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The Who's That Girl/You Can Dance Era


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The discography to Madonna’s first worldwide remix album â€˜You Can Dance’ has just been added by MadonnaUnderground!

You Can Dance was Madonna’s first full length (worldwide) non-stop remix album with an added bonus of a brand new song ‘Spotlight’ which was released as a single in Japan only.

They have collected 36 different pressings of this release, including this very rare Japanese advance promotional cassette!

 

View @ http://madonnaunderground.com/you-can-dance-madonnas-1st-full-length-worldwide-remix-album-discography-online-now-36-different-pressings/

 

04-YCD-Japan-Promo-Cassette-front_resize

 

Vinyl

 

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Who’s That Girl UK Sales Presenter

http://madonnaunderground.com/whos-that-girl-uk-sales-presenter-added/

 

This UK sales presenter is a dummy 12″ record sleeve that opens and contains two detailed press sheets. The Warner Bros New Release Schedule contains the catalogue numbers, release date, tracklisting and upcoming promotional campaign details. 

 

wtgsalespresenter.jpg

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It’s that Girl!

http://www.madonnatribe.com/decade/2013/its-that-girl-2/

BY MT2013 · MARCH 12, 2013

 

Sire UK were so pleased with how well Madonna‘s first series of sell-out stadium concerts in their country had gone they decided to celebrate the fact by pressing up a mini-greatest hits collection for promotion of just how wonderful the Material Girl was. An order was sent over to the normal German pressing plant at Alsdorf to press up a batch of videos and cassettes limited strictly to 500 each to be given out to press and those involved in the tour as a lovely reminder of Madonna’s amazing run of success. The compilation of Madonna’s finest single moments up until that point was ingeniously entitled ‘It’s That Girl‘ although one look at the Herb Ritts image used for the cover made the answer to the question of who the girl was pretty redundant – in 1987 everyone knew who that girl was!

 

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The compilation featured each of Madonna’s non-Geffen hits to date – Holiday, Lucky Star, Like A Virgin, Material Girl, Into The Groove, Angel, Dress You Up, Borderline, Live To Tell, Papa Don’t Preach, True Blue, Open Your Heart, La Isla Bonita and recent No.1 smash Who’s That Girl.

 

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The cassette contained the relevant edits and single remixes appropriate to their the 7″ single version featured on the single, giving listeners a much more familiar audio experience to what they were used to hearing on the radio than if it had been the album versions. Plus, with all the singles, bar Crazy For You and Gambler, present – it proved a far more comprehensive celebration of Madonna’s single output than ‘The Immaculate Collection‘ would eventually fail to do three years later. For the more nerdy out there, the edit of ‘Borderline‘ contained on the cassette is actually unique, although the differences are so small you’d be forgiven for not noticing!

 

The video remains the source of super-excitement for collectors though as it was the first official video to feature the rarely seen clip for the ‘Angel‘ single and also the Top Of The Pops appearance recorded to promote ‘Holiday‘ back on the 26th January 1984.

 

Apart from a subsequent promotional only compilation created in 1990 and the super super rare 1-track videos sent out to promote the songs at the time, this video is the only place where the videos for ‘Into The Groove’, ‘Angel’, ‘Dress You Up’, ‘Live To Tell’, ‘True Blue‘ and ‘Who’s That Girl‘ have been made available. The lack of the Geffen singles and the early flop Everybody is a major loss in terms of completeness of her UK release schedule, but they are a far better resume of Madonna’s 80s career history than anything made available in the shops!

 

For that – we should all thank Sire UK with a big sloppy kiss!

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YOU CAN DANCE

 

Mitsubishi commercial featuring Spotlight:

 

 

 

·Taraborrelli, Randy J. (2002). Madonna: An Intimate BiographySimon & SchusterISBN 978-1-4165-8346-2  p. 129

·Rooksby, Rikky (2004). The Complete Guide to the Music of Madonna. Omnibus PressISBN 0-7119-9883-3  p. 26; p. 27; p. 28

·Morton, Andrew (2002). MadonnaMacmillan PublishersISBN 0-312-98310-7 p. 37

·Bego, Mark (2000). Madonna: Blonde Ambition. Cooper Square Press. ISBN 0-8154-1051-4 p. 86

 

On January 20 1988, Madonna’s You Can Dance remix album was certified platinum in the USA for sales of 1,000,000 copies.

 

"Remixing is a form of secondary creativity. Dance music elevates the DJ and the mixer to being almost on a level with the musician. In my opinion this is false. Manipulation of pre-recorded sound sources may be creative in a secondary sense, and may be valid in its own field, but it is pseudo musicianship. That's why we tried to have a fresh approach to the songs for You Can Dance, as if we were developing and composing them for the first time.

