The “Like a Virgin” Sensibilities of “…Baby One More Time”

As far as many were concerned, Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” might as well have been her debut single. For that’s the one that truly “invented” her and turned her into a household name overnight. Thanks, in no small part, to the controversy stoked by her performance at the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards, which aired on September 14, 1984—just slightly over a month before the single would be officially released on, of all days, Halloween (appropriate, in a way, considering that Madonna’s look from this period would launch a thousand Halloween costumes for many decades to come). And if people didn’t already know the song from Madonna’s performance on MTV, they were about to know it from her video, directed by Mary Lambert (who had previously worked with Madonna on “Borderline,” which is what initially helped audiences put a name with a face—and “persona”).

Indeed, the “Like a Virgin” video would further elevate Madonna to the level of “instant icon” thanks to the Venice-set visuals that cemented her image in the consciousness of teenage youths for the rest of the decade. Not unlike what happened to Britney Spears after the release of her “…Baby One More Time” video on November 26, 1998 (two months after the single was released on September 29th). However, it isn’t just the fact that these two videos effectively launched each pop star into automatic “legend” status that connects Madonna and Spears’ signature singles, but also their sonic similarities. Of course, “Like a Virgin” is rooted in an 80s sound that Nile Rodgers further layered with the musical style of his own band, Chic, along with some Motown-inspired notes. Yet, even though “…Baby One More Time” was released fourteen years after, in the late 90s, there’s still something about it that gives it that same sonic tone as “Like a Virgin.” That something being, most notably the heavy use of synthesizers and keyboards.

Both of these instruments being what each iconic single leads with. And each opening melody is what drives “Like a Virgin” and “…Baby One More Time,” respectively, to be so memorable. For Madonna, it takes seven seconds of those indelible notes before she commences with the introductory line of her high-pitched tale: “I made it through the wilderness…” Spears, perhaps in an indication of how much the culture’s “erudition” had fallen since the mid-80s to the late 90s, only takes one second to give her listener the earworm, “Oh baby, baby.” But it was those throwback-to-the-80s keyboard notes, courtesy of Max Martin and Rami Yacoub (a.k.a. Rami) that really get in the listener’s head within that first second (once more speaking to the way in which attention spans had already devolved by that point). For Martin and Yacoub clearly saw the importance of hypnotizing the listener within a single instant.

Madonna and her producer, Nile Rodgers, on the other hand, had more time to build a sonic world. Yes, technically, both singles run about the same length (with “Like a Virgin” clocking in at three minutes and thirty-nine seconds and “…Baby One More Time” clocking in at three minutes and thirty-one seconds), but Madonna and Rodgers use the “space” much differently. This in terms of the riffs and refrains that also get interwoven into the core melody. Not to mention Madonna detailing a “contrast” between how she felt before versus after meeting her new “special someone” and falling in love. Spears’ song, however, is one of pure torture and lament. A baleful elegy for a relationship she knows she can’t get back, yet still hopes to anyway as she implores, “Give me a sign/Hit me, baby, one more time.” It’s that memorable lyric in particular that gives the song away as a product of its time, with Martin intending it to mean something more akin to “hit me up one more time.”

As John Seabrook, author of The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory, explained to Entertainment Weekly in 2018, “Everybody thought it was some sort of weird allusion to domestic violence or something. But [it was really] the Swedes using English not exactly correctly. What they really wanted to say was ‘hit me up on the phone one more time’ or something. But at that point, Max’s English wasn’t that great. So it came out sounding a little bit weird in English. But when they tried to get him to change it, he said, ‘No, it can’t be changed. That’s it.’”

Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” needless to say, does not bear any such dated attempts at slang. Which is why, lyrically speaking, it does have a more timeless feel (so thank songwriter Billy Steinberg’s then girlfriend [never publicly named] for inspiring such “evergreen” emotions). But of course, the use of the Roland Jupiter-8 synth is a dead giveaway of its quintessential 80s-ness (with the same synth also being used in such hits as Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf,” Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Queen’s “I Want to Break Free” [to name a few]). This, too, is part of what makes “…Baby One More Time” have such a “Like a Virgin” sensibility. For, despite being groundbreaking during the era it was released, both singles would go on to sound like some of Madonna’s and Spears’ most “dated” work. While, of course, remaining essential songs in their oeuvre. The very “building blocks” that established each of their enduring careers and legacies.

Fittingly, too, Spears would join Madonna onstage at the 2003 VMAs, nineteen years after the latter debuted “Like a Virgin” at the inaugural ceremony, to sing a rendition of “Like a Virgin” with Christina Aguilera (because, at that point, Madonna wouldn’t have been caught dead singing something that had become as stale to her as “Like a Virgin”—so why not leave it to the “kiddies” instead?). It was a full-circle moment that further tied Madonna’s first number one hit (therefore the single that truly put her on the global map the way Spears’ actual first single did) to Spears’ similar “pop star phenomenon” status. All originally spurred by the “Like a Virgin” stylings of “…Baby One More Time.”  

So it is that the Queen of Pop and the Princess of Pop shared more than just a kiss when it comes to their interconnectedness. Though, in truth, it’s no secret that Spears has been deliberate in her Madonna emulations (though not in the same, more “rip-off”-oriented way as Lady Gaga). Hence, declaring earlier this year, “I admire and look up to Madonna more than anyone … wise, incredibly strong and has remained gentle and genius. Again… DO NOT PISS HER OFF !!!” Otherwise, one might end up with a song like MDNA’s “Love Spent” being sung about them rather than something as swooning as “Like a Virgin.”