Everybody (Madonna Song) - Background and Release

Background and Release

In 1982, the 24 year old Madonna was living in New York and trying to set up her music career. She was joined by her boyfriend from Detroit, Steve Bray, who became the drummer of her band, The Breakfast Club, which generally played hard-rock music. After that, however, they abandoned playing songs in the hard-rock genre and got signed by a music management company called Gotham Records with the plan of pursuing a new musical direction. They decided to pursue the funk genre but the record company was not happy with their musical abilities, hence they were dropped, and Madonna and Bray left the band. Meanwhile, Madonna had written and developed some songs on her own. She carried rough tapes of three of the songs, namely "Everybody", "Ain't No Big Deal" and "Burning Up". At that time, she frequented the Danceteria nightclub in New York. It was there that Madonna convinced the DJ Mark Kamins to play "Everybody" for the crowd, and the song received a positive reaction. Kamins offered to get Madonna a record deal with the understanding that he would produce the single. He took her to his boss, Chris Blackwell, who owned Island Records, but he declined to sign Madonna. This rejection led Madonna to Sire Records in 1982. Michael Rosenblatt, who worked at the artists and repertoire department of Sire, commented that,

"Madonna is great. She will do anything to be a star, and that's exactly what I look for in an artist: total co-operation... With Madonna, I knew I had someone hot and co-operative, so I planned to build her career with singles, rather than just put an album right away and run the risk of disaster."

Rosenblatt offered Madonna $5,000 in advance plus $10,000 in royalties for each song she wrote. Madonna was ultimately signed for two 12 inch singles by the President of Sire, Seymour Stein, who was impressed by her singing, after listening to "Everybody" at a hospital in Lenox Hill where he was admitted. The 12 inch version of "Everybody" was produced by Mark Kamins at Bob Blank's Blank Tapes Studio in NYC. Kamins was romantically involved with Madonna at that time. He took over the production work from Steve Bray. The new recording ran 5:56 on one side and 9:23 for the dub version on the flipside. Madonna and Kamins had to record the single at their own cost. Arthur Baker, friend of Mark Kamins, guided him through the role of a music producer and provided him with studio musician Fred Zarr who performed his keyboard wizardry on the track. Zarr became one of the common musical threads on the album by eventually performing on every track. Due to the restrained budget, the recording was a hefty affair as Madonna could not understand Kamins' directions and Kamins himself faced problems directing. Hence the A-side "Ain't No Big Deal" did not become as successful as everyone expected. Rosenblatt wanted to release "Everybody" with "Ain't No Big Deal" on the other side, but later changed his mind and put "Everybody" on both sides of the vinyl record after hearing the recorded version of "Ain't No Big Deal". The single was commercially released in October, 1982.