. She’s wearing the first of many looks that would make her a fashion icon, a look that teenage girls all over the world would emulate: fishnet crop top, skirt over tights, studded belt, and a nest of hair tied up with giant bow; all black. It was the outfit she donned in the videos for “Lucky Star” and “Borderline”. She told Clark of her journey from Detroit, Michigan to New York to Paris, working as a backup dance to pop singer Patrick Hernandez, then returning to NY to strike out on her own. When asked if she was “the least bit scared to do that”, she paused and spoke about the confidence she’s always had, and when she says that you actually believe her. And then she utters the first of hundreds, maybe thousands of soundbites she would give. It wasn’t controversial or shocking, although she’d have a lot of those moments in the decades to come. Rather, it was brash and honest, matter of fact even:

Dick Clark: What do you hope will happen, not only in 1984, but in your professional life, what are your dreams, what’s left?

Madonna: To rule the world.

And for the rest of the 1980s, it would seem that she did, in fact, rule the world. Madonna would release three more albums in the 80s: Like A Virgin, True Blue and Like A Prayer. Those albums, and her debut, sold over 70 million copies, 30 million in the US alone; they were all #1 albums. She also amassed sixteen consecutive Billboard Top 5 singles, including seven #1’s. The sixteen Top 5 singles is an achievement that still stands (and may never be matched). The single for “Like A Prayer” sold 2 million copies in the US alone and was certified double platinum. These achievements and stats are staggering, of course.  At a time when physical sales of albums and singles still mattered, when there was no streaming, she was a juggernaut.  She proved herself to be an adept songwriter and performer. She left jaws on the floor at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards when she performed “Like A Virgin” for the first time in a wedding dress and writhed all over the stage. She was controversial at times. She had a turbulent and volatile public marriage to actor Sean Penn. She appeared in films, some not great. In short, Madonna became a pop culture icon. Madonna came to define the 80s. Everywhere you looked, there was Madonna. Every time you turned on the radio or MTV, there was Madonna. And in a time when a music video meant everything, along with Michael Jackson and Prince, she revolutionized the medium and was instrumental in making MTV what it became. It is 100% true that MTV helped artists sell their music back then, but Madonna helped MTV become a household name by making some of the greatest music videos ever. One could argue that MTV needed Madonna more than she needed them. In the six short years since she told Dick Clark she wanted to rule the world she became the bestselling female artist in the world and one of the most recognizable people on the planet. In six years. As the 1990s dawned, Madonna turned even more towards film, and her marriage to Sean Penn ended. She was about to star in a film adaptation of the 1930s comic strip Dick Tracy, and she had written some songs to go on a soundtrack to the movie. One of the songs she wrote during that time ended up as the last song on the album, an afterthought almost. “Vogue”, released in March in 1990 is a banger in every way, including the backstory, the video and the run it had on the radio and MTV. I think it’s Madonna’s best, and it’s easily one of my favorite songs ever. But not only because I heard it 100 times a week when it first came out, or that I saw that iconic video every single day for a year, or that I’ve come to appreciate it more and more as I’ve gotten older because I understand the meaning of “Vogue” more and more. I love it for all those reasons. I love “Vogue” because of all the songs on this 50 at 50 it’s had two lives for me. The life it had when I was a 20-year-old kid working at the mall, cranking it up in my car till the dashboard shook, and the life it took on when I heard it in an early 2000s comedy-drama film. “Vogue” provided the soundtrack for the transformation of the central character who at first hated her job, and then once she leaned into it, started to love that job in spite of herself and at the cost of everything that was important to her. Eighteen months into a new career myself, I watched The Devil Wears Prada, and I watched Anne Hathaway as fashion magazine assistant Andrea (Andy) Sachs navigated the NYC streets, her couture outfits morphing as she ducked behind buses, cars and subway stairs, and I completely sympathized with this character. Andy was confused and beaten down at first, looking for an affirmation she wasn’t going to get. But once she started wearing the high-fashion clothing she initially turned up her nose at, and answering the late-night calls from her colossally over-bearing and demanding boss to grant her every request, she transformed, at least for a time, into someone else. And I watched this brilliant montage, which is the turning point of the film, with “Vogue” pulsing perfectly in the background and I thought, “Yep, I totally get it Andy…but you’ll figure it out. Yep, this could have been me…” Well, minus all the Chanel.

