Betty Boo's Just Doin' the Do

Betty Boo & Madonna. Sire Records/Seymour Stein.

1982

Sire Records set Madonna to be photographed with Peter Cunningham for her first batch of publicity photos in 1982.

Madonna - True Blue (Greek Edition)

With True Blue coming on it's 25th anniversary on June 30th, Madonna Scrapbook reader X-STaTIC PRO=CeSS sent these great photos of the Greek Edition of True Blue! I have never seen it. Fab.

La Isla Bonita 45 Single

Boy Toy

xo

True Blue 45

The True Blue 45 and single artwork.

Ah, the True Blue 45. Mesmerizing. Blue vinyl (!!!) with a b-side of Ain't No Big Deal - originally set as her first single, the song that really got her signed to Sire Records. First properly produced by Mark Kamins then produced by Reggie Lucas for the Madonna album but discarded last minute and then replaced with Holiday. It had been previously released a few years earlier on a rare Warner B-Sides Album called Revenge of the Killer B's prior to the release of Like of Virgin. If you're interested, I posted about it HERE.

Anyway, Ain't No Big Deal got its proper release here on the 45 and the masses got to hear the very Motown sounding song, a perfect companion piece to True Blue - which hearkened the Sixties girl groups. True Blue was the third single off Madonna's True Blue album and written and produced by Madonna and Stephen Bray. This glorious piece of retro sounding pop candy reached number 3 on the US Billboard charts and the top ten around the globe.

Material Girl 45

The Material Girl 45 and single artwork.

Madonna was beyond huge with Like a Virgin and the definite maturity from the first album is obvious but with Material Girl, the second single from Virgin, she entered new territory. It's so hard to separate the song from the video as they were the perfect marriage, but as I try to think back to when I first got the album in November of 1984, there was something about this song that was entirely different. There was an extreme cinematic tone about Material Girl long before the video came around and, interestingly, this is the song that opened the album. It was also a new voice for Madonna. She played a character. Her vocal performance would fit perfectly on I'm Breathless which would come 6 years later.

Nile Rodgers production is tight but I don't doubt that Madonna played a huge role in the Material Girl production. We have the members of Chic playing on this song but even with its strong drums and bass, its disciplined not loose. We can hear elements of the Borderline girl but also some Emmy, in her delivery. Let's not forget her next venture, Into the Groove, was produced by her and Stephen Bray. When she spoke about the first album Madonna, produced by Reggie Lucas, she said she knew more about production than she had thought. Possibly with the second album she still wasn't as confident as a producer and had more to learn but I can hear her touches here. The Like a Virgin album is different to anything Nile had done prior or after.

Although Material Girl has been completely played out, it's a superior and fascinating song, history aside. The little poodle barks she does are wonderful punctuation marks on the songs character.

"Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda" - The Erotica Album.

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Madonna's 5th studio album Erotica. She didn't hit a home run with this one for me. However, don't get me wrong for the songs I love, I love.

The hip hop beats and Middle Eastern vibe under the cold yet sexy vocals of Erotica and Waiting. The hard disco of Deeper and Deeper and Fever. The urgency and hyperactivity of Words. The jazz fused drum 'n bass beats of Secret Garden. The arrangements and emotional vocals of Bad Girl and In This Life. All perfection.

The videos are amazing - from the super 8 vintage look of Erotica to the Hollywood slickness of Mark Romanek's Rain. Bobby Wood's Warholian Deeper and Deeper with original Warhol Superstar Holly Woodlawn and, of course, one of her greatest videos to date - in the purest form of today's extremely overused word - David Fincher's truly 'Epic' Bad Girl .

I know it's many fans favorite album and it could have been be for me, too, had she shaved a few songs off and rearranged the track-listing. Thank God for iTunes. In a perfect world, Erotica would have been released as such:

Erotica
Fever
Words
Waiting
Bad Girl
Deeper and Deeper
Secret Garden
In This Life
Rain

This is the commercial that ran on television for the Erotica album in 1992.

