It’s now been 35 years since Madonna released one of her biggest and most popular hits.

Thanks to its striking music video, empowering lyrics and an iconic middle eight section name-checking some of the biggest stars to ever grace the silver screen, Madonna’s song Vogue had all the makings of an instant hit.

Remarkably, it’s now 35 years since she released the track, which reached number one in more than 30 countries and gave the Queen of Pop a brand new signature tune back in 1990.

But despite being a song that’s now recognised all over the world – and still has everyone recreating those famous moves – there’s a lot you probably don’t know about

But despite being a song that’s now recognised all over the world – and still has everyone recreating those famous moves – there’s a lot you probably don’t know about Vogue.

So. Don’t just stand there. Let’s get to it…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuJQSAiODqI

1. Vogue was actually never intended to be a single

Madonna actually hooked up with music producer Shep Pettibone – who had previously remixed a number of her songs – to create a B-side for the Like A Prayer cut, Keep It Together (not even a track that particularly stands out in the star’s back catalogue, either).

It was only when she played the track for her label that it ended up being made a single in its own right.

2. Because they thought they were only making a B-side, Madonna and Shep were more focussed on having fun in the studio, rather than trying to create a hit

“We were just after a fun club record,” Shep told Entertainment Weekly a few weeks after Vogue topped the charts. “But when the record company bigwigs heard it, they said, ’This is a number one smash record. Let’s not put it on a B-side and lose it’.”

3. Vogue might be one of her biggest hits, but it came from one of Madonna’s most forgotten albums

In 1990, Madonna starred opposite then-boyfriend Warren Beatty in Disney’s adaptation of Dick Tracy, teaming up with Stephen Sondheim and frequent collaborator Patrick Leonard to create a soundtrack album inspired by her character, Breathless Mahoney.

When her label heard Vogue for the first time, they decided to tack it on the end of the album, I’m Breathless, which is why it sounds so distinctly different from the musical theatre-inspired tracks that precede it.

4. Madonna was inspired to write the song after seeing the House of Xtravaganza performing in a nightclub

“I’ve been very inspired [by New York],” Madonna told iHeartRadio in 2019, while reflecting on her career.

“The song Vogue was inspired by walking into a nightclub and seeing the Xtravaganza crew voguing. And I was like ‘woah, what the hell is that?’. It was just the most amazing thing.”

5. But Madonna wasn’t actually the first person to try and bring voguing into the pop scene

A year earlier, Malcolm McClaren (yes, the former Sex Pistols manager) paid homage to the ballroom scene with the single Deep In Vogue, which topped the US dance charts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd4u0Zzc5zc

The track was co-produced by William Orbit, who would later go on to work with Madonna on her albums Ray Of Light, Music and MDNA, even earning the singer her very first Grammy for Ray Of Light.

6. Vogue landed Madonna at the centre of a row about cultural appropriation, particularly within the ballroom scene

Because voguing has its origins in the 1980s and 1990s ballroom culture – largely populated by queer people of colour – some critics at the time questioned whether it was appropriate for Madonna to profit from it with her hit single, and to many, become synonymous with a dance style that she had no hand in creating or perfecting (not to mention the fact that all of the celebrities name-checked in the song were rich and white).

Others felt that Madonna was shining a light on voguing and opening the door for ballroom to become more mainstream, particularly as she included actual dancers from the scene in the accompanying music video, and her next world tour.

7. In fact, this very argument is explored in the second season of Pose

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcsQ15TA8Fw

The second series of Ryan Murphy’s ball-centric drama is set in 1990, just as Vogue is becoming more popular.

While Blanca, the mother of the house of Evangelista, is hopeful that the song can help take ballroom to the next level – which it does, allowing the character Angel to pursue her modelling career – others, like Praytell, are more sceptical, particularly as time passes and little has changed for the core group.

8. Considering it’s a song that would eventually go down in pop history, the recording of Vogue was actually pretty slapdash

“I think right after that she was on to something else, and I think it was within a week or so that I finished up the production and the mix and sent it off to [her label].”

He added: “Somebody had made a home recording studio, and I remember they had converted a closet that had bi-fold doors on it. They had put a sliding glass door on it, and that was the vocal booth.”

9. And Madonna seemingly recorded the verses and chorus in just one take

“She was always a first-take artist,” Shep recalled. “You didn’t have to go back in and punch a word. No tonal problems. She was pretty amazing that way.”

10. The famous ‘Greta Garbo and Monroe…’ rap was pretty much done on the fly, too

Shep claimed: “For the middle part, I was like, ‘How about if we do like a rap or something in here?’ Because we didn’t have anything for that, really.

″[She was] like, “What do you mean?”, I’m like, ‘Oh, how about like you know bringing in movie stars and stuff?’. So, we just wrote down a whole bunch of names of movie stars and that’s how the rap came up…

“But I mean that’s how she writes. You know, she’s fast. It’s just like, give her an idea or a direction to go.”

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