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| Another iconic cover - her second. |
This was the first
Madonna album I bought, on CD, a good while after it came out but - if memory
serves - before You Can Dance was released. "Live To Tell" sold
me on the album, and I still think it's one of the finest singles of the '80s -
Kate Bush caliber stuff. The video is dynamite too,
especially for one of those "film clip" videos of the era. She gives
a better performance here than in most if not all of her movies, somewhat
dressed down as a housewife, rendering the song (by turns heart wrenching and
ominous) even more effective. As the lead single for True Blue in
the late spring of ‘86 it was something of a mindblower - this was not
what we’d come to expect from Madonna - and the moody ballad shockingly made it
all the way to #1. I was not a big fan of ballads, and at first I wasn’t
sure what to make of it, but I quickly grew to love “Live To Tell” and it
ultimately forced me to completely reappraise her and her work. To me,
it’s still one of the greatest ballads of the rock era, with its huge cinematic
landscape dwarfing a frightened, vulnerable, fatalistic performance by Madonna. Work of this caliber doesn’t happen by
accident.
Do not adjust your set. This is simply Madonna doing the most radical thing Madonna could do in 1985: looking normal.
Unfortunately, while I like all of the other hits on the record, nothing on it approaches "Live To Tell" (or indeed "Into The Groove" or probably even "Crazy For You", which I didn't care for all that much as a teen but have grown to love over the years). That having been said, the record is packed with hits, though it suffers from a few misfires as well. Madonna never quite produced that one perfect pop album in the ‘80s - a Thriller, Purple Rain or Faith - but True Blue comes tantalizingly close and sold a whopping 25 million copies, thanks to a trio of chart topping hits, plus a #3 and a #4 hit. If Like A Virgin had made her a superstar, True Blue demonstrated she was going to remain one. Madonna haters must have been apoplectic.
Back then, "Open Your Heart" might have been my second-favorite track, and it's still a great number (nice Harry Nilsson quote there, Madge!) even if it’s extremely ‘80s. Written for Cyndi Lauper (Remember when they were seen as rivals? Yeah, that train was about to come to a crashing halt.), it seemed like it was perfectly directed at husband Sean Penn. These days, I think the album-opener "Papa Don't Preach" might be my second-favorite cut, though. The lyric was controversial, and Madonna received heaps of criticism for being seen as delivering an anti-abortion message. I never read it that way, though. Instead, I saw it as another teenage white trash pop soap opera, in the spirit of Rod Stewart's indelible "Young Turks". I think it was a very savvy move on Madonna’s part, immediately connecting her to a broader teen audience beyond the often well-to-do Madonna clones. And you gotta love that string arrangement, particularly in the intro, and that great walking beat, which the video made effective use of in its opening shots of Madonna.
That video was a fantastic little working class drama in its own right, brilliantly shot in Staten Island and Manhattan, and starring Danny Aiello as her dad and actor Alex McArthur (who’d she’d seen in the lesbian-themed drama Desert Hearts . . . hmmm . . .) as her boyfriend. She gives yet another great performance here, and I’d love to know why she can apparently act in a video but (for the most part) can’t act worth shit in an actual film. Can she only do it for 5 seconds at a time?
They did a great job trying to make her look like a teen, and she did a good job acting like one.
Longtime Madonna associate Stephen Bray - who she’d been working with since her pre-fame days in obscure groups like The Breakfast Club - shared writing and production duties this go around with newcomer Patrick Leonard. Leonard was an unlikely partner, a keyboardist who’d grown up on a steady diet of Jethro Tull, Genesis, and Floyd, but he was perfect for True Blue, nudging Madonna in a far whiter, less R&B direction and further tweaking her sound away from early-’80s synth pop just as that genre was in chart collapse. It was a brilliant move, allowing her to collect a chunk of the audience she hadn’t connected with before without sounding ridiculous or changing styles too much. The record made Leonard a star producer and songwriter as well, and he’d go on to collaborate with Madonna off and on over the next decade.
Unfortunately True Blue can’t maintain its momentum coming out of those first two cuts. “White Heat” goes for more Hollywood retro with samples of Cagney from the film of the same name, but “Material Girl” this thing ain’t. The verse is forgettable and the chorus not much better, while the production makes this a very-annoying ‘80s affair. The subsequent “Live To Tell” is so good, the juxtaposition only serves to make “White Heat” look even lamer.
"Where's The Party" always seemed calculated to me, but I love the "make the party last all night" chant. It's too well-spirited for me to actively dislike, but it never catches fire the way “Into The Groove” did. Still, I was kinda surprised it wasn’t released as a single - radio used to play this album cut on Friday nights, which was unusual for pop radio in the ‘80s, so clearly there was interest and a market. I always thought it odd that something which seemed tailor made as a hit single never got released as one.
