Madonna's '84 VMA performance, what was your first impression?

She seems to have been such a mega star and massive staple in pop culture for so long now that it's hard to think of a time when Madonna wasn't, well, Madonna.

In 1984 she had had some hits already and for the '84 VMA's the first of it's kind she had been told by her management to perform 'Lucky Star' which was a hit on the charts at the time, she however insisted on performing the lead single off her soon to be released album 'Like A Virgin'.

Between the giant cake, wedding dress, her humping the floor and exposing her underwear to the crowd all the while singing about her virginity (or lack there of) it's easy to see why there was so much buzz about it back in '84.

Fast forward just a couple weeks and the song has risen to #1 in the US and by the next year Madonna is on the cover of Time magazine and has every teenage girl in America trying to recreate her iconic look.

Were you watching that first VMA when Madonna performed and what was your reaction or the general reaction to it you remember.

 

I was 12 at the time. I missed the original broadcast of the original VMAs but I was aware of Madonna already through "Borderline" and "Lucky Star." But Like A Virgin exploded that year. For the next couple of years, the "big three" of pop music were her, Prince, and Springsteen (Michael Jackson was kind of de-throned). My mom thought Madonna was such a ho!

 

It's a striking visual, that's for sure...

 

Don't think I had seen this video until You Tube LOL. Amateurish at best, and I'm being generous.

 

Oh i remember when i first seen that back in the day. It was a big deal (shocking) then.

 

I was 17, I remember it as about what you would have expected based on her videos and image. It made an impression at the time but not a huge deal, at least in the world i lived in in 1984.

 

I thought it was whoreish; but its funny that it looks tame by today’s standards.

I loved it and was a huge fan after that

 

Nice shoes

 

For me in '84, I was 16 and did watch MTV... don't remember if I saw the actual VMA show but clips went into almost constant rotation anyway... I just thought it was "girl's music"... neither shocked me nor titillated me... just thought it was show biz...

 

Madonna's '84 VMA performance, what was your first impression?

 

I was 13. I thought it was over the top and kinda dumb.

 

"Over the top and kind of dumb" could describe the first 20 years of MTV.

 

More like the last 20 years of MTV!! The first five years or so were great and even brilliant on occasion.

 

When I saw it (after the fact) it confirmed what I thought when I first heard the song... "she is going to be a huge star"...

I have never owned a Madonna album, but there was no denying her pop culture instincts.

 

She knew how to use the media to her advantage from the start, you can't deny that...

 

I was in college and already a Madonna fan. In NYC her first album was a big dance record and in 1983 I had already spent a lot of time playing it and dancing to it and going out dancing to it; the singles also were getting a lot of airplay on dance radio. Everybody in my circles knew "Borderline" and "Holiday" and "Lucky Star."

She was already kind of riding a zeitgeist wave. I thought the VMAs performance was great and button pushing and I loved the song. But it was also a year and an era for that sort of thing. Purple Rain had been out in the summer with Prince doing his not entirely dissimilar "Darling Nikki" routine.

What Madonna had done differently is taken this song with this very interesting and different central lyrical idea and image, mixed together with these other kinds of images -- the virginal white wedding dress mixed with lingerie, the wedding cake which at the same time maybe suggested the old stripper popping out of a cake thing, and then some sexual stage writhing. The latter was hardly something that hadn't been done on stage before, you could go see a lot of acts who did suggestive pelvic thrusting and stage humping going way back, especially in some R&B and funk stage acts (I mean I certainly had seen George Clinton do a dog humping routine on stage), but they were all men, they weren't on MTV which was thought of as having a kind of kiddie audience, and they weren't dressed in some kind of combo wedding dress/stripper wear.

In some ways the performance and the imagery -- because the performance itself was just OK, but the imagery was very strong and became almost instantly iconic -- kind of swamped the song's central lyrical idea, which is kind of sweet and tender. (It was kind of like what happened with "Born in the USA" around the same time, the song's lyric got kind of lost in the production and politics of the moment, though in Springsteen's case, I think it was accidental, in Madonna's case, she was turning the song into a vehicle for this other kind of performance art.) But man, clearly this was a woman who was both a dance floor queen and a provocative performance artist. She was high concept, theatrical. She got people all riled up. And I remember, I dunno if it was after that or even really starting before that but just how fast it seemed like she exploded from NYC dance music newcomer to global pop icon and Bowie-esque pop culture button pusher. That's the thing I remember most about the whole thing, how fast it seem like she blew up, her sheer career velocity at the time. At some point that year, and maybe it was with the VMAs performance, she became someone that my 12 year old sister loved and that my mother could name.

 

In short...my 10 year old boner

 

"Not what it says on the tin" would describe the last 20 years of MTV.

 

I hope you grew out of that.

 

It really is relentless bollocks now.

 

A boring lip synced strip tease.

 

I had the same reaction.

I would’ve “liked” your post, but would’ve felt weird “liking” your boner.

 

Yep

 

Baaaahaahaha...true dat

 

I was sixteen at the time and honestly thought she must be on drugs! I do recall, everyone talking about the performance at the time.