Material Girl

This was written by the songwriters Peter Brown and Robert Rans. The song is about a woman who craves the finer things in life and will manipulate men to get them. Like A Virgin was only Madonna's second album, and she was still developing her image. Much to her dismay, "Material Girl" became her nickname, but over the next few years she was able to dissociate from the song and establish many new looks. Later in her career, Madonna wrote and recorded many more substantive and personal songs, and adapted a lifestyle that stressed harmony and mindfulness over materialism and excess. This is apparent in her 2003 song "American Life."

The video re-creates a classic scene from the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, with Madonna as the Marilyn Monroe character. MTV played the video constantly, which associated Madonna closely with the song. Fortunately for her, "Like A Virgin" was an even bigger hit, and after she performed that song on the MTV Video Music Awards she became much more identified with that one.

Mary Lambert, who worked on most of Madonna's early videos, directed the clip, but Keith Carradine portrayed the director in the video (this "film within a film" concept was an early MTV staple, first seen in the Human League video for "Don't You Want Me"). He is the son of actor John Carradine and half-brother of David, but despite his pedigree, this video may have been his biggest role. He did have a hit song called "I'm Easy" in 1976.