“When I'm 90, I'll still be the Material Girl!”: Madonna’s signature song was released 40 years ago today

It wasn’t just a hit record. It was the song that gave Madonna a nickname.

Material Girl was released as a single on 23 January 1985 - 40 years ago to the day. But while this is one of her best-known and best-loved songs, Madonna has mixed feelings about it.

In a 1986 interview with Company magazine, she stated: "I'm very career-oriented. You are attracted to people who are ambitious that way, too, like in the song Material Girl. You are attracted to men who have material things because that's what pays the rents and buys you furs. That's the security. That lasts longer than emotions.”

But many years later her perspective was very different.

“I can't completely disdain the song and the video, because they certainly were important to my career,” she said. “But talk about the media hanging on a phrase and misinterpreting the damn thing as well. I didn't write that song, you know, and the video was about how the girl rejected diamonds and money. But God forbid irony should be understood. So when I'm 90, I'll still be the Material Girl.”

The song was in fact written by two men, Peter Brown and Robert Rans. Brown had previously had success as a singer with the 1977 disco hit Do Ya Wanna Get Funky With Me, co-written with Rans. With more than a million sales, Do Ya Wanna Get Funky With Me was reportedly the first 12-inch single to achieve gold status in the US.

Madonna had written most of the tracks on her self-titled debut album, including the hit Lucky Star. For her second album she had written material with drummer Stephen Bray, her ex-boyfriend.

But as she recalled in a 2009 interview with Rolling Stone, she heard something special in demo recordings of Material Girl and another song named Like A Virgin, co-written by Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg.

"I liked them both because they were ironic and provocative at the same time but also unlike me,” she said. “I am not a materialistic person, and I certainly wasn't a virgin, and, by the way, how can you be like a virgin? I liked the play on words, I thought they were clever. They're so geeky, they're cool.”

Madonna chose Like A Virgin as the title for the album. She also chose Nile Rodgers as her producer.

Having made his reputation as guitarist, songwriter and producer for disco superstars Chic, Rodgers had also enjoyed huge success producing hits for Diana Ross and David Bowie.

During the recording of Madonna’s album at New York’s Power Station studios in the summer of 1984, Rodgers was certain that Material Girl should be the lead single.

As he told Q magazine: “I thought Material Girl was the best song to lead with. Madonna was convinced it was Like A Virgin. But I was like, ‘Material Girl's ten times better!’”

Madonna had final say. Like A Virgin was the first single. And her instincts proved right when it became her first US No.1 at the end of 1984.

Material Girl almost repeated the trick, hitting No.2 in the US and also making the top five in the UK, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Ireland and Japan.

Madonna - Material Girl (Official Video) [HD] - YouTube

Watch On

The video for Material Girl, directed by Mary Lambert, was inspired by Marilyn Monroe’s performance of the song Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend in the 1953 movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

And it was on the set of this video that Madonna met actor Sean Penn, whom she would marry in the summer of ’85 - on her birthday, 16 August.