35 Years Ago, Madonna Justified Her Love

Doors and Eyes were Opened

While there have always been musical genres, it seems like pop music covered a much wider spectrum when I was in high school than I hear on the radio today. In 1990, I bought new albums by Public Enemy (Fear of a Black Planet), Megadeth (Rust in Peace), Depeche Mode (Violator), Sinead O’Connor (I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got), Jane’s Addiction (Ritual De Lo Habitual), and Slayer (Seasons in the Abyss), all of which were being played either on the radio or MTV.

The number one song the first week of January, 1991, was Madonna’s “Justify My Love”. It was, to seventeen-year-old me, like listening to porn on the radio. Okay, maybe not hardcore porn, but softcore, cable-friendly porn.

I certainly was no prude when it came to music. Before I was a teen I’d heard Motley Crue’s “Ten Seconds to Love” (a song about having a “quickie” in an elevator) and Prince’s infamous “Darling Nikki”. By the time I was in middle school everyone had copies of 2 Live Crew albums and by high school we were all listening to gangster rap. The big difference was, none of those songs were being played on the radio.

Madonna herself was no stranger to controversy. If you look up “awkward” in the dictionary you’re liable to see a picture of me sitting in the floor of our living room watching the MTV Music Awards with my parents in the room as Madonna writhed around on the ground in a wedding dress singing “Like a Virgin”. In one of her videos she played a stripper in a peep show booth and in another she had a black Jesus on a crucifix come to life. Controversy was kind of her thing.

Right around the time I turned sixteen, people began putting gigantic stereo systems in their cars. Suddenly it was more important to have a loud car than a fast one. For kids like me on a limited budget there was only so much that could be done. My next door neighbor had a stereo so loud in his Nissan pickup that you could feel it in your chest. The used speakers I purchased from the flea market were so weak they barely rattled the box they were installed in. Everyone with a custom stereo had “that” song that sounded great in their car. In an era ruled by the 808 kick drum, “My Posse’s on Broadway” was a popular choice. Toward the end of 1990, another popular choice began Madonna’s “Justify My Love.”

Back then, it was uncommon for a hit single to not have a hit video. Songs like C&C Music Factory’s “Everybody Dance Now”, Vanilla Ice’s “Ice, Ice Baby” and Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” were getting played once an hour on MTV… and yet here was this song by Madonna that wasn’t being played on MTV because it was “too sexual.”

Madonna is not only known for being controversial, but knowing how to capitalize on it as well.

Not long after MTV announced the video was banned, VHS copies were being sold in stores. Madonna sold more than a million copies of the tape and it wouldn’t surprise me if MTV didn’t get a cut of the sales.

While the original controvery involved the video’s content, the real controversy came later regarding songwriting credits. The spoken word portion of the song is actually a poem written by Ingrid Chavez, which was given to Madonna by Lenny Kravitz. When Madonna and Kravitz received songwriting credit and Chavez didn’t, she sued and was awarded both a settlement and songwriting credit. Justify your sources.

The song came and went pretty quickly on pop radio — it’s not really a song you can sing along to and once the kink factor wore off, people moved on pretty quickly. Once it fell off the charts I didn’t hear it again for two years… and then, I heard it every night for months.

In 1993 I got a job at a local pizza restaurant that had the first CD-playing jukebox I had ever seen. If I remember right the jukebox held 40 CDs, most of which were either greatest hits or compilation discs. Along with a couple of “best of the 70s” and “best of the 80s” CDs the jukebox had The Cars’ Greatest Hits, Duran Duran’s Greatest Hits, and Madonna’s Immaculate Collection, her greatest hits album. And yeah, along with “Like a Virgin”, “Lucky Star”, “Borderline” and all her other hits, buried down there at the bottom was “Justify My Love.”

You may not have known that single was on that CD, but every teenager who came into our restaurant did. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was the most popular song played on that jukebox. It didn’t help matters that our jukebox had two subwoofers in the bottom. Every time the song came on you could hear the “whomp whomp” of the subwoofers kick in moments before Madonna began whispering, parents began uncomfortably wiggling in their seats, and teens began giggling and snickering. This wasn’t something that happened once a week. This happened multiple times a night until, after a few months, our manager complained to the guy who came ‘round to collect the quarters out of the jukebox and eventually he collected the CD out of it, too.

“Justify My Love” is probably more culturally important than I give it credit for. My graduating class consisted of 365 kids, none of which openly identified as gay. I don’t think MTV (and I know parents in the Midwest) were ready for a video containing whips and people wearing leather masks. Looking back, even if 99% of us were a bit shellshocked by the video, I’m sure there were a few people out there who saw a little bit of themselves on the screen. If the worst thing that came from taking alternative sexuality out of the closet and putting it in people’s living rooms was a few blushing parents, I can live with that.