Madonna's 'Ovidian Allegories of Sex'

James Miller, a professor at the University of Western Ontario (go, Mustangs!), agrees with commenter Sadie that the wilderness metaphor at the beginning of "Like a Virgin" is awesome:

We should imagine the speaker of the lyrics to be a worldly-wise, sexually jaded City Woman who's imagining what it would be like to return to the blissful pastoral state of virginal innocence. Notice the little allegory of the journey signifying the fantasized transition from sexual innocence to experience back to virginal bliss, newness, freshness. This is an allegory of sex that goes back to the Roman poet Ovid.

This, of course, is crap. Intellectually rigorous social scientist that I am, I reached a kneejerk conclusion that the lyric was just a ham-fisted (and thematically bizarre) metaphor for a rough period in one's life, and then set out to find evidence tailored to my theory. The similarly rigorous Wikipedia immediately delivered. Read it and weep:

Their breakthrough occurred in 1985 with the song "Like a Virgin." Steinberg later recalled writing the lyric in 1983 following a failed relationship, and recalled that he had genuinely felt that he'd "made it through the wilderness" and that he was "beat, incomplete".

Score one for the Tim! (Please note that I consider the debate open on whether it's an effective pop lyric.)

Professor Miller does apparently give some bitchin' tests, though:

ANOTHER TIP: You will be required to answer questions relating to the erotic cultures of ALL the cities

Mustangs, indeed!