0093624790129. Pre-Owned: Good condition. CD. Madonna had hits with her first album even reaching the Top 10 twice with Borderline and Lucky Star but she didn t become a superstar an icon until her second album Like a Virgin. She saw the opening for this kind of explosion and seized it bringing in former Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers in as a producer to help her expand her sound and then carefully constructed her image as an ironic ferociously sexy Boy Toy; the Steven Meisel-shot cover capturing her as a buxom bride with a Boy Toy belt buckle on the front and dressing after a night of passion was as key to her reinvention as the music itself. Yet there s no discounting the best songs on the record the moments when her grand concepts are married to music that transcends the mere classification of dance-pop. These of course are Material Girl and Like a Virgin the two songs that made her an icon and the two songs that remain definitive statements. They overshadow the rest of the record not just because they are a perfect match of theme and sound but because the rest of the album vacillates wildly in terms of quality. The other two singles Angel and Dress You Up are excellent standard-issue dance-pop and there are other moments that work well ( Over and Over Stay the earnest cover of Rose Royce s Love Don t Live Here ) but overall it adds up to less than the sum of its parts -- partially because the singles are so good but also because on the first album she stunned with style and a certain joy. Here the calculation is apparent and while that s part of Madonna s essence -- even something that makes her fun -- it throws the record s balance off a little too much for it to be consistent even if it justifiably made her a star. [The 2001 reissue cuts Into the Groove (which was pasted onto the original CD release anyway) but adds remixes of the title track and Material Girl ] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine Rovi