In December of 1989, Madonna released the fourth single from her Like a Prayer album, the highly personal ballad “Oh Father”. That release would break the streak of sixteen Top 5 singles that Madonna had in the 80s, with the song only reaching number 20 on the Billboard Hot 100. For the next release, “Keep It Together”, the record company wanted a strong “B” side to boost sales, so they enlisted producer and DJ Shep Pettibone, who had remixed several earlier Madonna tracks into hits and worked with dozens of other artists to write and produce a dance track. Around this time, Madonna observed dancers at New York City club The Sound Factory, specifically members of the House of Xtravaganza, “voguing”, or striking dramatic dance poses inspired by fashion models and showgirls. Madonna would end up hiring several dancers from the Xtravaganza troupe; they appeared in the “Vogue” video and on her ensuing tour. Inspired by what she saw, she wrote lyrics and sent them to Pettibone and told him she wanted to call the track “Vogue.” On a barebones budget, Madonna recorded her vocals in one take, Pettibone reworked some of the music to fit the lyrics, and he sent it off to the record company in about a week. Record executives heard it, and the reaction was, “Um, yeah, that’s not a B-side; we’re giving it a full release.” Ah, but where to put it, with Madonna technically between albums? The decision was made to throw it onto the end of I’m Breathless, the collection of songs written by Madonna and Stephen Sondheim for the Dick Tracy movie. The other songs on the album are all jazz and swing inspired and sound very much like show tunes. Obviously, “Vogue” does not fit in any way to the flow of the album, but when it was released in March of 1990, it seriously did not matter what album it was on. With the help of a now iconic music video directed by David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club, The Social Network), “Vogue” was the #1 song in the US by May, the #5 song for the year, and was double platinum in sales for 1990 (it has sold 6 million copies worldwide since its release.) I remember hearing “Vogue” everywhere: in the car, on the radio at home, on MTV; it was inescapable, especially that summer of 1990. The car I had at the time was a maroon Plymouth Turismo hatchback. It was an eyesore, with ornate, cheesy detailing on the hood and the doors. It ran OK and it got me around, but whoever had it before me saw it fit to spend more money on the stereo than on the car itself, so I used to make those speakers THUMP whenever possible. “Vogue” was the perfect song to get that stereo going and I would crank the cassette single and watch the dashboard shake as the 4/4 beat pulsed from the speakers. This was around the time I was inching into listening to new wave and alternative music, but I could not get enough of “Vogue” that year. Then in 2006, I heard it in a movie, and it took on another meaning. The way “Vogue” was used and the way it captured so perfectly the main character’s journey and transformation and how it tied into that moment she was in was one of the best uses of a song in a movie I’d ever seen. It’s the turning point of the movie, the fork in the road where our frustrated, confused hero finally gives up her principles and leans into the job she doesn’t really want.

