Madonna - The Immaculate Collection

There are greatest-hits albums, and then there is The Immaculate Collection. Released in November 1990, it gathered the first eight years of Madonna's career into seventeen tracks and became one of the best-selling compilations ever made, moving more than thirty million copies worldwide and functioning for an entire generation as the definitive Madonna record.

The run is close to absurd. "Holiday," "Lucky Star" and "Borderline" from the debut, "Like a Virgin" and "Material Girl" from the album that made her a global phenomenon, "Into the Groove," "Live to Tell," "Papa Don't Preach," "Open Your Heart," "La Isla Bonita," "Like a Prayer," "Express Yourself," "Cherish" — and then "Vogue," which had topped charts worldwide only months earlier. Two new songs close it out: the Lenny Kravitz co-write "Justify My Love," a genuinely provocative number one, and "Rescue Me."

Most tracks appear here in remixed form, using the QSound spatial process that gave the compilation its distinctive wide, enveloping mix — a choice that remains divisive among purists and beloved by everyone who grew up with it.

This is the double-LP reissue on Sire / Warner Records in a gatefold jacket, mastered at Capitol and pressed by Record Industry. The most complete document of Madonna's imperial phase, spread across four sides.