Strike a Pose Madonna’s music videos defined the MTV era and changed pop culture forever. Here are the stories behind the 20 greatest

SOUND AND VISION Madonna in the “Vogue” video, 1990

00 72 | MADONNA | COLLECTORS EDITION COLLECTORS EDITION | MADONNA | 00 Ray of Light 1998 A bold embrace of electronica that got Madonna her due at the VMAs

“it’s probably, to this day, No. 1 the longest shoot ever for a 2 music video,” remembers direc- tor Jonas Åkerlund, who traveled to New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas to get “Ray of Light” ’s fast-forward cut- and-paste look. The clip had a simi- Express lar feel to the 1982 art-house favorite Koyaanisqatsi (which Åkerlund had never seen) and a frantic energy that fit the song’s embrace of “electronica.” “We had this diagram that I had in Yourself my pocket for the whole production,” 1989 Åkerlund recalls. “Let’s say you shoot Taking total control of the one frame every 10 seconds or so. Then artistic process, Madonna you have to do that for 30 minutes to worked with director David get like five seconds. Every shot was Fincher to make a sci-fi classic just, like, such a big deal.” The hard work paid off: Although she made near- ly 70 music videos during her career, “Ray of Light” is the only one to win he first of an MTV Video Music Award for Video The VMA- Madonna’s col- of the Year. Says Åkerlund, “I didn’t winning “Ray laborations with of Light” video really think about winning the VMAs. acclaimed Fight But it was life-changing for me.” Club and Social T Network director David Fincher is also her most ambitious use of the video form (and, at $5 million, the most ex- Open Your Heart Take a Bow er Emilio Muñoz. “The bull never got pensive video ever made at the hurt . . . at all,” says Haussman. “When 1986 1994 time). Heavily influenced by Ger- you’re looking at the footage, it’s pretty man director Fritz Lang’s 1927 Madonna takes a big risk in a risqué Madge + bullfighting = one outstanding what he does. He’s not just classic Metropolis, with its sci- video with an art-house soul of her weirdest scandals ever fighting it – he’s fighting it beautifully. fi cityscape and surreal facto- It’s gorgeous.” Still, animal-rights orga- ry scenes, “Express Yourself” is “at the time we were into “there were several times nizations were furious. “We had to have a perfect melding of Fincher’s a period where we were exper- when it was gonna be canceled the police in my office opening our mail expressionist impulses and Ma- 3 imenting [with] some kind of 4 because of PETA getting in- looking for letter bombs,” says Hauss- donna’s shape-shifting allure. freedom about the body, about sexual- volved,” remembers director Michael man. “The producer had a rose taped (“We sat down and threw out ity and stuff,” says director Jean-Bap- Haussman about this steamy love story, to his door, and it said, ‘Hasta la vista, every idea we could,” Madonna tiste Mondino. “So the peep show was filmed in Spain with real-life bullfight- baby!’ All kinds of really scary shit.” said.) She played different seduc- an idea that I had.” With Madonna tive characters: a pantsuit-wear- playing a stripper clad in a black bust- ing, Marlene Dietrich-like fig- ier, “Open Your Heart” was the sing- ure, a shimmying coquette in a er’s first overtly risqué clip to date. But corset, a submissive wife chained it was no mere shock piece: A mix of half naked to a bed. “This one I Federico Fellini and Bob Fosse, “Open had the most amount of input,” Your Heart” featured paintings by art- said Madonna. “I oversaw ev- deco artist Tamara de Lempicka on erything – the building of the the club exterior and a colorful cast of sets, everyone’s costumes, I had cold-looking characters. At one point, meetings with makeup and hair in a striking piece of synergy, Madon- and the cinematographer, every- na leaned back and brilliantly repro- body. Casting, finding the right duced the now-iconic cover photo for cat – just every aspect. Kind of her 1986 album True Blue, which fea- Taking like making a little movie.” “I oversaw tured “Open Your Heart.” “She makes the picture, you know?” says Mondino. no bull everything,” in “Take said Madonna. “She gives you the stuff. You’ve got to be a Bow” ready to grab it.”

