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Madonna, 63, is known for her risqué stunts. To this day, she continues to either flash the audience at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon or "bare too much" at the 2021 MTV VMAs. So when she flashed the audience at the 1984 VMAs, everyone thought it was just one of her crazy antics. It's even considered as one of the most iconic performances in the entire VMA history.
However, the Queen of Pop didn't do that on purpose. It may be hard to believe but it was all an accident. It may not be as bad as the time she got yanked off the stage and injured her knee, leading to the cancellation of her Madame X tour. But it still almost ended her career. Here's what really happened back there.
The Now Iconic 1984 VMA Performance
When Madonna flashed the audience at the 1984 VMA stage, she was performing her second album's lead single, Like a Virgin. With the song sustaining a "fevered dance-rock momentum" according to Billboard at that time, there was a lot of pressure on the singer's first live performance of the track.
But she was up for the challenge. She appeared on stage, coming from the top of a giant wedding cake. She was dressed in her signature rugged wedding dress and veil, plus a "Boy Toy" belt buckle.
Not long after she made her entrance, she began to do some humping and rolling while singing her song, even showing her butt at some point. At that time, it was a huge scandal. "I was right there. I saw it happening. I saw what [MTV] did, and I can tell you that they tried to destroy her that day," Madonna's stylist Maripol told Yahoo Entertainment. "They went under her skirt with the camera; they were trying to intimidate her."
Still, the whole thing was actually a breakthrough for Madonna. Critics called it "one of the most important and most unforgettable VMA performances ever." Maripol also recalled the impact of that performance on the media at that time. "Madonna had to break through; I knew she was going to make it big, because I could see how ambitious she was, in a very genuine and sweet way. The wedding outfit did help. I knew that [VMAs] day that she had made it," she said.
"Every journalist was rushing, running, going, 'Oh my God, who is this girl with the white outfit rolling and crawling on the floor, with crosses in her ears and her name is Madonna? And she's singing about being like a virgin?' They were shocked, yes."
The Real Reason Madonna Flashed The Audience
In an interview with Howard Stern in 2015, Madonna revealed that she didn't mean to flash the audience at the 1984 VMAs. "When I did Like a Virgin — when I performed it live for the first time — actually my shoe fell off on stage," said the Material Girl hitmaker. "I'd come down the wedding cake and my shoe fell off. I was like 'Oh sh-- I can't dance in one shoe.'"
She continued: "I was like 'How am I gonna play this out?' So I just dove for it on the ground and when I dove for it, my dress went up and my butt was showing. Everyone's showing their butt now but back then, nobody saw anyone's butt and I didn't know my skirt was up." Madonna added that she was genuinely trying to keep the show going and was not thinking of shocking people at all.
"After I got off stage during that performance, my manager was white as a ghost," the singer recalled. "And he looked at me, he said, 'Do you know what you just did?' And I said, 'Yeah I sang a song and I lost my shoe on stage.' And he's like, 'No, your butt was showing for the entire song. Your career is over.'"
When asked whether she believed what her manager had said, Madonna said she "felt really bad but I didn't do it on purpose." Stern then asked: "But does a panic set in — 'I'm gonna lose everything, I'm trying so hard here, I didn't mean to be controversial'?" But Madonna said she's just "not like that."
"I wasn't that apologetic," she explained. "I was just like f--k it, I made a mistake ... I think when that [controversy] happens to you year after year, decade after decade at this point, it's just noise. At this point, it's noise. People just like to give me s--t." And like she recently told Jimmy Fallon: "Artists are here to disturb the peace."