Chart rewind: in 1990, madonna was in ‘vogue’ atop the hot 100

One of Madonna’s biggest hits, her 1990 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 dance anthem “Vogue,” had surprisingly humble beginnings. “The whole thing was done on a shoestring budget,” Shep Pettibone,

the track’s co-writer and producer, told _Billboard_ in 2015. Allotted just $5,000 by Warner Bros. (now Warner) Records to create what was initially slated as a B-side, he finished the song

in three weeks, recording the then-31-year-old pop star’s vocals in a “basement on West 56th Street” in New York, where, he said, a closet had been converted into a vocal booth. [embedded

content] The song starts with suspense-building synths before kicking into “Philly Salsoul”-style house music, and its lyrics and sumptuous black-and-white video — directed by future Academy

Award nominee David Fincher (_Gone Girl_, _The Social Network_) — celebrate voguing, a style of dance popularized in New York’s mostly gay ballroom club scene in the 1980s that mimics

fashion-shoot poses. Released as an A-side, “Vogue” topped the Hot 100 dated May 19, 1990. Madonna and Pettibone also collaborated on the singer’s 1992 No. 1 ballad, “This Used to Be My

Playground,” and the _Erotica_ album, but Pettibone left the music business in the late ’90s. In June 2019, Madonna released her latest album, _Madame X_, which arrived as her ninth No. 1 on

the Billboard 200. In 2022, “Vogue” appeared on the diva’s retrospective album _Finally Enough Love_, which debuted in the top 10 on the Billboard 200, making Madonna the first woman with

new top 10s on the chart in every decade from the 1980s through the 2020s. _A version of this article first appeared in the May 23, 2015, issue of _Billboard_ magazine._