The Immaculate Collection (CD - 1990)

Producers include: Madonna, Stephen Bray, Lenny Kravitz, John "Jellybean" Benitez, Nile Rodgers.

On the surface, the single-disc hits compilation The Immaculate Collection appears to be a definitive retrospective of Madonna's heyday in the '80s. After all, it features 17 of Madonna's greatest hits, from "Holiday" and "Like a Virgin" to "Like a Prayer" and "Vogue." However, looks can be deceiving. It's true that The Immaculate Collection contains the bulk of Madonna's hits, but there are several big hits that aren't present, including "Angel," "Dress You Up," "True Blue," "Who's That Girl," and "Causing a Commotion." The songs that are included are frequently altered. Everything on the collection is remastered in Q-sound, which gives an exaggerated sense of stereo separation that often distorts the original intent of the recordings. Furthermore, several songs are faster than their original versions and some are faded out earlier than either their single or album versions, while others are segued together. In other words, while all the hits are present, they're simply not in their correct versions. Nevertheless, The Immaculate Collection remains a necessary purchase, because it captures everything Madonna is about and it proves that she was one of the finest singles artists of the '80s. Until the original single versions are compiled on another album, The Immaculate Collection is the closest thing to a definitive retrospective. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

If any artist exploited MTV and music video to its full extent, it was Madonna. Duran Duran may have been the first video stars, but Madonna was savvy enough to redefine her image with each video, not just each album. All of her major videos between 1983 and 1990 (with the exception of her first, "Burnin' Up," and "Justify My Love," which was one of the new tracks on the greatest-hits The Immaculate Collection) are included on the video edition of Immaculate. Images from the videos -- the gondolas of "Like a Virgin," the Marilyn Monroe homage of "Material Girl," the faux-Blade Runner "Express Yourself," the taboo-shattering "Like a Prayer," the sleek, stylish "Vogue" -- have not only become part of pop music history, but of pop culture, and that becomes apparent after watching this collection. It's truly astounding to watch the videos back to back, as it confirms that Madonna always knew where she was going, visually and musically. The singles were benchmarks of pop music in the '80s, and if anything, the videos are even more important. This is what mainstream pop was all about in the '80s. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

If you're only going to get one Madonna record, or if you want to find out what the fuss is about, start here. THE IMMACULATE COLLECTION compiles the cream of Madonna's '80s singles, from the dancefloor innocence of "Holiday" to the soul-searching pop of "Live To Tell" and "Like A Prayer" to the forward-looking, beat-crazy stylings of "Vogue." Included are a few singles, "Vogue" among them, that didn't make it onto any of Madonna's proper studio albums, and a couple of cuts exclusive to the collection, most notably the weird, Lenny Kravitz-produced "Justify My Love."

Though there are a few ballads, the vibe is dance-pop, and to that end most of THE IMMACULATE COLLECTION was remixed by Shep Pettibone, Madonna's producer of choice at the time. Most of the mixes are true to the original singles, just buffed up a bit, while "Like A Prayer" gets a kind of Latin disco overhaul. For a summation of '80s pop, you can hardly do better. Seven of these songs hit numbr one and 13 of them made the top ten. And still Madonna was able to leave off several major hits, a measure of how picky she could afford to be. IMMACULATE indeed. minimize