Madonna’s 1990 smash hit “Vogue” was inspired by the dance of the same name and helped make the Queen of Pop a gay icon. Voguing was popular in New York’s underground gay club scene, but Madonna brought it mainstream. Dancers would use hand gestures and make poses emulating their favorite Hollywood stars and cover models.

In late 1989, Madonna was looking to add a b-side to her Like a Prayer single “Keep It Together.” She teamed up with producer Shep Pettibone—who had remixed a number of her songs previously—but they only had a $5,000 budget. Pettibone recalled making the song in an interview with Billboard:

She had the choruses together, and the verses together…That’s how she writes. She’s fast. It’s just like, give her an idea or a direction to go.

Madonna told Rolling Stone in 2009:

I wrote it when I was making Dick Tracy. After we shot the movie, [then-boyfriend] Warren Beatty asked me if I could write a song that would fit my character’s point of view, that she could have conjured up. She was obsessed with speakeasies and movie stars and things like that. The idea for the lyrics came through that request.

In 1990, Pettibone told EW:

We were just after a fun club record. But when the record company bigwigs heard it, they said, ‘This is a No. 1 smash record. Let’s not put it on a B-side and lose it.‘"

When “Vogue” was released, it hit #1 in 30 different countries which made it Madonna’s biggest song ever at the time. It was the best-selling​ single of 1990—having sold over two million copies in the US alone.