A Pop Music Feature
The Queen of Pop’s second Greatest Hits collection endeavored to make as indelible a mark as its “immaculate” predecessor Volume 2 delivered a bolder new direction and the artist’s determination to break any expectations.
Madonna’s first greatest hits package, the 3x gone Platinum The Immaculate Collection was something of a trendsetter in the music industry, much like the artist herself. Corporeally it assembled Madonna’s most distinctive chart-toppers defining her early career including “Holiday”, “Lucky Star”, and “Like a Virgin” (to name a few), driving into undoubtedly her greatest career hit “Vogue” and landed on delivering two all-new provocative tracks “Justify My Love” and “Rescue Me” which perfectly closed a chapter. The Immaculate Collection inevitably paved the way for what was to come next as Madonna continued to defy expectations.
The 17-track Immaculate Collection was released in 1990, and though it would be paired five years later with a perfectly packaged setlist of her most cherished ballads with the release of Something to Remember, fans wouldn’t get a proper second “greatest hits” setlist until after the start of the new millennium. By 2001 Madonna emerged less as a “Material Girl” and more as the “Mercurial Girl”. She had explored the dark corners of underground house music as she entered into the 90s (while pushing buttons with the release of the “SEX” book), realized a dream come true, and starred in the big-screen adaptation of Evita adding Golden Globe-winner and motherhood to her most coveted achievements.
The accolades continued as Madonna expanded personally in her spirituality, influencing her musicality, and fearlessly turned to more electronic-based sounds while fusing organic instrumentation with all-new collaborators. The Immaculate Collection exemplified her work up to the 90s; now it was time to look forward and into the future. GHV2 is the second volume of her most popular chart hits from the “next” decade, and it couldn’t be more divergent from its predecessor. The setlist is elegantly eclectic chronicling the hits from Erotica, Madonna’s post-“Vogue” dance opus, through Music, and including soundtrack hits from Evita as well.
Madonna selected 15 tracks to complete the package. GHV2 was released after the artist closed her 2001 “Drowned World” Tour, who admittedly was exhausted after the tour, and her criteria for selection was based on which of her hits she could listen to five times straight. Although she had wanted to include the remake of “American Pie” on this greatest hits album, a record exec urged instead that the track be included in the 2000 album Music, which did not appeal to Madonna, who didn’t think it “fit” on that album. Also, GHV2 did not benefit from its predecessor’s inclusion of any new songs, perhaps more intently denoting a new decade in a still-evolving career.
GHV2 wouldn’t match the phenomenal success of The Immaculate Collection, but it still became one of the highest-selling CDs of 2001.
Get your “FansEyeView of Madonna’s “Deeper and Deeper” video in HD here and the opening track on GHV2:
GHV2 | by Madonna | is available on most Digital Download stores including iTunes. Download from iTunes here.
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