464 Hello Madonna - Holiday

Chart  entered  : 14  January  1984

Chart  peak : 6  ( 2  on  re-release  in  1985, 5  on  re-issue  in  1991 )

Number  of  hits : 70

This  feels  like  another  landmark  as  we  reach  someone  who  has  never  really  lost  her  iron  grip  on  the  singles  chart. Between  this  debut  and  2010  there  was  only  one  year-2007-  when  she  didn't  have  something  on  the  chart  and  she's  scored  hits  off  the  two  albums  she's  had  out  since  then.

Madonna  Ciccone  was  born  in  Michigan  in  1958  but  moved  to  New  York  in  1977  to  further  a  career  in  dance. She  worked  as  a  waitress  as  well  as  performing  in  modern  dance  troupes  to  support  herself.  She  also  did  a  nude  photoshoot  in  1979  with  photographer  Lee  Friedlander  as  a  particularly  hirsute  brunette. Friedlander  is  a  respected  artist  but  he  wasn't  above  selling  the  pictures  to  Playboy  in  1985. She  also  appeared  topless  in  an  independent  film  A  Certain  Sacrifice  which  is  badly  filmed, almost  incomprehensible  and  would  be  just  mouldering  in  someone's  attic  were  it  not  for  her  subsequent  fame.

  In  1979  her  musical  career  began  when  she  came  through  an  audition  to  be  a  dancer  and  backing  vocalist  for  French  disco  star  Patrick  Hernandez  who  enjoyed  a  brief  burst  of  fame  with  the  song  "Born  To  Be  Alive"  ( which  I hated ). She  lived  in  Paris  for  a  while  but  didn't  enjoy  her  time  there  and  returned  to  New  York  moving  in  with  a  musician  Dan  Gilroy  that  she  had  met  just  before  setting  off. He  taught  her  to  play  the  drums  and  guitar  and  she  started  writing  songs. In  the  summer  of  1980  they  formed  a  band  The  Breakfast  Club. Though  she  started  out  as  the  drummer she  quickly  found  her  way  to  the  front  of  the  stage. The  odd  demo  has  surfaced  from  this  period  sounding  like  early  Blondie  with  a  very  inferior  singer.

Madonna  wanted  to  strike  out  on  her  own  very  quickly  and  in  the  autumn  of  1980  called  up  her  old  boyfriend  Steve  Bray  to  form  a  new  band  called  Emmy. She  and  Bray  started  writing  some  of  the  songs  that  would  end  up  on  her  first  album. In  1981  she  did  some  backing  vocals  for  German  producer  Otto  Von  Wernherr.  When  she  made  it  big,  Wernherr  used  these  small  scraps  of  songs , inexpertly  sung, on  an  endless  string  of  dance  mixes  with  her  name  and  image  plastered  across  the  sleeves. She  went  to  court  to  stop  him  and  though  he  succeeded  in  fighting  her  off,  nobody  bought  the  records. The  public's  not  that  easily  fooled.

After  a  gig  at  Max's  Kansas  City  in  the  spring  of  1981  Emmy  were  offered  a  recording  contract  but  Madonna  received  an  alternative  offer  from  Camille  Barbone, head  of  a  New  York  recording  studio  to  manage  her  as  a  solo  artist. Madonna  took  the  latter  option  and  allowed  Barbone  to  fire  off  the  band  but  they  soon  clashed  over  musical  direction. Barbone  was  a rock  fan  but  Madonna  thought  disco  was  now  where  the  action  was . In  September  1982  she  walked  out  on  her  contract  with  Barbone  and  started  hustling  her  own  action  at  the  hip  Danceteria  club  , hassling  the  DJs  to  play  her  demo  tape.  It  paid  off . DJ  Mark  Kamins  had  contacts  at  Sire  Records  and  landed  her  a  deal.

Kamins  produced  her  debut  single  "Everybody" a  celebration  of   the  escapism  and   euphoria  of  the  New  York  dance  scene  in  the  synth-heavy   mutant  disco  style  of  Talking  Heads  offshoot  the  Tom  Tom  Club . It's  got  a  decent  tune  but  is  a  bit  tame  rhythmically. Her second  release,  the  unashamedly  sexual   "Burning  Up "  has  a  rockier  edge  to  it  similar  to  Michael  Jackson's  Beat  It  .  

In  September  1983  she  released  her  second  single  in  the  UK  "Lucky  Star" .  It  had   simultaneously  a  poppier  sheen   and  lyric   and  a  harder  electro-funk  backing  track. She  paid  a  short  promotional  visit  to  the  UK  doing  "track  dates"   i.e  lip-synching  at  the  Hacienda  ( Kamins   had  a  mutually  beneficial  relationship  with  the  Factory  team )  and  the  Camden  Palace. The  former  was  not  the  appearance  filmed  by  The  Tube   which  is  often   wrongly claimed  to  be  her  first  British  appearance. The  song  became  her  second  UK  hit  on  re-release  in  1984.

At  the  same  time, "Holiday"  had  been  chosen  as  the  next  single  in  the  US. It  broke  her  in  the  US  reaching  number  16  so  it  was  the  natural  choice  for  the  next  single  in  Britain. She  came  back  to  the  Hacienda  for  another  lip-synching  performance  and  was  rather  disappointed  when  the  audience  threw  bread  rolls  at  her. This  was  the  performance  that  featured  on  The  Tube   which,  no  doubt,  did  help  her   but  the  single  was  already  in  the  Top  20  when  it  was  broadcast.

For  a  record  that's  been  a  Top  10  hit  on   three  separate  occasions  I  still  find  "Holiday"  somewhat  underwhelming.  Kamis  had  become  the  first  of  many  musical  collaborators  to  be  put  aside  in  favour  of  a hotter  talent , in  this  case  a  rival  DJ  John  Jellybean  Benitez. He  brought  her  the  song  which  had  been  written  by  two  members  of  a dance  group  Pure  Energy  and  produced  it  for  her. With  a  synthesized  string  arrangement  and  piano  break  from  Fred  Zarr  and  plenty  of  funk  guitar  it's  more  musically  sophisticated  than  her  previous singles  but  it's  still  a  fairly  straightforward  disco  track  with  an   indifferent  vocal, uninteresting  lyric   and  not  much  of  a  chorus.  She  would  go  on  to  make  much  better  records  than  this.