Material Girl

The single from the Like a Virgin album, written by Peter Brown and Robert Rans titled Material Girl was released in January, 1985 by Sire Records. Madonna remained faithful to the pop style and Material Girl used those beats too. The baseline of the song reminds The Jacksons's Can You Feel It, which was included on their album Triumph in 1980.

Material Girl became another top five hit for Madonna in the U.S. It was also included in the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and on Billboard's Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. The single achieved top positions in the UK, Canada, Australia and many other countries.

The video for this single mimicked Marilyn Monroe's performance of Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), but since then Madonna didn’t like being compared to Marilyn Monroe. The video was shot in 1985 at Ren-Mar Studios in Hollywood, California and directed by Mary Lambert. This video was ranked #54 on VH1's 100 Greatest Videos. During the music video for Material Girl in 1985 shooting, Madonna began dating actor Sean Penn. They married later that year on Madonna's twenty-seventh birthday.

The title of the song became Madonna’s nickname and Madonna said if she had known this, she probably would have never recorded it. And the one still can hear Madonna is sometimes referred to as "the Material Girl" in the media.

Madonna included Material Girl in many tours: 1985 The Virgin Tour, Who's That Girl Tour in 1987, Blond Ambition Tour in 1990 and performed the song again on the Re-Invention Tour in 2004 though she declared earlier that she would never again perform the song.

Madonna performed remastered version of Material Girl in her greatest hits compilation album The Immaculate Collection, released in 1990. There were made a lot of cover versions of the single: the game theme, soundtrack of the film, song for children's show, in this case the lyric was changed. Besides, many other artists have covered the song. Among them there were such stars as Britney Spears, Marilyn Manson, Exhumed and Virgin.