On This Day: May 26, 1990 — The Week Women Owned the Entire Billboard Top 5
On the morning of May 26, 1990, radio DJs across America were spinning a chart that had never existed before. Five songs sat at numbers one through five on the Billboard Hot 100. Five songs. All by women. It sounds like a footnote, but in the pop landscape of 1990 — an industry still largely gatekept by male executives, male producers, and the lingering assumption that women were novelty acts — it was a detonation.
Madonna was at the top with “Vogue.” Heart held at number two. Sinéad O’Connor was at three. Wilson Phillips at four. Janet Jackson rounded out the five. For one perfect week, the most commercially dominant real estate in popular music belonged entirely to female artists. It has never happened before. It has never happened since.
How “Vogue” Became the Number One Song in America
The story of “Vogue” starts not in a recording studio, but in the underground ballroom scene of 1980s New York. Madonna had been frequenting clubs like the Sound Factory and the Tunnel, watching as gay Black and Latino men invented an art form — voguing, a dance style that blended runway posturing with athletic floor work. It was gorgeous and fierce and almost entirely invisible to mainstream culture.
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Madonna brought it to the world. Producer Shep Pettibone was handed just $5,000 by Warner Bros. to make what was initially supposed to be a B-side. He finished the backing track in under two weeks. The song was originally slated as filler for the I’m Breathless soundtrack album, tied to Madonna’s role as Breathless Mahoney in Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy. Nobody expected it to become her biggest hit to date.
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The Retro Almanac
A monthly roundup of "on this day" highlights from that month, decades back — plus first dibs on new retro merch drops. No spam, just the good stuff.
