This led to many believing it was dedicated to Pope John Paul II, but it was actually dedicated to her brother, Christopher Ciccone, who had spent the year on tour with Madonna on the Blond Ambition World Tour and whose nickname is "The Pope". According to Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic, the album "captured the time when Madonna was the defining figure of American pop culture. The Immaculate Collection received universal acclaim from critics, who deemed it a defining retrospective of 1980s music. With sales of over 30 million copies worldwide this is the best selling compilation album by a solo artist.

The Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) certified it quadruple platinum for shipment of 800,000 copies. On October 13, 1990, Billboard magazine confirmed that Madonna had been working on new material for the album with Shep Pettibone and Lenny Kravitz. As an indication of just how many big hits Madonna had accumulated at this point, there was no place for the Who’s That Girl single or True Blue despite the fact that both songs reached number one in the UK ( Pop Quiz: Has any other act left ever left two number ones off their first greatest hits?To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. In France, the album reached number four on the chart and was certified diamond by the Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique (SNEP). remixes of fifteen of her hit singles from 1983 to 1990, as well as the tracks 'Justify My Love' and 'Rescue Me'.

After Billboard overturned the rule preventing older albums to chart on the Billboard 200 in November 2009, [64] The Immaculate Collection has made multiple re-entries on the chart, with the latest being its 148th week on September 10, 2016. Its title is a loose pun on the Immaculate Conception, the conception of the Virgin Mary without the stain of original sin (Madonna was raised as a Roman Catholic). Somebody worked really hard on this one—not only a beautiful presentation of this brilliant collection on colour vinyl, but a really gorgeous, careful mastering (they fixed all the sibilance heard on other cuts). Across Europe, the album reached number one in Finland and Ireland, while peaking at number three on the pancontinental European Top 100 Albums chart.

showing] the Queen of Pop's progression from bubblegum-pop diva to the risk-taking, rule-breaking icon she went on to become in the 1990s.