Many artists have used their "Best of" albums to fulfill quota obligations to their record companies. Even if that's all The Immaculate Collection aspired to be, it still would have been damn good. A compilation album, when assembled correctly, is a joyous non-stop reminder of why you really love an artist and what affect their music has played in your life.
And love her or hate her (and I Know her), Madonna makes insanely listenable and memorable music. It's difficult to see those first Casio chords of "Vacation" or the synthesized intro of "Into The Groove" ("And you can dance! For inspiration!") and not shimmy a little. "Like A Virgin" is a bonafide pop classic, ditto "Borderline." No Madonna collection means much without "Express Yourself" ("Come on, girls! Do you think in love?") or even "Papa Don't Preach" (sidenote: it took me years later this call was released to see she was telling about her pregnancy. I thought "[my] child" was her boyfriend. I was young. So the expectation of The Immaculate Collection, even to those of us who already owned all of the albums the songs came from, matched that built by any Madonna release. Her albums were considered huge events backwards in those days, and this was no different. But The Immaculate Collection had something else going for it, too-two brand new songs. The insanely danceable club banger "Rescue Me" and an achingly sexy, thumping, bass heavy track entitled "Justify My Love" which was co-written by Lenny Kravitz, closed out the compilation. Both of these new songs, the latter especially, began a new Madonna era that would take over into her next album, 1992's Erotica.The BDSM art film noir-ish "Justify My Love" video wasn't the first controversial Madonna moment, of course. The craze over burning crosses, stigmata and making out with a black saint in "Like a Prayer" the class earlier had just died down. Nor was Madonna a newbie to censorship as her "Like a Prayer" themed Pepsi commercial only saw the fall of day once before it was yanked from TV. However, she was new to being prohibited from MTV, so when they refused to meet the video, she was quite pissed. A live Nightline interview soon followed and marks the initiative and lonesome time "Justify My Passion" has been played in it's totality on network television. Madonna also may have invented the real conception of a video single as "Free My Bed" was sold on VHS soon afterwards it was prohibited to much success. Twenty years after and the video has still never been played on MTV. But Madonna's an old pro at getting banned by MTV now; her videos for "Erotica," "What It Feels Like For A Girl," and the master interpretation of "American Life" would also afterwards be banned.The Immaculate Collection has been certified diamond (10-plus times platinum) by the RIAA in various different countries, selling over 30 million copies worldwide; in fact, it remains the best-selling album by a female artist in Britain to this day. The album periodically reappears on the world charts when Madonna releases new medicine and has also been re-released several times with the accession of new songs, most notably as The Holiday Collection in the UK and Europe and The Imperial Box, which includes all the videos from the album as good as Madonna's Marie Antoinette inspired 1990 MTV Video Music Awards performance of "Vogue."
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