"True Blue" is a delightful retro, candy sweet girl group number which Madonna pulls off amazingly well - the bridge is especially well-done. In fact, listening to her catalog today, I'm struck by how well the bridges and transitions are pulled off in most of her work, especially the hits. It's extremely noticeable, and they’re often the highlights of the song. She may not be a great musical talent, but she either knew how to pick incredibly well-constructed pop songs or she wrote/tweaked them into shape amazingly well. Unfortunately for “True Blue”, the video was garbage - easily her worst from this era (looked like a cheap Go-Go's video). That was probably intentional, but it didn’t work.
"Open Your Heart" on the other hand had a very interesting video, Madonna working in some kind of a peep show, except what's really on display here are the sad men watching her. Apart from "Material Girl" I'd not thought very much of her dancing up until this point - it seemed more like exercise, or writhing around on the ground coupled with the occasional pose. On "Open Your Heart" though she's got some killer moves, especially with her arms. She'd also slimmed down a bit, and with that short, almost Annie Lennox-like white blonde hair looked very sleek, powerful and catlike but also - surprisingly - more vulnerable too.
"Open Your Heart" was controversial because of the kid who was in it - presumably her character's son or younger brother, waiting for her to get off work and clearly aping some of her dance moves. It’s an interesting observation regarding where kids' ideas about sexuality come from, and a far more sophisticated statement than videos tended to make. To my eye the most shocking thing about the video though were the numerous references to homosexuality - the butch lesbian watching Madonna dance from one of the cubicles, the ambiguously gay sailor duo pressed together and watching her from their shared cubicle, and of course the boy aping some of her stripper moves. None of these were especially subtle things, they appeared repeatedly throughout the video, and I'm surprised the morality police didn't focus more on them and freak completely out. Maybe they were just too clueless to notice, but I sure did. This was the first time I realized she had to be an ally, and a really savvy one at that. It was a blatantly queer message for a superstar at that level to be sending. We weren’t in Kansas anymore.
Unfortunately, True Blue stumbles as it nears the finish line. "Jimmy Jimmy" feels seriously underwritten and is duller than it should be, given all that energy. I think it's trying to be a '60s throwback like the title cut, but isn't anywhere near as successful. At least I can remember it, though. She debuted album closer "Love Makes The World Go Round" at Live Aid the year before. It didn't change much if at all between then and the release of the album, but like "Jimmy Jimmy" feels half-baked to me, too. I want to like it more than I do. Surprisingly, it was originally intended as the album’s first single - fortunately that didn’t come to pass, because I’m confident it would have stiffed.
Debuting "Love Makes The World Go Round" at Live Aid the summer before. This was right after her old nude photos cropped up, which many assumed would sink her career. Um, nope! "I ain't taking shit off today!" she told the crowd.
True Blue is a great-sounding record. It's high-'80s and certainly has the '80s sound, but it's not ear bleedingly shrill and isn't quite as dry as some other titles from the era. An analog recording done in Dolby SR (or possibly with no noise reduction at all - high speed analog decks by this point were nearly silent), it's about as quiet as any digital recording but maybe not quite as transparent. I can't hear thru the mix on this one quite like I could on Like A Virgin. Of course, it wouldn't surprise me given the time if everything was being run thru some sort of digital processor - a reverb or whatever - at some point along the recording chain. Some of those early digital units had issues, too. The bass is good but not great - you definitely don't get the really deep synth bumps and thuds I heard on Like A Virgin, or the richer bass environment of her debut. This album continues her drift away from early-'80's electronic music, and also from hardcore dance/club music. Maybe she thought "Into The Groove" was enough of that, or that club music was moving in a more pop direction. Her next original record drifted even more towards rock/pop but - thanks to the miracle of the remix - started featuring more prominent club-oriented versions of certain songs. More about that when we get to Like A Prayer I suppose.
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| This was as '50s retro as she ever got. |
Still, none of that stopped True Blue from becoming her first global monster - this is the record where she cemented her status as an international superstar, right up there with Michael Jackson and Prince. It surprisingly wasn't quite as successful as Like A Virgin in the US, but far better positioned her for career longevity there as it showed she could keep up with the times successfully, evolve with her maturing audience, continue to produce top selling pop hits, churn out a stream of eye catching videos that bested all of her rivals', and mount massive global tours. And as '80s pop turned more serious and introspective toward the close of the decade, she surprised just about everybody by proving she could keep in step with those artistic and stylistic shifts as well, ultimately being the only one of the big three of the '80s to survive the next decade with her fortunes - artistic and commercial - (mostly) undiminished.
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