In his review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine commented, "Overall, the album adds up to less than the sum of its parts—partially because the singles are so good, but also because on the first album, she stunned with style and a certain joy.

Hugo Mistry from the Chicago Tribune felt that " Like a Virgin was Madonna's breakthrough, playing off her self-conscious campiness with a series of hot dance tracks, attention-grabbing lyrics and steamy videos.William McKeen, author of Rock and roll is here to stay: an anthology, felt that the image was another trigger and testament to the fact that Madonna was the last word on fashion for women and young girls of that era, the epitome of cool. The album was present for a total of 74 weeks on the chart, and was certified diamond by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), for shipment of one million copies of the album. Fouz-Hernández, Santiago; Jarman-Ivens, Freya (2004), Madonna's Drowned Worlds, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. It's hard to convey nowadays what a whirlwind erupted at the time on the arrival of Madonna and this album. The mimicked scenes are interspersed with scenes of a Hollywood producer trying to win the heart of an actress, played by Madonna herself.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) later certified it diamond for shipment of ten million units. It became her first number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100, while reaching the top of the charts in Australia, Canada and Japan and the top-ten of other countries.In the edit page, go to the 'Metadata' tab and add your Juno artist, label or release page for listeners to purchase your release / releases. The album reached the top ten of the Billboard 200 on December 8, 1984, [87] and after one month reached the top of the chart on February 9, 1985, where it stayed for three weeks. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. It was eventually certified ten times platinum (diamond) by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), for shipment of ten million copies of the album.