https://longreads.com/2026/08/27/80s-ladies-lisa-whittington-hill/
"“Very, very whorish,” was how Annie Lennox described it to
Melody Maker. “It
was like she was fucking the music industry,” the Eurythmics lead singer said
of Madonna’s performance at the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards (VMA) in
September, 1984. With her bright orange crew cut and fondness for men’s
tailored suits, Lennox’s androgynous appearance challenged sexualized,
hyper-feminine images of women in music. For both artists, sweet dreams were
made of shattering gender norms; Lennox just preferred her trailblazing with a
little less dry humping.
Madonna had snagged a Best New Artist nomination for “Borderline,” the Top 10
single from her 1983 self-titled debut, but she was also opening the show.
Rather than perform a track from the album, like MTV and her management wanted,
Madonna insisted on the not-yet-released “Like a Virgin.” She had requested a
Bengal tiger for the performance, but for safety reasons that idea was killed.
(Protect Moonman nominees Herbie Hancock and Huey Lewis at all costs!)
Instead, Madonna appeared atop a 17-foot-tall, three-tier wedding cake, with a
mannequin dressed as a groom. (Probably a better choice than future husband,
Sean Penn.) Her wedding dress was a white lace bustier and tulle skirt. Her
unconventional bridal attire also included fingerless, white lace gloves,
chains, crosses, and her BOY TOY belt—a nod to Madonna’s graffiti tag that also
happened to irk feminists like Lennox. As she strode down the cake, she kicked
off her white pumps, removed her veil, and shook out her hair. Later, she
dropped to her knees, gyrated and writhed on top of the veil, and suggestively
crawled across the Radio City Music Hall stage. In the process, she exposed her
garters, white silk panties, and Moonman to the audience.
For Madonna, the performance was a commentary on marriage and sexual double
standards. Others saw a career-ending disaster. “This gal, Madonna—this is not
going to happen,” Huey Lewis’s agent Dan Weiner said of the shocking opener.
Weiner wasn’t alone in thinking the singer’s image was as destroyed as the
guitar Roger Daltrey had smashed onstage while presenting one of the night’s
awards. Watching backstage, her manager Freddy DeMann also worried she’d gone
too far, but Madonna wasn’t concerned. As a new artist, she felt she didn’t
have a career to lose. She also maintained she didn’t know about the wardrobe
malfunction. “Well, fuck it, I made a mistake,” was her unapologetic reaction.
The mistake paid off. Rather than kill her career, the performance defined it.
By late December, “Like a Virgin” was the number one single in America, and
remained atop the charts for six weeks. MTV put the video in heavy rotation and
the album from which it came, also called
Like a Virgin, reached the top spot
on the Billboard 200. Being touched wasn’t the only thing Madonna was doing for
the very first time.
Like a Virgin was the first-ever album by a woman to
sell more than five million copies."
Via Esther Schindler.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
