On July 23 1988, Madonna – Ciao Italia: Live From Italy hit #1 on the Top Music Videos chart in the US.
Category Archives: July
Today in Madonna History: July 22, 1985
On July 22 1985, Like A Virgin was certified 5x Platinum in the US – the first solo album by a female artist to be certified for shipment of 5-million copies. The album remained a consistently strong catalogue seller well into the next decade, eventually earning a Diamond certification (the RIAA’s highest certification award) in 1998 for shipment of over 10 million copies in the US.
Today in Madonna History: July 21, 1987
On July 21 1987, the Who’s That Girl: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack album was released.
Who’s That Girl was released as the lead single from the soundtrack, it became Madonna’s sixth single to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart, making her the first artist to accumulate six number-one singles in the 1980s, and the first female performer to earn that many number-ones as a solo act.
The album’s second single, Causing a Commotion, was released on August 25, 1987. In the United States, the single quickly climbed up the chart, ultimately peaking at number two in the week of October 24, 1987, the same week Michael Jackson’s Bad advanced to the pole position. It remained in second position for three weeks, before descending from the chart.
The third song released from the album was the European single The Look of Love. In the United Kingdom, The Look of Love was released on December 12, 1987, and entered the UK Singles Chart at position 15. The next week, it reached a peak of nine on the chart, her first single to miss the top five since Lucky Star in 1984.
Regarding her contributions to the soundtrack, Madonna said:
“I had some very specific ideas in mind, music that would stand on its own as well as support and enhance what was happening on-screen and the only way to make that a reality was to have a hand in writing the tunes myself… The songs aren’t necessarily about Nikki or written to be sung by someone like her, but there’s a spirit to this music that captures both what the film and the characters are about, I think.”
The only Madonna song not to be released as a single or performed live from the soundtrack was Can’t Stop. Madonna had been performing her three other songs from the soundtrack during the Who’s That Girl World Tour for over a month prior to the album’s release.
Today in Madonna History: July 20, 2010
On July 20 2010, photos by Steven Klein for Dolce and Gabbana’s Fall Winter 2010/2011 ad campaign featuring Madonna surfaced on the internet.
Capturing an Italian family lead by the matriarchal figure of Madonna, the campaign told the story of a close knit family. From a family portrait to a meal at the table, the images showed a new direction for the Italian luxury brand.
Today in Madonna History: July 19, 1994
On July 19 1994, Madonna contributed Goodbye to Innocence to the Just Say Roe benefit CD.
When Madonna went to record her vocals for Goodbye to Innocence during the recording of the Erotica album , she started singing Little Willie John’s song Fever instead of singing the original words. Shep Pettibone and Madonna decided to record it, as they felt it sounded good. As they did not know the words, Madonna called Seymour Stein from Sire Records, and within an hour, they had the Peggy Lee version, and the original version of the song. Fever was the last song to be recorded for the album, in August 1992, and it was finished within a month later.
Lyrics:
I don’t wanna say goodbye
There are some who believe that I owe them something
But they’re wrong, I owe nothing to no one but myself
And there are some who say they created me
But only my parents will have that acclaim
I took it from there, I am to blame
Say goodbye to anonymity
I have to (have to, have to) say goodbye
To privacy, but most of all
To innocence
To innocence
To innocence
My life is not a game that I play to entertain you
And if you can do it better, then you’re welcome to my fame
I’m not gonna waste my time correcting myths and rumors
You believe what you wanna believe
Say goodbye to anonymity
I have to (have to, have to) say goodbye
To privacy, but most of all
To innocence
To innocence
To innocence
I don’t wanna say goodbye
I don’t need a reason to cry
Kinda makes me wanna
Kinda makes me hafta
Stop and think about it
Stop and think about it
Stop and think about it
Do I want to?