Sometime in 2004 I discovered Audible, the digital audiobook service. Up until Audible, you could listen to books being narrated on cassette or CD’s, but as you can probably imagine, that was cumbersome and not easily transported if you were, say, exercising or commuting. The invention of MP3 players, most notably the iPod, made listening to books on tape much easier. So, when I figured out that I could download books to my iPod through a subscription service, I jumped on it immediately. For a monthly fee, you were able to download one book. When I signed up, I received two free books just for subscribing. Back in those days, you would browse the selection on the Audible website on your PC (or in my case, a Mac), make your picks and then transfer the book onto your listening device through a USB cable. Not as quick as it is today, but revolutionary for its time. I looked at the book offerings, but I actually knew the first free book I was going to pick. For months, I saw Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada on bookstore display tables at Barnes & Noble and Border’s Books every time I went shopping for books. I should mention here that I was and still am a huge buyer and reader of actual books. I have a reading device, but I hardly ever use it. I find the process of browsing a bookstore, buying books and subsequently stacking them all over the house and reading them extremely pleasurable. I know my wife is reading this and silently shaking her head because she knows it’s true. I always have a book with me wherever I go, and I buy books just to have a reserve. But every January, I will purge the books I no longer want and donate them, and I’ll keep the ones I may want to read again. Why do I purge my books each year? To make more room to buy more books! Anyway…back to The Devil Wears Prada. I had picked that book up several times while on my buying trips, but I just could not get past the image of a man in his early 30s reading that book and people staring at me with a raised eyebrow. So, I always put it down. I had a general idea of what it was about: recent college grad gets first job and has the boss from hell. This was something I could completely relate to. The author Weisberger had worked for a time for notorious (and recently retired) Vogue magazine editor Anna Wintour and based the novel’s antagonist on her. Weisberger called her fictional magazine Runway, and the editor she named Miranda Priestly. I remember being very intrigued, but as I said, I could not bring myself to buy the book. However, listening to a digital book would solve my dilemma; no one would know what I was listening to, unless I offered it up. So, I selected The Devil Wears Prada, and I also downloaded There and Back Again: An Actor’s Tale, which is Sean Astin’s memoir. Astin played Sam in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, of which I am an obsessed fan. It was the first book about those movies I would ever read (er, listen to.)  Once the books were on my iPod, I started listening to The Devil Wears Prada right away. I had it on almost every time I was at the gym, mowing the lawn, or pushing Dylan through the neighborhood in his stroller (Dylan was a baby at the time). And I have to be honest: I loved the book. The characters were well written, especially that of the demonic boss, Miranda Priestly. The plot moved along briskly, and it made me waiver between empathy for the embattled assistant, Andy Sachs, and wanting to throttle her to wake the hell up and tell this unreasonable person she worked for to go fuck herself (which she eventually does.) Now I understood the hype surrounding this book and why it was a bestseller. In the end, I have no regrets about listening to the book rather than buying it. (Now, I wouldn’t care as much, ha ha.) Then in early 2006 I started seeing trailers for a movie adaptation, starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway. Of course, I’d have to see it. But this would be a movie I would definitely have to see with my wife. There was absolutely no way I’d get the guys to see it in the movies. Never mind a raised eyebrow; they would have laughed at me till their sides hurt. No, this would be a night out with my spouse. But if you have small children, you know you have very limited opportunities to go out, and there would be no babysitting money spent on a movie night to see The Devil Wears Prada. As it would turn out, I ended up renting it and watching it at home on DVD before the end of 2006. But it didn’t matter where I saw it, because for whatever reason, that movie has stuck with me for almost 20 years.

I’d hesitate to call the film version of The Devil Wears Prada a romantic comedy, or rom-com. To me it’s more of a coming-of-age story wrapped in a satire of the fashion industry. Our hero Andy Sachs has graduated college, so her “coming-of-age” is her first new job, and all the changes that come with it. Watching it reminded me of my first job: lousy pay, boring work, long commute, but some great people. The bosses were demanding, but nothing like Miranda Priestly; Andy had it much worse. But as the story in the movie unfolded, I just started to relate to it much more than when I listened to the book. And then that scene. Andy feels she can’t please Miranda, no matter what she does, and that she’s killing herself and trying hard, and the magazine’s creative director Nigel, played by Stanley Tucci, reminds her “You are not trying…you are whining”. He also reminds her that Runway has published some of the greatest artists of the century: “…and what they did, what they created was greater than art, because you live your life in it.” Nigel goes on for another minute, and suddenly Andy has an epiphany, a lightbulb moment, and realizes that if she’s going to make a run at this job that she’s going to really have to lean into it, and in this world, that means she’s going to have embrace the fashion, the “art” that she scoffs at. She’s going to have to begin to compromise all of her principles to fit into this new world, and to succeed at this job. Nigel takes Andy through the magazine’s sample closet and he hands her a pile of clothes and shoes by the most iconic designers in the world…and then there’s that scene…