—Patrick Leonard talking about working on the album.

 

Mixing was an interpretative process, where the artist was usually involved, but the development was generally looked after the record producer. The different parts of a song, including the lead vocals, background vocals, guitars, bass, synths, drum machine—all went through the process of mixing to sound considerably different from their original counterpart. Mixing determined how loud these instruments were going to sound in relation to each other and what particular sound effects should be added to each instrument. Improvements in studio technologies meant the possibility of shaping the sound of a song in any way, after it has been recorded. The arrangements were itself created at the mixing stage, rather than being created previously. A particular vocal phrase could be endlessly copied, repeated, chopped up, transposed up and down in pitch and give them more echo, reverberation, treble or bass.

 

It was this concept which intrigued Madonna, while she was developing True Blue (1986) album.

She said, "I hate it when people do master mixes of my records. 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. But the fans like it, and really, this one was for the fans, for the kids in the clubs who wanted to hear these songs in a fresh new way." 

 

She went to Warner with the idea of releasing her songs by remixing them in a complete dance tune. From Warner's point of view, the rise of remix was a commercial boon, because it meant making more money out of the same piece of music. Instead of paying Madonna to go to studio and record different tracks, they found that allowing her to record the same tracks in different formats was much less costly. Hence they decided to release the album, but gave full freedom to Madonna to choose the producers with whom she wanted to develop the remixes.

 

In November 1987, Warner Bros. Records commissioned the release of Madonna's first retrospective â€œYou Can Danceâ€â€”—which was aimed at the dance segment of her audience.

 

The album was to contain 7 Madonna's songs in remixed format, a revolutionary concept in the 1980s.

 

Madonna turned to her old friend and producer Jellybean to help her remixing the songs, and also enlisted the help of Pat Leonard, the producer of True Blue. Together they chose six of Madonna's old songs and decided to give it a remixed form. The songs chosen were "Holiday", "Everybodyâ€, "Physical Attraction", "Into the Groove", "Over and Over", "Where's the Party" and a new song called "Spotlight". Madonna said that she was inspired by the song "Everybody is a Star" (1970), by American rock band Sky and the Family Stone. Written by Madonna, Steve Bray and Curtis Hudson, "Spotlight" was originally recorded during the True Blue recording sessions. It was omitted from the album because Madonna felt that it was similar in composition and structure to "Holiday".

 

In a 2012 interview with blogcritics.com writer Justin Kantor, Curtis Hudson recalled the circumstances surrounding the creation and release of Spotlight:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/justin-kantor/2012/02/01/songwriters-of-madonnas-holiday-curtis-hudsonlisa-stevens-1

 

“During the time right after Holiday, when we’d go to her place and write, I presented Spotlight. I gave her a complete song, Spotlight. I had actually written it in case Warner Bros. asked her for another Holiday. She said she loved it and felt spiritual about it. But she didn’t use it or contact me again about it. It sort of popped up out of nowhere when she was getting ready to do You Can Dance. Her lawyer contacted our manager and said we needed to talk. We went over and met with him. She and Stephen Bray had already done the song; but I hadn’t even heard the version they had done.They took the demo I had given her and worked it into a different song. They gave me credit since I had the original song copyrighted. I would’ve collaborated and made changes. But I was told, ‘Well, she’s too busy. She’s overseas doing a movie.’ I was okay with it, though, because they gave me credit. But the original song had a certain magic, and the changes took that essence away. The original Spotlight was another Holiday—the rhythm, the basic groove. I think they were trying to get away from that sound. Sometimes artists don’t want their sound to be identified with specific writers.â€

 

After the remixing of the songs started, Jellybean noted, "We decided on basic questions like 'How loud should the drums be? How much should the vocals stand out?' These are creative decisions which will change the finished piece of music." Shep Pettibone, one of the producers of the album commented that "normally, without some music to work on, the remixer has nothing. But we already had Madonna's catalogue of danceable songs which was enough material for lifetime." The mixes on You Can Dance exhibited a number of typical mixing techniques. Instrumental passages were lengthened to increase the time for dancing, which undermined the tighter structure of the original pop song. Vocal phrases were repeated and subjected to multiple echoes, panned across the stereophonic sound outlets. At certain points, almost no music is heard except the drums and at others, the drums are removed with only the hi-hat left to keep time.

 

The album cover denoted Madonna's continued fascination with Spanish culture and fashion. She wore a female toreador outfit with a lacy bustier, embroidered bolero jacket and a cummerbund with a flouncy bustle.