74 | MADONNA | COLLECTORS EDITION COLLECTORS EDITION | MADONNA | 75 Like a Prayer Cherish to do was direct music videos. “She kept 1989 1989 asking me, and I said I really didn’t know the first thing about moving im- How to offend every bigot in Madge takes the plunge agery,” Ritts said in a 1999 interview. America in just five fiery minutes with a first-time director in “Finally, I practiced with a little Super one of her sweetest videos 8 camera when I was on a job in Hawaii, burning crosses, stigmata, and came back and said I could do it. a saint’s icon coming to life and the photographer herb Two weeks later, I was filming ‘Cherish.’ 5 succumbing to the pleasures of Ritts and Madonna struck I directed it, and the camera work as the flesh – the imagery in “Like a Prayer” 10 up a friendship early in her well. It was invigorating.” In the video, caused such a commotion that Pepsi career. Ritts shot the cover for the 1986 Madonna playfully frolics in black- pulled a $5 million ad campaign featur- album True Blue as well as Madonna’s and-white on the beach, and even dives ing the song. “I knew that we were push- fourth Rolling Stone cover, in 1987. into what was actually freezing water. ing some big buttons, but I sort of un- But what Madonna really wanted Ritts Said Ritts, “She was a real trouper.” derestimated the influence and bigotry of fundamentalist religion and racism in this country and the world,” says direc- tor Mary Lambert. “I always think that if my work is successful, it goes beyond my intentions, and in this case it defi- nitely did.” Madonna originally wanted to focus more directly on racial violence. But she and Lambert revised and broad- Vogue ened the concept to connect sex and re- 1990 ligion, casting actor Leon Robinson as a Creating vintage glamour out black saint (presumably Martin de Por- res, the patron saint of racially mixed of the underground club scene people). “Why not a black Jesus?” says Lambert. “Why can’t you imagine kiss- madonna’s third collabo- ing him? I wanted to show the relation- ration with director David Finch- ship between sexual and religious ec- Pushing 8er is a kaleidoscope of classic stasy.” Madonna summed up the clip’s buttons in movie-star iconography and an ener- mission succinctly, telling The New York “Like a getic display of “vogueing,” a dance born Times in 1989, “Art should be controver- Prayer” in the underground gay club scene. Re- A (very sial, and that’s all there is to it.” markably, the elegant video was pre- chilly) day at the pared in record time for a single that beach was being rush-released. “We cut this thing together as quickly as we Rain Papa Don’t Preach could,” recalls Fincher. “We shot the 1993 1986 video in, like, 16 hours, that was it. She got on the plane and went on her A trip into the future Setting high style aside for a dose world tour.” that Madonna almost of social realism in Staten Island Material Girl didn’t take 1985 A tribute to Marilyn Monroe with “papa don’t preach,” director mark Madonna began treating music that became a classic itself Romanek’s clips 7 videos more as short films than Like a Virgin 6 for Lenny Kravitz promotional clips. She imbues her char- 1984 “i have always been ex- and En Vogue were high- acter – a teenager who discloses an un- tremely interested in Marilyn Madonna takes a big-budget trip to volume, high-energy af- planned pregnancy to her strict father Monroe – her life and persona. Venice and gets down with a lion 11 fairs that caught Madon- (played by Danny Aiello) – with a ma- Madonna and I shared that fascination,” na’s eye, so she asked him ture, sympathetic tone far removed from says director Mary Lambert. “I watched to go behind the cam- her sex-bomb image. “We talked about “we went to venice with a the dance sequence from Gentlemen era for this lush Erotica wanting to tap into a working-class bunch of fucking wack jobs,” said Prefer Blondes about a million times track. “I actually turned environment, because by that time she 9 Warner Bros. creative director with [choreographer] Kenny Ortega, her down, because I thought the song and-white, romantic,” Madonna said to had done ‘Material Girl’ and ‘Like a Vir- Jeff Ayeroff. “I don’t know what we spent who brilliantly reinterpreted it [in the was really romantic, and I didn’t real- Romanek. But the director’s vision pre- gin’ and other stuff that was very glam- – $150,000? $175,000? – but it was way video].” By now, this homage to Mar- ly know what to do with something ro- vailed. Madonna reached out to Jean- orous and stylized,” says director James more than we’d ever spent on a video.” ilyn Monroe’s 1953 film has probably mantic at that point in my life,” Ro- Luc Godard to appear as her director Foley. The video was shot over three days For their second collaboration, director inspired as many tributes as the orig- manek said. He eventually accepted and in the video. When he turned her down, in Staten Island and Manhattan. Foley Mary Lambert shot the pop star on gon- inal: Taylor Swift’s performance of came up with a futuristic concept and she tried Federico Fellini, who also de- recalls that, despite the seriousness of dolas in Venetian canals and teamed “Shake It Off” at the 2014 MTV Video the unique idea of staging a video with- clined. Finally, they went with exper- the song, the vibe was “pure fun.” “No her with a lion. Lambert recalls, “At Music Awards was definitely more in a video. At first Madonna wasn’t sold imental composer Ryuichi Sakamoto one was getting down about the social one point the lion started sniffing Ma- Madge than Norma Jean. Says Lam- on the idea. “This song is kind of like because he was, according to Romanek, importance of it,” he says. “We just liked donna’s crotch, and I thought she might bert of Swift, “I think she’s amazing, and Wuthering Heights – it should be black- “[an] attractive Japanese icon.” to blast it as loud as possible.” be a goner.” I was flattered.”

