lynus's Full Review: True Blue [Remaster] by Madonna
What a difference four years can make in one woman’s musical career. Madonna went from being on holiday, to being a virgin, to now singing about “keeping my baby” in “Papa Don’t Preach”. With True Blue she “Lived To Tell” about being blue, to “Opening [her]/Your Heart”, feeling happiness in finding “Where[’s] the Party” was to feeling sadness in “True Blue”. Madonna also explored the world with “Is La Bonita” and knew that “Love Makes the World Go Round.”
True Blue is one of Madonna’s best albums to date. To me it felt that she had started to balance herself between what her fans wanted, what she wanted, and what her fans and what her fans wanted in terms of her continuing to push buttons. It’s very daring to begin a CD with a track that is basically a - “in your face father!!!” - track that “Papa Don’t Preach” is. A blond short hair cut Madonna is basically saying - I love you Dad, but I’m sticking to what I know and who I love.
On the album’s cover, it is a wall Madonna is leaning against – not a human support.
With 1986’s True Blue Madonna mixes her musical repitore up a bit and releases a wide range of tracks. On one track she switches from English to Spanish, a first for Madonna. In yet another track she slows things down almost to a poetic standstill as she declares that “I have a tale to tell. Sometimes it gets so hard to hide it well. I was not ready for the fall, too blind to see the writing on the wall.” And although she may almost drown and bore just about any listener with that song she follows it up with “Where’s The Party” another homage to the working class people who make up her fans as she sings “working Monday through Friday, takes up all of my time. If I can get to the weekend, everything will work out just fine. That’s when I can go crazy, that’s when I can have fun. Time to be with my baby, time to come undone. Where’s the party, I want to free my soul. Where’s the party, I want to lose control.” A club favorite – and a great driving song while flying down the freeway to a party – “Where’s The Party”, gets the party going!!!
With “Papa Don’t Preach” – Madonna finally completely breaks free of her excessive yet perhaps necessary need to have all her music accompanied by cheap electronic keyboards. The song begins in a swell of violins, until a big bold bass section kicks in and drives the song forward with her message. It is also one of Madonna’s most personal songs to date – for it was easy to see the laugher in her acting out being a virgin or a material girl. And although as a person the character in “Papa Don’t Preach” may be a complete dream, Madonna stresses her music to the point that it all feels real.
When I was married just a few months ago – I wanted to pick just one Madonna track to play at the wedding reception. Just one, because I didn’t want the reception to become a Madonna-fest and so, I picked “Open My Heart.” It is not that different than many of the Madonna tracks that came before it, but to me personally it was one of the most heartfelt and personally personal. In the song, Madonna sings about wanting a heart opened but also being afraid to do so because of what others may think or say. There’s a sense of need to close oneself behind a wall and act how many expect you to act – but if you find that one true love where you can open your heart to and that person can open their heart in return – then open your heart!
I don’t care much for the remainder part of the album. “White Heat” completely bombs the album by cutting in some movie clip that sounds alien to the CD as a whole. Even once Madonna interjects her music which kicks in high gear it doesn’t sound like the movie clip belonged there in the first place. Even “True Blue” which the album was named after seems out of place. There a playground feel to it as Madonna seems to revisit her “kiddie” vocals. By design the song was meant to be fun and may have been fun if listeners were looking for it after the intense songs that came before it. “True Blue” would have probably been suited as a single – which it may have been. But as a part of the CD – it left me sad (and no I wasn’t crying!)
“Jimmy Jimmy” also suffers from the same silliness “True Blue” had. Wasn’t Jimmy Jimmy a popular truck for high school students around the same time? …Anyways, “Jimmy Jimmy” sounds completely silly, out of place in the CD as a whole, and is worth every fingerprint as you hit the track skip button. “Love Makes The World Go Around” is a semi-sequel to Madonna’s more popular “Isla La Bonita”, which carries heavily the Miami feel. The song begins with Madonna almost screaming “make love not war” and then ranting off about peace and that nothing good can come from knifes and guns; perhaps Madonna’s first foray into an anti-war/pro-peace stance that would give her yet new controversy many years later with her release of the single American Life.
Overall, if True Blue isn’t a part of any Madonna fan’s collection they are missing out on where she began to explore more of her music while at the same time learning to explore her persona in the media and how she could use it to her advantage.
It is Madonna’s most versatile album with songs that range in different emotions, different ethics, and different ethnicity’s. Once again, Madonna in 1986 was doing something much different than other top artists. She wasn’t Addicted to Love or Walking Like an Egyptian. Yet, she may have had a slight Burning Heart and was entering the Danger Zone. A theme she would continue to explore in her next studio album full of new material Like A Prayer (skipping over her dance album You Can Dance!).
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