The world’s biggest ever selling video single
Wanting….needing….waiting…
Madonna’s Justify My Love was a worldwide smash hit in late 1990 reaching No.1 in the US and No.2 in the UK.
The lead off single from The Immaculate Collection, her first collection of hit singles, was always going to be a big deal, but who could possibly have imagined the sauce-a-thon Mads had in store for us with that song?
Well, after that summer’s Blond Ambition Tour, most of us actually, but who predicted the video?!
In classic Madonna style… when the Jean-Baptiste Mondino video was innocently sent out to music TV stations to air on this little innocent looking tape…even the heads of MTV, the channel for a new generation remember, found it too hot to air and a classic Madonna furore erupted. Heh. Good old Mads
Ever the one to spot a marketing ploy when she saw one – her next move was to create the world’s biggest ever selling video single!
Variously released in saucy looking porn-style cheap casings giving little indication of the supposed filth contained within, the video hit the shelves in record time and sent the video buying public into a frenzy of Maddy-sauce shopping! The Aussie video, deemed its ‘sexual allusions’ for Mature audiences only, the Canadian issue which artified the classic Patrick Demarchelier photo with a lovely purple tint, and the US issue with the era-defining ‘Parently Advisory’ WARNING logo (maybe it was a warning that you may end up sprawled over Tony Ward? Wise words… )
The UK, in an untypically brash move, went one better and they slapped it in a proper sleeve, with a plastic case and added the phenomenally popular MTV Awards performance of Vogue!
The video proved iconic and the real blast off for Madonna’s ‘sex-mad’ period and even led to an hilarious parody on Wayne’s World where Wayne and Garth re-enacted the video and even met Madonna in a dream…
In the words of Camille Paglia – the video is pornographic, it’s decadent…and it’s fabulous!
Thanks to Tony from London.
Scans by MadonnaTribe.