On September 4 1987, Madonna performed the second-to-last show of her Who’s That Girl World Tour at the Stadio Comunale in Turin, Italy. Broadcast live in Italy, France, Germany, Austria and Spain, the television special also aired at a later date in Australia and The Netherlands. The commercially released Ciao Italia! combined the Turin & Tokyo broadcasts with additional footage from the tour’s final concert in Florence, Italy.
On August 18 1987, Madonna performed the first of three sold-out Who’s That Girl Tour concerts at Wembley Stadium in London.
In total, Madonna performed for 216,000 fans during the three nights at Wembley.
On July 24 1987, Madonna performed her Who’s That Girl World Tour at the Astrodome in Houston, in front of 40,000 fans.
The title Who’s That Girl Tour came to Madonna during rehearsals one-day when she looked at a gigantic image of herself projected on a screen on the stage. She commented,
“Oh god, what have I done? What have I created? Is that me, or is this me, this small person standing down here on the stage? That’s why I call the tour ‘Who’s That Girl?’; because I play a lot of characters, and every time I do a video or a song, people go, ‘Oh, that’s what she’s like.’ And I’m not like any of them. I’m all of them. I’m none of them. You know what I mean.?”
On July 18 1987, Madonna appeared on the cover of the Dutch youth entertainment magazine called, Hitkrant.
On July 11 1987, Madonna’s Who’s That Girl made its U.S. chart debut at #43 on the Billboard Hot 100. The single entered the Hot 100 Airplay chart at #32 in the same issue.
On July 3, 1987, Madonna accepted a rare Canadian Diamond Award at a press conference in Toronto on the eve of her sold-out concert at CNE Stadium. The certification award was presented by WEA Music Canada president Stan Kulin to mark over one million units sold of the True Blue album in Canada.
On March 28 1987, the final single from Madonna’s True Blue album, La Isla Bonita, was briefly reviewed in Billboard magazine.
The now-classic song was Madonna’s first sonic exploration into her love of Latin music and culture which would become a recurring inspiration in her body of work. Written by Madonna, Patrick Leonard, and frequent Leonard collaborator, guitarist Bruce Gaitsch, it has been reported that the instrumental demo of the song was initially offered to Michael Jackson, who passed on the track.
While Madonna has said that La Isla Bonita took inspiration from “the beauty and mystery of Latin American people,” she has remained more elusive about the song’s geographical references. Years later, she teasingly commented in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine:
“I don’t know where San Pedro is. At that point, I wasn’t a person who went on holidays to beautiful islands. I may have been on the way to the studio and seen an exit ramp for San Pedro.”
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