76 | MADONNA | COLLECTORS EDITION COLLECTORS EDITION | MADONNA | 77 Justify My Love versy into the bestselling “video single” Frozen Fever 1990 of all time. “The whole idea was to lock 1998 1993 ourselves into this hotel for three days A hotel party that made for the Chilling out on a desert vacation Madge gets her martyr on and two nights, without any rules,” says steamiest video of her career Mondino. “Nobody was allowed to go in a trippy experimental clip and receives a paint job out. It was very strange because we mtv refused to play didn’t know when we were doing the this arty video was di- “my concept was that this Jean-Baptiste Mondi- film or when it was real, you know? rected by Chris Cunningham, she was a kind of Joan of Arc,” 1 2 no-directed clip, which fea- Things were just happening. The last 17 whose work on Aphex Twin’s 1 9 says director Stéphane Sed- tured images of S&M, group sex and morning when I woke up and had to creepy “Come to Daddy” caught Ma- naoui. “I wanted her like a provocative even some bare breasts – but the re- go back home, I felt very strange on donna’s attention. “Frozen” was visually saint, somebody that speaks out and tells sourceful Madonna spun the contro- the sidewalk.” stunning, with Madonna clad in billow- Music the truth, and is ready to burn for it. I ing black against a stark desert tableau. 2000 remember the big boss at Maverick was But it wasn’t easy to make: “We were worried I’d burn her.” While Madonna Redefining Oh Father A pregnant Madonna and a little-known thinking of shooting it in Iceland,” she doesn’t catch fire in the clip, she does get room service 1989 Sacha Baron Cohen take a wild ride in “Justify said in 1998. “But then I thought, ‘You evocatively covered in silver body paint: Childhood memories haunt a My Love” know what, I’m going to be freezing. I’m “They thought, ‘[Let’s] do something deeply personal mini-epic going to be miserable.’ . . . So I said, ‘Let’s the girls-night-out- that’s not the Madonna we know – more do it in the desert, it’ll be warm.’ . . . But themed “Music” video was shot pop, more disco, more club,’ ” recalls madonna dug deep for then we got there and it was like 20 de- 18in April 2000, when Madonna Sednaoui. “So, I think that’s why she this David Fincher-direct- grees below zero . . . and I was barefoot.” was pregnant with son Rocco. “I didn’t went all the way, like, ‘OK, let’s paint.’ ” 13 ed, Citizen Kane-referencing think it was a problem,” says director mini-epic about her mother’s death, her Jonas Åkerlund. Madonna didn’t agree, troubled relationship with her father and spent most of the video in a fur coat. and her tempestuous marriage to Sean “Music” was many Americans’ introduc- Penn. “It’s my most autobiographical tion to comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, work,” she said. In one disturbing scene, who played a limo driver. “I remember a young girl steps up to view her moth- one thing,” says Åkerlund. “We had a er’s coffin only to find the dead woman’s big discussion: ‘Fedora or cowboy hat?’ lips have been sewn shut – an image re- Every time I go to a Madonna show and portedly inspired by Madonna’s memo- see all the people in cowboy hats, I think ries of her own mother’s funeral. ‘That could have been a fedora, dude!’ ”

