Like A Virgin (song) - Cover Versions

Cover Versions

In 1985 The Lords of the New Church recorded "Like a Virgin" for their compilation album Killer Lords. Gary Hill from Allmusic called the composition as "very funny and obnoxious". The same year, "Weird Al" Yankovic parodied the song with his single "Like a Surgeon" from the album Dare to Be Stupid. Eugene Chadbourne from Allmusic commented: "Turning the tacky Madonna hit inside out and upside down, Yankovic comes up with a hilarious satire of the medical profession." In 1991 Glaswegian band Teenage Fanclub covered "Like a Virgin" on their second album, The King. The song also appears on the soundtrack of the 2001 film Moulin Rouge! and is sung by the characters Harold Zidler, played by Jim Broadbent, and The Duke of Monroth, played by Richard Roxburgh. In 2004 The Meat Purveyors covered the song in a bluegrass medley, pairing it with Madonna's "Lucky Star" and "Burning Up."

In the opening scene of the 1992 film Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino (as Mr. Brown) was shown talking about the song, and has an insight that "Like a Virgin" is a "metaphor for big dicks". When Madonna met Quentin Tarantino at a party, after the film was released, she gave him an autographed copy of her Erotica album, signing "Quentin: it's about love, not dick". In the 2004 film Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, the title character teaches the song to women in a Thai prison, after becoming annoyed that they are singing the song badly. She tells them, "Madonna is nothing if not a perfectionist!" In one of the episodes of the TV show Grey's Anatomy, the character of Cristina Yang hums the song during surgery to take the focus off herself. However, when her assisting surgery, Lexie Grey starts singing along, Christina looks venomously at her until she quiets down. The song was covered in the 2010 Glee episode "The Power of Madonna" by the cast, including Jonathan Groff, Jayma Mays, Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, Matthew Morrison, and Naya Rivera, during a dream sequence by their characters. The same year, Elton John performed a cover version of "Like a Virgin" at the Rainforest Fund Benefit Concert. On September 9, 2011, Vanessa Carlton posted a link to a snippet of her stripped-down cover of the song in her Twitter account. In 2012 Korean girl group 2NE1 released a cover of the song for their debut Japanese album Collection. On April 29, 2012, JoJo performed a cover version of "Like a Virgin" at the LACMA for the Harvard Westlake Charity.

In 2009, the song was namechecked in the Train hit single Hey, Soul Sister with the lyric I believe in you/Like a virgin you're Madonna/And I'm always gonna wanna blow your mind