When I first saw it, I had my own lightbulb moment; using “Vogue” in this movie, in this moment makes complete sense. Andy is “posing” in a sense, modeling the couture fashion as she strides through the NYC streets. “Vogue”’s lyrics are about finding your true self and inner beauty and expressing that with confidence; it’s about owning who you are. Andy uses the city as her “dance floor”, as she transforms herself. Even the song’s title calls back to the magazine that inspired the novel’s author in the first place: Vogue. It was perfect. I am hesitant to be hyperbolic about movies, music or any art because it’s so subjective. But this scene using this song…could be the best use of a song in a movie not actually written for that movie. We talked about this a very long time ago, at Track #5: “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett, and its use in the movie Shrek. Sometimes, songs become more iconic if they’re used in just the right way in a film and make it impossible to not to associate them with that particular film. (I made a whole playlist of great examples, including “Vogue”, that you can check out.) The way “Vogue” is used in The Devil Wears Prada transformed the movie for me. Of course I liked it before that moment, but to me, the whole tone of the movie and story changes right there. As I watched the scene, I empathized with Andy because I knew she had made a decision that would change her. And I remembered the moment I had that could have caused me to just lean into the job and career I had but instead made me turn away from it. It was when my boss called me during what was supposed be my time off when Dylan was born, and told me I was going to have to come in to work. I was two days into my week off with my newborn, but because Dylan was born during a financial close and I worked in accounting at a publicly traded company it didn’t matter; I had to cut it short and go back to work. But I didn’t tell my boss to fuck himself like Andy does at the end of the book, nor did I throw my company-issued cellphone into a fountain like she does at the end of the movie, but I did make up my mind that it was time to make changes and I started formulating plans to change careers. Did I work long hours and sometimes take calls when I was on vacation in my new job? Yes, but I did it on my terms. No one demanded I come into work. If I wanted to succeed, I worked harder, it was simple as that, so I did it. Andy’s lament in the movie is always that she “didn’t have a choice”, but we all have choices. In a way I admire what Andy did; she absolutely did her best and did what she thought she needed to do to succeed. But there was a cost, and she made some bad decisions; she lost herself there for a bit, but luckily she recovered. So, watching Andy Sachs make that transition with “Vogue” providing the background hit me in a way that few movie scenes have before or since. Not only because of the pure art of it, but because of where that character was going after that moment. And it made me wonder how things may have turned out if I just had continued down the path I was on and not made the changes I knew I had to make. Up until then, I had a complicated relationship with work and anything career-related, mostly because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And while I’ve certainly had some downs in the past 20 years, at least I knew I was on the right path. At the end of the movie version of The Devil Wears Prada, Andy lands the writing job she covets at a small newspaper, partly because of a recommendation from her terrible boss; Miranda tells the editor, of Andy, he’d “be an idiot not to hire her.” Hopefully Andy found her way; and guess what? We’re going to find out, because they’re filming a sequel right now, slated for a May 2026 release. Maybe I can get someone to see this one in the theaters with me; and maybe they’ll figure out a way to squeeze a few bars of “Vogue” in there.

Thanks again for reading! Please sign up for email updates to get new posts delivered to your inbox and if you’re enjoying the posts, please feel free to share the link with your friends! Four. More. Songs. To go!

Here it is, one of the most iconic music videos ever; and if you’re looking for a music video double-feature, George Michael’s “Freedom ‘90” is a great companion to “Vogue”. Same director, similar vibe…enjoy! 😊

Next time…a song from one of the Beatles; the one whose name I didn’t know until his untimely death.

P.S.

