NEWSMadonna's Manager Said Her Career Was 'Over' After Iconic MTV Performance
Aug. 11 2022, Published 4:51 p.m. ET
Despite its status as an iconic pop culture moment, Madonna recently revealed that her manager was initially less-than-thrilled with her “Like A Virgin” performance at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards.
During her Wednesday appearance on The Tonight Show, the 63-year-old artist told host Jimmy Fallon that her manager said her career was “over” after she experienced a wardrobe malfunction in her now-famous white dress.
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“I walked down these very steep stairs of the wedding cake and I got to the bottom,” the “Material Girl” songstress explained of her famous performance. “I started dancing around and my white stiletto pumps fell off.”
While the star said she initially tried to play off the footwear mishap as an intentional choice, attempting to “dive for the shoe and look like it was choreography,” it seems her efforts at smoothing over the “accident” managed to make matters worse.
“My dress flipped up and my butt was showing,” she recalled. “Can you imagine?”
Madonna shared that although she “didn’t even know my butt was showing” during her time on stage, she seemingly learned of her inadvertently bold display moments later during a post-performance run-in with her manager.
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"Yeah, when I went backstage, my manager told me my career was over with,” she recalled. “Those were the days when you shouldn’t show your butt to have a career. Now it’s the opposite.”
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But it seems her manager's fears were largely unfounded. “Like A Virgin” marked Madonna’s first of 12 number-one songs on the Billboard Hot 100 before earning a gold certification from the RIAA the following January.
Beyond the song’s success, Madonna’s accompanying MTV performance has remained a legendary moment in pop culture, even earning the third spot on the New York Times’ list of “60 Times” the star “Changed Our Culture.”
“If Madonna has been perpetually unapologetic (see: “Human Nature,” “Unapologetic B***h”), it is partly because she ignited so much controversy at the beginning of her career by barely striking a match,” Jacob Bernstein, the outlet’s Styles desk reporter, wrote of Madonna’s MTV moment back in 2018. “Basically, she wore a wedding dress, while singing about the joys of sex, on a song called 'Like a Virgin.'”
