11 August 2022
Madonna was warned her career was “over” when she accidentally flashed her butt on stage.
Madonna was warned her career would be over
The 63-year-old singer was one of the performers at the very first MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) in 1984 when she caused a sensation when her dress flipped up and she flashed her backside while singing ‘Like a Virgin’, and though the wardrobe malfunction was accidental, her management team were convinced the brief flashing of flesh would spark enough outrage to ensure she’d never work again.
Speaking to Jimmy Fallon on ‘The Tonight Show’, she said: “I did that show and I walked down the very steep stairs of the wedding cake and I got to the bottom and I started dancing around in my white stiletto pumps fell off.
“And I was trying to do this smooth move like, dive for the shoe and look like it was choreography. And my dress flipped up and my butt was showing. Can you imagine?
“Those were the days when you shouldn’t show your butt to have a career. Now it’s the opposite.
“It happened by accident and when I didn’t even know my butt was showing. It wasn’t even like the whole butt it was just like a butt cheek, like half a butt cheek.
“Yeah, when I went backstage, my manager told me my career is over with.”
The ‘Beautiful Stranger’ singer also recalled how much it “blew [her] mind” when she saw people dancing to her music for the first time at a club called Danceteria.
She said: “I want to tell you when I finally got this guy, Mark Kamins, to play my cassette, it’s a song called ‘Everybody’.
“It’s on his record and I swear to god, I had to promise everything to him to get it played. And when he played it, everybody got up and started dancing to it and it blew my mind I mean, seriously, like that was everything to me.”
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