Like A Virgin (song) - Recording and Production

Recording and Production

In mid-1984, Madonna met producer Nile Rodgers at the Power Station studios (now Avatar Studios) in New York. Rodgers initially did not want Madonna to record "Like a Virgin", as he felt that the lyric 'like a virgin' was not a terrific hook; according to him it was not an all-time catch phrase. Madonna dismissed the song after hearing the demo, which she thought sounded "really stupid and retarded". Later, Madonna had second thoughts: "It's weird because I couldn't get it out of my head after I played it, even though I didn't really like it. It sounded really bubble-gummy to me, but it grew on me. I really started to like it, But, my first reaction to it was, 'This is really queer.'"

Rodgers credits Madonna with recognizing the song's potential, he later said: "I handed my apology to Madonna and said, 'you know... if it's so catchy that it stayed in my head for four days, it must be something. So let's do it.'" Hence the song was finally recorded. Steinberg reflected on the recording process and commented that:

When Madonna recorded it, even as our demo faded out, on the fade you could hear Tom saying, "When your heart beats, and you hold me, and you love me..." That was the last thing you heard as our demo faded. Madonna must have listened to it very, very carefully because her record ends with the exact same little ad-libs that our demo did. That rarely happens that someone studies your demo so carefully that they use all that stuff. We were sort of flattered how carefully she followed our demo on that.
It was the perfect union, I knew it from the first day in the studio. The thing between us, man, it was passionate, it was creative. Madonna was sometimes temperamental during the recording, everyone told me she was a terrible ogre, but I thought she was great.

Jason Corsaro, the record's audio engineer, persuaded Rodgers to use digital recording, a new technique at the time which Corsaro believed was going to be the future of recording because test pressings always sounded consistent. To ensure this, Corsaro used a Sony 3324 24-track digital tape recorder and a Sony F1 two-track for the 12-bit mix. Madonna recorded the lead parts in a small, wooden, high-ceilinged piano room at the back of Studio C, also known as Power Station's "R&B room".

Corsaro then placed gobos around her while using the top capsule of a stereo AKG C24 tube microphone, with a Schoeps microphone preamplifier and a Pultec equalizer. Once the track met with everybody's approval, Robert Sabino added the keyboard parts, playing mostly a Sequential Circuits Prophet-5, as well as some Rhodes piano and acoustic piano, while Rodgers also played a Synclavier. Madonna, although not required, was present every minute of the recording sessions and the mixing process, Corsaro commented: "Nile was there most of the time, but she was there all of the time. She never left".