The accompanying music video was directed by Mary Lambert, and showed Madonna sailing down the canals of Venice in a gondola, as well as roaming around a castle wearing a white wedding dress.

"Like a Virgin" was written by Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly;[1] the former had just begun a new relationship after a long rough period, and came up with the lyrics one day while driving a pickup truck around his father's vineyards in the Coachella Valley.

[2] Steinberg went on to reveal in an interview for the Los Angeles Times that the song was not written with a female singer in mind; it was inspired by how he coped with the difficult situation after ending a previous relationship.

[3] In a 2009 interview with Rolling Stone, the singer was asked by Austin Scaggs what were her first impressions after listening to the demos of "Like a Virgin" and "Material Girl"; she replied, I liked them both because they were ironic and provocative at the same time but also unlike me.

[10] Rikky Rooksby wrote in The Complete Guide to the Music of Madonna (2004) that the bassline on the intro is a re-working of the three-note bass motif present in the Four Tops' "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)" (1965), where Chuck Berry provided the chord arrangement.

[40] After six weeks on the chart, "Like a Virgin" reached the Hot 100's top spot on December 22, tying Prince's "When Doves Cry" as the fastest-rising number one single of the year.

[56] "Like a Virgin" proved to be a success across Europe as well, peaking within the top ten of the charts of Austria,[57] Belgium,[57] France,[16] Germany,[17] Ireland,[58] Netherlands,[59][60] Norway and Switzerland.

[22] Georges-Claude Guilbert, in Madonna as Postmodern Myth (2015), highlighted the "games with carnival masks, men, lions and 'werelions', [and] allusions to eighteenth-century practices", adding that it was an "extremely sexy" clip.

[71] Author Michael Campbell concluded that with the video, Madonna created "the formula that would set the tone for her subsequent work: combine provocative, shocking and controversial themes and images with bright, accessible music".

[83] Author Margaret Plant noted the expression of Venetian vitality in the video, writing that "old sacrosanct Venice was propelled into a pop world of high-energy gyration, and endless circulation".

"[86] On September 14, 1984, Madonna opened the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards ceremony with "Like a Virgin"; she initially wanted to perform with a full-grown Bengal tiger, but this idea was quickly nixed.

[87] MTV's Jessie Peterson opined that the performance put Madonna "on the map as Queen of Pop Music", and established the VMAs as "the place where water-cooler moments happen".

[91] Similarly, Tom Breihan pointed out that many of the performers and presenters were already established figures: Rod Stewart, Huey Lewis And The News, and David Bowie among others, yet, "all anyone remembers is Madonna singing 'Like A Virgin' in public for the very first time".

On the first one, Madonna once again wore a white wedding dress and asked the audience if they wanted to marry her; she would then thrust her hips at their affirmative response, and sang a few lines from "Billie Jean".

Halfway through, she bent over to revel a pair of lace panties, which she then threw into the crowd, and sang a fragment of "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)".

[110] Greg Kot from the Chicago Tribune singled out the performance for being "both seductive and hilarious", while Richard Harrington said it was the concert's "only clear miscalculation, probably meant to shock, but [was] only distressing".

[116] The song's performance on the Girlie Show (1993) took place in a Berlin cabaret setting; Madonna sang in a heavy German accent, pronouncing the word "Virgin" as "Wurgin", dressed in a look similar to that of Marlene Dietrich in the 1930 film Morocco, consisting of top hat and tails.

[120] In April 2003, while promoting her ninth studio album American Life, Madonna did an impromptu acoustic rendition of "Like a Virgin" at New York's Tower Records.

Sal Cinquemani opined that "[Madonna] rarely shares the stage with other stars, and for it to be Britney and Christina [...] was nothing short of surreal";[122] according to Glamour's Christopher Rosa, it was an "important moment in our nation's history", that "spawned an entire generation of gay men".

[123] On the Confessions Tour, Madonna, dressed in a "dominatrix equestrian" outfit, sang "Like a Virgin" on top of a black saddle as the backdrops flashed X-ray radiographies of the injuries she suffered on a horse-riding accident.

[130] For the MDNA Tour of 2012, Madonna reworked "Like a Virgin" into a "gothic waltz", which she sang in bra and panties, backed by a piano player wearing a top hat.

[133] For The Kansas City Star, Timothy Finn compared the rendition to the work of Leonard Cohen;[131] according to Scott Marvis from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's, the number saw Madonna singing in "her most seductive vocal".

[134] The performance of the song at the November 19–20, 2012 shows in Miami, at the American Airlines Arena, were recorded and released in the singer's fourth live album, MDNA World Tour (2013).

[135] A remix of the song with a "pulsing industrial beat" was created by French producer Denis Zabee, and performed by the singer on her Rebel Heart Tour (2015―2016);[136][137] Madonna danced alone on the stage, doing moves similar to Michael Jackson's and, at one point, opened her blouse to show off her lingerie and cleavage.

[143] The number, which depicted silhouettes of Madonna and Jackson dancing with each other, was criticized by the Washington Blade's Kevin Naff: "[It] screamed 'He's the King of Pop and I'm the Queen' — it felt thirsty and superfluous".

[156][157] In 2014, Cristina Scuccia, a nun who won that year's The Voice of Italy season, released a ballad rendition of the song as her debut single;[158] Madonna herself praised Succia.

[166] A sing-along of the track was performed by the titular character (Renée Zellweger) and a group of prostitutes at a Thailand jail in the 2004 film Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason;[167] four years later, in "The Becoming", the fourteenth episode of the fourth season of American medical drama Grey's Anatomy, Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) hums the song while she removes the hearts of 50 cadavers.

[169] In "The Power of Madonna" (2010), fifteenth episode of American television series Glee, "Like a Virgin" was sung by three couples played by Jonathan Groff, Jayma Mays, Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, Matthew Morrison, and Naya Rivera;[170] the performance was praised by Entertainment Weekly's Tim Stack, who hailed it as "one of the more ambitious numbers of the night".

[198] A similar opinion was shared by Jude Rogers from The Guardian, who claimed that until Madonna emerged, "the V-word" wasn't used by female singers "unless they were singing Christmas carols".

[199] Out's Nathan Smith gave a detailed analysis: From a contextual perspective, another appeal of 'Like A Virgin' was the way it reconstituted sex in mainstream music within discourses of religion and innocence.