1984: A song called Holiday jets into the Top 10 for the very first time – but certainly not the last. Madonna’s debut hit and signature song has been a Top 10 hit THREE times.

Can you remember a time before Madonna?

If you can’t, and only know her as the global superstar she is now, there’s every chance you won’t know just how exciting, different and interesting this ragtag American singer with a kind of squeaky voice seemed when her ditty about skiving off work entered the Top 10 this week in 1984.

Sassy solo female singers were nothing new, of course and another young American lady named Cyndi Lauper was enjoying her first Top 10 hit with Girls Just Want To Have Fun a little further up the chart, but Madonna seemed to have something special from the start.
Brutally honest and funny in interviews, her music was unashamedly poppy and devoted to having a good time and Holiday, now one of her most famous songs, perfectly encapsulated Madonna’s whole ethos: “Awww, just have a day off, it’ll be fine”.

Watch Madonna perform Holiday on Top Of The Pops before we tell the story of her very first feelgood smash. The guy dancing to the left of her with the impressive sweatpatches is her brother Christopher.

Holiday had been in the Top 40 for three weeks before it finally clambered into the Top 10. It seemed odd that this happy, carefree record hadn’t been released in the height of summer and when it peaked at Number 6, Madonna obviously decided that wasn’t good enough – it was rereleased 18 months later covered in suntan lotion and in the height of Madonnamania, this time making it all the way to Number 2.


Borderline would get another shot at the Top 10 in 1986, when it zoomed up to Number 2, coming at the end of a blitz of Madonna chart entries – eight within a year.
She would have to wait until August 1985 for her first Number 1, Into The Groove. For one week, Holiday sat right behind it in Number 2. There’d be another 12 chart-toppers to come, but we’ll be talking about those later…