Written and produced by herself and Shep Pettibone , it was inspired by voguing , a dance prominent in the underground New York City gay scene. The song was released as the lead single from the album on March 20, , by Sire Records and Warner Bros. Its middle eight features Madonna name-dropping several actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Upon its release, "Vogue" received positive reviews from music critics, who noted how it was musically different from the rest of the tracks on I'm Breathless ; it was retrospectively seen as one of Madonna's career highlights.
The accompanying black-and-white music video, directed by David Fincher , was shot within 16 hours, while she was rehearsing for her Blond Ambition World Tour. It leans on static iconography, including shots inspired by works by painter Tamara de Lempicka and several Hollywood photographers. The video has been retrospectively regarded by critics as one of Madonna's best. Madonna has performed the song on several of her concert tours β the most recent being the β Celebration Tour β and other occasions, such as the Super Bowl XLVI halftime show.
Writers and critics have noted the video and the song's influence in bringing an underground subculture into mainstream popular culture, as well as the way in which it followed a new trend in which house music enjoyed widespread popularity.
By the end of the s, Madonna had achieved a record-breaking 16 consecutive top-five singles on the US Billboard Hot chart, more than any other act in history. The singer and her record company Warner Bros. The label's head of dance music , Craig Kostich, approached producer Shep Pettibone to record a new track, as he had remixed some of her singles previously. She flew to New York City two weeks later to record her vocals in a vocal booth in a track basement studio at West 56th Street, in a booth that had been converted from a closet, writing most of the lyrics on the plane.
He proposed the idea of a rap to fill the middle eight , and suggested name-dropping classic film stars, so they quickly wrote a list of names and she recorded it immediately.