I don’t (getting up and down)
I don’t (getting up and down)
I don’t (getting up and down)
Up-up, d-d-down, up-up-up
I don’t (getting up and down)
I don’t (getting up and down)
I don’t (getting up and down)
Up-up, d-d-down, up-up-up
Listen up
It always comes down to this
It always comes down to this
Some people have a snake at the base of their spine
That would suck out your life, that would take all your time
They’re called feeders
They’re not believers but you must not fear it
They’re takers
You know you better stop, stop and think about it
Your innocence
Your innocence
Your innocence
I don’t wanna say goodbye to innocence
I don’t need a reason to cry, innocence
Hold on to your innocence
Hold on (hold on, hold on), hold on to innocence
Hold on
Stop and think about it, say goodbye, think about it
Today in Madonna History: July 18, 2004
On July 18 2004, Madonna played the first of three sold-out dates at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre during her Re-Invention Tour. Playing to a combined total of over 52,000 fans, the shows were the only Canadian stop on the tour and marked her first concerts in Canada in eleven years.
At the second show Madonna proclaimed to those in attendance that they were the best audience of the tour thus far, while the final Toronto date saw Madonna in an uncharacteristically playful mood. Interrupting the show’s normally swift progression between Papa Don’t Preach and Crazy For You, she joked about the infamous 1990 threats of arrest and whipped the audience into a cheering frenzy with her self-described “unprofessional” behaviour.
Today in Madonna History: July 17, 1993
On July 17 1993, Rain was released as a single in North America. It was the fourth and final North American single from the Erotica album.
Following a cold reception to Madonna’s previous North American single – the bleak-but-beautiful Bad Girl – Rain was given a glossy makeover by French record producer Daniel Abraham to help ensure that it would receive a warmer welcome from radio programmers. The U.S. promotional CD that was serviced to radio by Maverick/Warner offered the choice between the sweetened “Radio Remix” (in full-length and edited form) or an edited album version, which was fittingly used in the song’s gorgeous music video. As her label had correctly predicted, radio indeed favored the smoother sound of the “Radio Remix” over the darker, more dynamic (and in our opinion – more interesting) production-work of the original mix. While not an all-out smash hit, Rain was the first single from the Erotica album to impact Billboard’s Hot AC chart, where it reached the Top 10, and it is generally viewed as an initial recovery step following the backlash Madonna had faced in the wake of the Sex book.
Written and produced by Madonna & Shep Pettibone (unlike the majority of the tracks from Erotica, Tony Shimkin has not been added as co-writer, according to the Warner-Chappel publishing database), Rain was one of the earliest songs conceived during the Erotica album sessions. It appears as the first track on a two-cassette collection of demos from the album sessions submitted to the U.S. Library Of Congress for copyright registration. The infamously sought-after set is often referred to by fans as The Rain Tapes because of the song’s prominent placement in its sequencing and also due to the likely unintentional visual prominence of the song’s title in the handwritten sleeve notes that accompanied the tapes.
The Rain maxi-single was perhaps most notable for its inclusion of a non-album track, Up Down Suite, which was for all intents and purposes a dub remix of album outtake, Goodbye To Innocence (which remained unreleased at the time, aside from some vocal samples used in a promo-only remix of Fever). A new remix (featuring Everlast) of the album track, Waiting, was also included on the North American maxi-single, while its original album version served as the single’s North American b-side.
With its poetically poignant and emotionally charged lyrics, percussive urgency and one of Madonna’s most ambitious uses of layered self-harmonization (not to mention it being accompanied by one of the most beautiful music videos ever created), it isn’t difficult to understand why Rain remains such an enduring fan favorite.
“It’s strange
I feel like I’ve known you before
And I want to understand you
More and more and more
When I’m with you
I feel like a magical child
Everything strange
Everything wild
Waiting is the hardest thing
I tell myself that if I believe in you
In the dream of you
With all my heart and all my soul
That by sheer force of will
I will raise you from the ground
And without a sound you’ll appear
And surrender to me, to love”
Today In Madonna History 