Madonna, Martin Burgoyne, Erica Bell and Bags at Haoui Montaug's No Entiendes Cabaret Performing 'Everybody' for the very first time - 1982.

In early 1985, fans got their first proper Madonna Book - like Culture Club's When Cameras Go Crazy only better because it was Madonna, Lucky Star.

The Lucky Star Book, as my friends and I referred to it, was written by Michael Mckenzie and designed by Martin Burgoyne - it was our Bible. It was the first time we saw Island Magazine!

Full of never before seen pictures taken not only by the books author but Laura Levine, Beth Baptiste, Dan Gilroy, Stephen Jon Lewicki (Bruna!), Marcus Leatherdale, Patrick McMullan, Debroah Feingold, Edo Bertoglio (Maripol's boyfriend) and heaps others. It was the first time fans had read about about Madonna's debut performance of Everybody in detail. It had taken place at the Danceteria at Haoui Montaug's Caberet Show, No Entiendes.

Like reading about the 4 track demo that got her signed to Sire Records, I thought it would never see the light of day. However, a few years ago, Everybody hit the internet.

To make a long story longer, I remember the day I bought my first computer. I got it at Best Buy and it was that very day at that very store that I saw Stephen Bray's Pre-Madonna, the cd that not only had the songs from the 4 track demo but some new ones that I had only read about in Entertainment Weekly. I was more excited about the cd than my computer.

Anyway, here it is. Madonna's very first performance of Everybody at the Danceteria plus scans of details from The Lucky Star Book.

 

The Making of the Like a Prayer Commerical

The 'Like a Virgin' 45.

In April 1984, Madonna said on MTV that she had completed a new album. Plus, in Rolling Stone, they said, 'Borderline' vocalist Madonna has a second album, Like a Virgin, ready for release, but what's the rush? After more than forty weeks, the first album from the ex-Alvin Ailey dancer is still climbing the charts.

Being 13, I was totally clueless on how records were released. In America, it was every Tuesday, which I found out the hard way. I went to my local record store, Tempo Records, on my skateboard everyday (with bleached out hair and red lips) asking, "Do you have the new Madonna album yet?" From April on... That poor dude - I drove him crazy. Haha!

Anyway, one day he set me straight () and told me that albums are released every Tuesday and they have nothing on the roster yet, leave my phone number and he will let me know.

The wait was horrendous but I'm not of the mortal school that waiting makes it better. I had my LIVE version taped off the radio simulcast from the first MTV Music Awards that I listened to on my walkman a hundred times a day since September. Hence, why that is still my favorite version.

Here it is, the real deal (with a new b side - Stay!!!) purchased on its release date: November 06, 1984.

Angel - Into The Groove Maxi Single

Madonna/Madonna - The year was 1983....

It all began in October 1983 when my sister, 7 years older, brought home THIS VERY CASSETTE. I was 13. I still have it.

27 years ago today..."Everybody"

released October 6, 1982

December 15, 1984. Billboard Magazine - A Vision of Madonna - 4 Videos on One Cassette

Billboard Magazine Advertisement of Madonna's first ever Video Compilation Release. Madonna. 1984.

Billboard - July 5, 1986 - Back Cover

Madonna's US 10th Consecutive Top Ten Single - True Blue

Revenge of the Killer B's - Ain't No Big Deal. For me, it was.

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It was 1984 and all I had was Madonna/Madonna. When I came across Revenge of the Killer B's, sequel to Attack of the Killer B's, from Warner Bros. Records and saw there was a new Madonna song from the first album sessions, excitement didn't even describe it. The song was Ain't No Big Deal, and this was almost 3 years before it was released as a B-side on the True Blue single. A song the fans had always heard of in early interviews - the song that really got her signed and was slated to be her first single but was scrapped at the last minute. It was that high pitched Motown voice, it was that great Reggie Lucas production, it was just great.