Jim Farber from "Entertainment Weekly" said that "In addition to raising the Madonna/whore ante with songs like the title cut, "Virgin" cradled the kind of '80s hits ("Dress You Up") built to transcend the Dynasty era." Alfred Soto from Stylus Magazine remembered the first time that he heard the songs from the album and commented, "Lots of critics think something similar occurred when Madonna followed her eponymous debut with "Like a Virgin", helmed by Nile Rodgers with all the fixin's—too calculated next to the 'raw passion' of the debut. This is nonsense; it misses how Madonna conflated notions of spontaneity and calculation. Rodgers is the ideal collaborator." Stephen Holden from "The New York Times" said: "With a tough-cookie voice that's both coy and streetwise, Madonna's singing harks back to the rock-and-roll "girl-group" tradition that preceded the Beatles. But where girl groups, from the Shirelles to the Ronettes, worshipfully extolled their boyfriends' cars, haircuts and rebel poses, Madonna's point of view is decidedly more self-interested. In matters of love, she is a comparison shopper with a shrewd sense of her own market value. The words 'shiny and new' describe not only the way the love-smitten singer feels in the title song but the sound of the album."