Bedtime Story Burning Up Hung Up 1995 1983 2005 Madonna fans get a crash course The early-Eighties clip that almost How to power through pain in the in “painterly surrealism” cut Madonna’s career short name of a good dance sequence

the idea for this clip this testament to the weeks before madon- came when Madonna ap- anything-goes era of early na was scheduled to shoot 14proached director Mark Ro- 16 MTV was the work of Steve 20 the clip for the Abba-bor- manek about doing the video for the Barron, who was in high demand at rowing lead single from Confessions on 1992 Erotica track “Bad Girl.” When the time after his success helming vid- a Dance Floor, she had a horseback-rid- they met, Madonna brought a single eos like Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” ing mishap that resulted in several bro- piece of artwork for inspiration. “It was and Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue.” ken bones. But she still managed to don this very surreal, dark, kind of amber- Human Nature Barron didn’t love “Burning Up” but a long-sleeved pink leotard and danced colored, somewhat disturbing painting 1995 took the job. Of their first meeting, held around a rehearsal studio with gusto. – and I didn’t know Madonna, so I was at Madonna’s apartment, he recalls, “She was such a trouper. She just fell Laughing her way through a playful really surprised that this was her taste “There she was, naked except for a pair off a horse!” said director Johan Renck, in art,” Romanek recalled. When he S&M fantasy that co-starred a dog of knickers, on the floor doing exercis- who assembled her segments from a later heard the pulsing, Björk-penned es in front of this massive speaker and three-hour shoot, taking breaks so Ma- “Bedtime Story” a couple of years later, after a decade of sexu- amp. That was the only furniture in the donna could deal with intense physical he knew he had found a vehicle to show ally charged work, Madonna place, really. She seemed very confident pain. Renck, a last-minute replacement off what he called “painterly surrealism.” and Jean-Baptiste Mondino with herself.” Barron came up with a Toughing for David LaChapelle, didn’t have time 15 it out for Romanek delved into the history of fe- addressed erotic subject matter with “mishmash” of ideas and shot over two “Hung Up” to overthink its dancing-in-the-streets male surrealists, paying particular trib- winking humor. Dressed in bondage nights in L.A. At one point, a massive concept: “I like being out on a limb and ute to painters Leonora Carrington and gear, Madonna laughs, makes funny crane on the set started teeter­ing and not know what we’re doing and why. Just Remedios Varo with elaborate visual ef- faces and disciplines her Chihuahua nearly fell on Madonna. “She would deal with the mayhem, you know?” fects. The end result cost a reported $5 with a riding crop. “S&M is a game,” have been 100 percent dead,” says Bar- million, making it her priciest clip since says Mondino. “It’s dark, it looks dark, ron. “I never told her that night because contributors: Bilge Ebiri, Maura Johnston, Jason Newman and Christopher R. Weingarten “Express Yourself.” but I think people have fun.” I didn’t want to scare her.”

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