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.