Jeri Heiden, who had worked on the cover art for True Blue, was given the task of editing the photos and making them compatible for appearance in an album cover.

http://www.madonnatribe.com/idol/jeri.htm

http://www.smogdesign.com/

 

Shot by Herb Ritts, the cover showed Madonna again as a platinum blond. Heiden explained in an interview with Aperture magazine in October 2006 that the cover was not meant to be a tie-in with the True Blue cover. "It was just Madonna's look at the time â€“ Platinum Blond. And of course the handwriting reappears on that album."  The album sleeve included a free poster and the gold wrap-around liner notes contained approximate running time to indicate the difference between the length of the remix and the original track.

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-us/auction-catalogues/isa-auctionata-auktionen-ag/catalogue-id-srauctionat10063/lot-fb968b82-4a5f-4aa5-a0be-a46b012742b0

 

Brian Chin, a Rolling Stone journalist, wrote the liner notes for the album, explaining the process of remix and why the seven songs were chosen for the track list.

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On January 23 1988, Madonna’s You Can Dance remix album hit #14 (and peaked) on the Billboard 200 chart.

 

Here is Stephen Thomas Erlewine’s review (from AllMusic.com) of You Can Dance:

http://www.allmusic.com/album/you-can-dance-mw0000197952

 

Released in 1987 as a stopgap, the remix album You Can Dance reworks material from Madonna’s first three albums. Actually, it keeps the spotlight on her first record, adding non-LP singles like “Into the Groove†for good measure, along with a bonus track of “Where’s the Party.†Since it’s a dance album, it doesn’t matter that “Holiday†and “Into the Groove†are here twice, once each in dub versions, because the essential grooves and music are quite different in each incarnation. It is true that some of this now sounds dated — these are quite clearly extended mixes from the mid-’80s — but that’s part of its charm, and it all holds together quite well. Not essential, but fun.

 

 

On April 25 1988, Spotlight was released as a single by Warner-Pioneer. Issued exclusively in Japan, it was the only commercial single release from the remix album You Can Dance. The song was written by Curtis Hudson, Madonna and Stephen Bray and was produced by Stephen Bray. Madonna wasn’t given a co-producer’s credit on the track – odd considering it was a leftover from the True Blue album sessions, for which she co-produced every song. The track was remixed by John “Jellybean†Benitez for its inclusion on You Can Dance.

 

 

UK Collectables and Variations

http://www.madonna-decade.co.uk/you-can-dance.html

 

After a dearth of official collectables with both the soundtrack to 'Who's That Girl' and 'True Blue', finally there was a limited edition UK release for the early bird collector which came in the form of a poster edition in a stickered sleeve. 

An alternative limited edition poster edition was also made available and it would appear at least some of these came with Irish-pressed labels.  However, the record shown here comes with its own alternate label design which is the standard German label but with the distinctive Irish indentation.  Another oddity to note with this poster edition is the USA origin of the poster itself.  Unlike the UK poster edition, which has a '1987 Sire Records Company' credit in the bottom left hand corner, this version has '1987 Sire Records Company. Made in U.S.A.  For promotional use only.  Not for sale.' credit.  It would appear that a batch of US promo posters were shipped (to Ireland?) for this purpose.

 
Collectors should note that the UK version is also the same poster that was issued with the 12" limited edition of 'The Look Of Love'.  For ease of reference, see also the 'PROMO' tab where both poster versions are shown together. 

For the first time it was clear that vinyl was falling out of favour as both the cassette and CD versions - both cheaper to produce - were given the boost of coming with additional, and in some cases exclusive, dub remixes.  See 'Track Listing' below for further information.  For the collector, the cassette does come in two versions due to an alternative credit 'Brampton Music' / 'Fresh Air Music' credit on track 4.  While the era of different plastic top-up cassettes had ended, there is a miss-pressed blank version of the cassette to look out for.  

The CD only comes as one standard version although some of them did come with a booklet promoting other WEA releases across Europe at that time.

  
'You Can Dance' also had a marketing reissue which saw an additional black sticker applied to all three formats.  While the circular sticker applied to the LP was plentiful, the two rectangular versions applied to the cassette and CD formats respectively are surprisingly scarce.

  
The LP format was given a further marketing reissue in 1988 after Madonna was nominated for 'Best International Solo Artist' whereby it appeared with an additional blue 'nominee' sticker while the CD was reissued in 1990 with an additional '7599' prefix to the catalogue number.

The most interesting item for the collector is a so-called promotional picture disc and this is discussed further in the Promo section. While the provenance of the disc is not certain, what is certain is that it is very limited and by far the most collectable item for this release. As if for comparison, a 'genuine' bootleg copy duly appeared with the regular versions of the tracks and a very badly over-saturated image of Madonna.  

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