By the time Madonna made her album-length debut in 1983, remixes as we think of them today – inventive reimaginings of existing singles to increase their dancefloor potential – would have been familiar to few people who didn’t spend IRL time in New York or Chicago clubs. A remix at the record store back then was more than likely an extended version that added a few extra minutes of music from the studio session or a dub take that removed the vocals and focused on the instruments. Madonna was part of changing that – even if it went against her initial, instinctual urge to control. “I don’t want to hear my songs changed like that. I don’t know that I like it, people screwing with my records. The jury is out on it for me,” she reportedly said of remixes in 1986, per Rikky Rooksby’s 2004 book Madonna: The Complete Guide to Her Music. Even so, as a veteran of the NYC underground club scene, she understood how remixes connected to people in a new way: “But the fans like it,” she continued, “the kids in the club who wanted to hear these songs in a fresh way.” When Shep Pettibone took a bit of liberty on a remix of “True Blue” in 1986, redoing the drums to make them land harder, Madonna liked what she heard and invited him back to work on 1987’s You Can Dance, the first remix album from a major pop star that boasted songs reimagined in meaningful ways.

After that, the Queen of Pop was fully on board with club-ready mixes that tweaked or outright reinvented her studio versions – in some cases (“Keep It Together,” “What It Feels Like for a Girl”) even improving upon the originals. Pop singers, rock bands and rappers all took note, following her lead by tapping remixers to boost their new single, a practice that’s thriving in the streaming era. If you listen to the unabridged version of Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones, you hear not only the story of her increasing comfort level with radically different remixes, but the story of mainstream pop’s slow but steady reliance on DJs and producers from the ‘80s to present day.

Goes without saying, but Madonna was hardly the first artist to bring house music to the charts. Farley “Jackmaster” Funk’s “Love Can’t Turn Around” took Chicago house to the top 10 in the U.K. in 1986, and in early 1987, Steve “Silk” Hurley’s “Jack Your Body” topped the U.K. singles chart. But despite coming out of America, it took house longer to find real estate on the Billboard Hot 100 – and Madonna was a big part of giving it a lease. Alongside Shep Pettibone, Madonna brought the cascading pianos and rushing rhythmic thumps of “Love Can’t Turn Around,” the lush, soulful energy of a Mr. Fingers production and the sly wink of queer and trans ballroom culture to “Vogue,” a delicious distillation of the genre in pop form that topped the Hot 100 in May 1990. It cracked open the doors for future house chart classics like Black Box’s “Everybody Everybody,” which went top 10 that October, and C+C Music Factory’s “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now),” which went No. 1 in Feb. 1991. Aside from blazing that trail, it’s also one of the genre’s finest.

Trip-hop – the melancholic, downtempo mixture of hard hip-hop beats and ambient textures – had been percolating for a few years in the U.K. when “Justify My Love” dropped as a one of two new songs on Madonna’s 1990 hits comp The Immaculate Collection. But unless in-the-know Yanks were grooving to Massive Attack’s “Daydreaming” single, which dropped one month earlier in Oct. 1990, it’s unlikely they were ready for “Justify My Love.” Co-produced by Lenny Kravitz and André Betts, it’s an early foray into the percolating sound that – thanks in large part to an immediately banned music video – became the first Hot 100 No. 1 of 1991. Trip-hop pioneers like Portishead and Tricky would soon make Stateside waves, and by 1995, Madonna would collab with genre pioneers Nellee Hooper (“Bedtime Story”) and Massive Attack (“I Want You”).

It’s hard to pinpoint when electronica finally went mainstream in the U.S. Certainly, the squelch of acid house on “Ray of Light” or the cinematic industrial tone of “Frozen” (“She asked me if I could write something that was somewhere between The English Patient and Nine Inch Nails,” recalls co-writer Rick Nowels of that one) would have been familiar to tuned-in ears by 1998. But a major pop star making a full-on electronica album was certainly ahead of the curve when Ray of Light beamed into the world.

Tapping William Orbit (who had previously remixed a couple of her singles), Madonna crafted an exhilarating and introspective LP that demonstrated the emotional depth pop singers could plumb while exploring inorganic textures. Some skeptics accused her of trend-hopping, but Ray of Light undoubtedly helped the genre expand to places where underground raves and ripped mixtapes simply weren’t an option, especially in the pre-streaming era. Rest assured, when songs melding soul-stirring vocals and rollercoaster EDM became chart catnip in the early 2010s, Ray of Light was shining in the background of those singers’ and DJs’ minds.  

Yes, smirk if you must – and perhaps you must. After teaming with Mirwais in 2000 for the juggernaut Music, Madge returned to the Frenchman’s fold for 2003’s American Life. The folktonica collaboration was not as artistically or commercially fruitful, but her maximalist approach to the disparate genre fusion certainly got a lot of people talking – and preceded the commercial viability of similar acoustic/electro pairings by several years. Coincidence or not, just one year after remixing (and improving) Madonna’s “Girl Gone Wild,” Avicii dropped the head-turning “Wake Me Up!,” which became the late Swedish star’s sole top 10 on the Hot 100 — and an undeniable classic.

French DJ/producers were leading the charge on disco revival in the early 2000s, but Madonna teamed with English musician Stuart Price in 2005 to give disco music its proper 21st century revitalization. Taking the genre’s swirling strings, throbbing bass lines and indefatigable energy into the sonic possibilities of the new century, Confessions on a Dance Floor (and its era-defining standout “Hung Up”) went a long way toward biting back against the then-prevalent narrative that disco was a hopelessly dated genre that had deserved its swift demise. More than that, it reminded people how goddamn delightful disco can be when done by those who love it, paving the way for everyone from Pharrell to Mark Ronson to Dua Lipa to keep the flame burning. After “Hung Up,” if you thought disco sucked, chances are you were the one who sucked.

With an uncanny ear for sensing the next big thing in dance, Madonna has catapulted DJs and producers to new realms of success over the course of her four decade-career. She supercharged the careers of genre GOATs Shep Pettibone, William Orbit, Victor Calderone, Mirwais and Stuart Price; worked with a number of producers when they were first breaking (SOPHIE, BloodPop); and helped solidify some of its established talents (Diplo, Honey Dijon) as upper echelon by bringing them into her orbit. Perusing the credits of Finally Enough Love is a who’s who of dance’s biggest, boldest producers of the last four decades – and a testament to Madonna’s knack for finding and boosting talent.