October 1982: Madonna Releases Debut Single "Everybody"

The Madonna song that started it all.
Photo Credit
album cover/Sire Records

Dance and sing, get up and do your thing: Madonna released her first single "Everybody" on Oct. 6, 1982.

The future pop queen, all of 23 years old at the time, spent most of the year in search of a record deal after brief stints in bands like future hitmakers The Breakfast Club. A mainstay of New York club Danceteria, she eventually put together her first solo demo tracks, including "Everybody," and started shopping them to interested labels.

Eventually she hit pay dirt with record impresario Seymour Stein of Sire Records, who was introduced to the demo in a most unusual place: in a hospital bed, as he recovered from a rare heart condition.

"As penicillin dripped into my heart, I lay there and listened...I’m sure I was going nuts in that little room, but I immediately felt an excitement," Stein wrote in his memoir. "I liked the hook, I liked Madonna’s voice, I liked the feel, and I liked the name Madonna. I liked it all and played it again. I never overanalyze or suck the life out of whatever I instinctively enjoy."

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The final version of "Everybody" was tracked with Danceteria DJ Mark Kamins, who'd sent the demos to Sire, in the producer's chair. A key collaborator was Brooklyn synth player Fred Zarr, hired on the recommendation of Kamins' friend, producer Arthur Baker. Zarr would go on to produce several early hits for Debbie Gibson.

In an effort to attract a diverse audience, the "Everybody" single was released without an image of the singer. Sire A&R representative Michael Rosenblatt told Rolling Stone in 2013, "I didn’t want her picture on the cover of the 'Everybody' single, because I thought I could get a lot of R&B play on that record, because a lot of people thought she was black." Sleeve designer Lou Beach created a collage off the instruction “do a scene of everyday people in the street." (Billboard mistakenly called her "a young New York duo" when they first mentioned her in the magazine's "Dance Trax" column later that month.)

But it was Black radio that gave Madonna the thrill that all singers dream of: her first time hearing herself on the air. "I was living on the Upper West Side, 99th and Riverside," she recounted to Rolling Stone in 2009, "and about 7:00 at night I had the radio on in my bedroom, on WKTU, and I heard 'Everybody'. I said 'Oh, my God, that's me coming out of that box.' It was an amazing feeling."

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"Everybody" reached its peak on January 8, 1983, when it hit #3 on Billboard's dance chart. (Holding at #1 for a second week on that chart: Thompson Twins' "Lies.") It never did reach the Hot 100, though her self-titled debut, issued in July 1983, put three consecutive singles in the Top 40 - the first of many in Madonna's incredible, ongoing career.

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