What makes a song a classic? The short answer is longevity. Pop-centric multigenre artist Ronnue has taken Madonna’s classic track “Like A Virgin” and brought it to 2025. He’s also paid homage to its 80s roots but even with that he did it the only way he knows how, his own way.
Ronnue is an artist and a student of the constantly expanding musical canon. As he watched a selection of 80s music videos, a sequence of Madonna videos began and naturally, “Like A Virgin” was one of them. The inspiration hit him almost instantly as he began to imagine how the timeless hit would sound if it was reimagined for the current musical landscape.
“I’ve always thought Madonna was dope. As I watched, I thought it would be dope to do a flip on the song.” he said.
Ronnue has several remakes and reimaginings in his discography, with each one available as an EP on streaming services. Listeners can treat themselves to acapella and instrumental versions and in the case of “Like A Virgin” an 80s remake too.
Originally, the remake Ronnue and his co-producer, multinstrumentalist Roc Phizzle made was quite close to the trademark production of the 80s the song came from. This was going to be put out first but Ronnue had a reconsideration.
“I said ‘let’s slow it down completely and put our own music on it.’ So we decided the second version we made would actually come out first since it was so unique.” he said.
The stripped back pop production on this lead version is what Ronnue saw as a reflection of the current pop landscape, with minimalism being the key to the track. While his love for iconic pop artists like Michael Jackson, Prince, Whitney Houston and of course Madonna is still strong, he knows that a very different approach is taken to pop music in 2025.
“We started with the bass line. Then I said we needed some chords to separate the verses from the chorus and I was satisfied with that. Roc Phizzle wanted to add more because he can play the drums, keyboard, bass and guitar and he’s a musical genius. But I told him our goal was to make it simple like modern music is so that’s what we did.” he said.
Ronnue’s remake of “Like A Virgin” released with an accompanying music video which he directed and edited. He knew he didn’t want to just copy the original one so he took his own approach that pulled from a different source, the movie of the year, Sinners.
“I wanted to give the video a vampire stalker treatment. In the final shot of the video, originally I wanted to have fangs, similar to how Michael Jackson had yellow eyes in Thriller.” he said.
The video was released through Nue Avenues Entertainment, Ronnue’s record company. His goal with this is to expand it into a label and sign artists of all kinds with a focus on revitalizing the girl groups and boy bands scene.
Critics have affectionately said when Ronnue remakes a song it becomes “Ronnueified” because he takes something people are familiar with and puts his own spin on it. With a love for all kinds of music, the remakes and original music in his discography cover a variety of genres. Ronnue’s goal is to not be defined by one genre and continue to expand the power of multigenre artists and music.
“For me, putting a song together is like putting a puzzle together. You put in one piece at a time and at the end you look at it like ‘Wow, what a dope puzzle.’ Whatever I’m feeling at the moment is gonna dictate the direction of my music. If you listen to my discography, you’ll see that each project is different from the last one. If you want to know what’s going on in my life, just turn on my music.” he said.
Ronnue’s Like A Virgin (All the Mixes) EP is available on streaming services now and you can watch the music video for “Like A Virgin” here.
You can see more of Ronnue’s Ronnueified work by keeping up with him on the following platforms.
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