The Number Ones: Madonna’s “Vogue”

The underground — any underground — tends to find peculiar and unintended routes into the spotlight. Madonna was always a creature of New York club culture, and it wasn’t particularly out of character for her to get interested in a particular facet of that culture, which kept evolving after she got famous. But it was pretty weird that Madonna…

‘60 Songs That Explain the ’90s’: Madonna Strikes a Pose

Madonna’d already done enough shocking people for several lifetimes by 1990. What a strange experience, to be a little kid—to be a young, impressionable, but presexual human—in the mid-to-late ’80s, as Madonna ascended to MTV dominance and global megastardom, and to understand that this person was controversial and confrontational and quote-unquote sexy and possibly outright dangerous without quite understanding why. Boy, this…

Vogue’s André Leon Talley Discusses Madonna in New Book

When Anna returned to Vogue in 1988 as EIC, replacing Grace, she named Andre creative director. “There was no higher accolade she could give me, as the masthead portrayed. Anna Wintour made me the highest-ranking black man in the history of fashion journalism,” he writes of a ranking he’d maintain until Edward Enninful‘s promotion to EIC of British Vogue 30…