Madonna would go on another run in the 90s. She released three more studio albums, a greatest hits collection that would go on to sell 30 million copies worldwide (The Immaculate Collection), starred in the 1992 film A League of Their Own, and snagged a Golden Globe in 1996 for her performance as Eva Peron in the film Evita; she also contributed several songs to the soundtrack. Her 1998 release Ray of Light earned four Grammys and is often considered one of the greatest pop albums of all time. It seemed Madonna continued to rule the world in the 90s, despite the rise of alternative artists and a dip in interest in the pop and dance music that made her a fixture in the 80s. She opened the 2000s with Music, another album that won critical acclaim and has sold 11 million copies worldwide. By the end of the 2000s, she was the bestselling single artist of the decade; I’m not making this up, kids. Just when you thought Madonna was peaking and was maybe going away, she would reinvent herself and her sound and continue her march to be one of the most influential and bestselling artists of all time. There just aren’t enough superlatives to describe her impact on popular culture, or her influence on generations of musicians, including Britney Spears, Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, Liam Gallagher, Alanis Morrisette, Katy Perry, Chester Bennington, and Lady Gaga, just to name a few you may have heard of. Like Elvis and the Beatles, and her contemporaries Michael Jackson and Prince, she redefined what it meant to be a musician and pop star, and the impact music could have on people and the world. I wrote earlier that she became a pop culture icon, and she did; but Madonna also became a historical icon. When I was growing up in the middle of MTV’s cultural revolution and watching hours of videos was a thing, you saw a lot of videos that were, ehhh, forgettable. It was inevitable. They couldn’t all be hits. But when you saw a video like “Beat It”, or “When Doves Cry”, or “Hungry Like the Wolf”, or “Sledgehammer”,  or “November Rain”, you took notice because those were going to stick around for a while, maybe forever; and those videos are still racking up views in our on-demand digital age. And Madonna’s videos…you just knew they were genre-defining. You couldn’t look away, and you knew you were seeing something special.

For some deeper dives into Madonna’s chart run, check out Chris Molanphy’s Hit Parade podcast episode, “Material Girl in an Imperial World Edition”. For an in-depth look at “Vogue” specifically, I recommend 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, Rob Harvila’s excellent podcast.

The movie The Devil Wears Prada went on to gross over $300 million during its theater run. Meryl Streep was nominated for an Oscar for her performance as Miranda Priestly (she was beaten out by Helen Mirren for The Queen; not sure I agree with that one.) However, she did win a Golden Globe and a few other accolades, and deservedly so. No one else but Meryl Streep could have pulled off playing that character. She doesn’t even have to speak; Streep simply appears onscreen and she’s diabolical. The movie received generally positive reviews, and in my opinion, has aged well, even if the depiction of “the boss from hell” trope hasn’t. But you’ll never get me to say a bad word about that movie, and to this day I can’t explain why I love it and why I return to it so often. Sometimes I’ll have it on, and Christine will come into the room, and say “John, this movie again?” And I just shrug and smile and watch Anne Hathaway get abused for two hours. The Ringer podcast The Rewatchables did a great episode on the movie that I highly recommend if you want to hear more about the production and casting, and why it deserves multiple viewings. I think I relate to The Devil Wears Prada so much because of the complicated relationship I used to have with work and my career in general. I had no idea what I wanted to do for a long time, so I struggled and made some bad decisions. The movie reminds me of the importance of getting that first job just to get experience, no matter the pay or the commute or the boss, or whatever. You just do what you need to do and hope that your first job leads to something better. And it came out just after I finally made a good decision and was finding some success. Watching that movie is a bit of nostalgia for a time when I finally figured out, at least somewhat, who I was and what I wanted to do. And I don’t see myself ever getting tired of that nostalgia. A few months ago, the New York Times put out its list of the greatest movies of the century so far, and it inspired me, and a couple of other pop-culture obsessed guys I work with to make our own lists. We had some great films between the three of us, but one of the guys, Tom, replied with, “There are some great picks there…but The Devil Wears Prada? Oof!” Tom, I hope this clears things up!   😊

I wasn’t going to make a Madonna playlist, but after realizing just how deep her catalog was, I picked my 25 favorites. I am a big fan of her ballads, and I included several. Did I miss any of your favorites? Let me know in the comments.

See you next time…

JS

10/5/2025