The long forgotten, unreleased Remix album

Back in the mid-80s, Warner Music launched a series of remix albums as a bonus release to complement the catalogues of their big acts. These albums collected together the popular ‘Extended Remixes‘ which were popular on singles at the time, and the albums were known as “12″ers“. Simply Red and Phil Collins are examples of Warner artists who released 12″ers albums.

But why wasn’t there one by Warners’ biggest act of the 1980s? Madonna was well known for her dance mixes of her multiple hits yet no 12″ers album appeared for sale by her.

Well – they planned to release one! It was to be called Madonna – “12”ers+2”

In fact, they got to the stage of designing artwork and choosing the tracklisting to make it! Madonna’s album was to collect the Extended 12″ Mixes of six of her biggest hits from her first two albums, together with the standard versions of two non-album cuts ‘Ain’t No Big Deal‘ and ‘Into The Groove‘ (the +2 from the title) and release the package in garish red and yellow abstract artwork celebrating the recently completed Virgin Tour.

The tracklisting was to run as follows :

Side One
1. Ain’t No Big Deal
2. Dress You Up (The 12″ Formal Mix)
3. Angel (Extended Dance Mix)
4. Lucky Star (U.S. Remix)

Side Two
1. Into The Groove
2. Material Girl (Jellybean Dance Mix)
3. Borderline (U.S. Remix)
4. Like A Virgin (Extended Dance Remix)

There is only one known copy of the Japanese promo cassette of this mysterious release – and that is in the collection of yours truly – no other issues have been documented to date. Here’s the fold-out sleeve design and the actual cassette (courtesy of 991.com).

The reason why the release was cancelled is unknown but it is probably due to the relentless release schedule of Madonna product which was available in 1985 (Warner and Geffen really were in danger of saturating the market with Madonna product!), the fact that the Like A Virgin album was re-launched in many territories to include ‘Into The Groove‘ and also by this stage our Mads was headlong into the True Blue album project.

Of course, this isn’t the only time a planned remix compilation has been cancelled. The infamous 1999 ‘Veronica Electronica‘ remix collection of Ray Of Light songs was cancelled in favour of a new studio album. Also, the rumoured full length American Life Remix album never came to be, although with the release of the ‘Remixed & Revisited‘ project, fans were able to add a collection of rock mixes to their collections.