It’s That Girl!
Sire UK were so pleased with how well Madonna‘s first series of sell-out stadium concerts in their country had gone they decided to celebrate the fact by pressing up a mini-greatest hits collection for promotion of just how wonderful the Material Girl was. An order was sent over to the normal German pressing plant at Alsdorf to press up a batch of videos and cassettes limited strictly to 500 each to be given out to press and those involved in the tour as a lovely reminder of Madonna’s amazing run of success. The compilation of Madonna’s finest single moments up until that point was ingeniously entitled ‘It’s That Girl‘ although one look at the Herb Ritts image used for the cover made the answer to the question of who the girl was pretty redundant – in 1987 everyone knew who that girl was!
The compilation featured each of Madonna’s non-Geffen hits to date – Holiday, Lucky Star, Like A Virgin, Material Girl, Into The Groove, Angel, Dress You Up, Borderline, Live To Tell, Papa Don’t Preach, True Blue, Open Your Heart, La Isla Bonita and recent No.1 smash Who’s That Girl.
The cassette contained the relevant edits and single remixes appropriate to their the 7″ single version featured on the single, giving listeners a much more familiar audio experience to what they were used to hearing on the radio than if it had been the album versions. Plus, with all the singles, bar Crazy For You and Gambler, present – it proved a far more comprehensive celebration of Madonna’s single output than ‘The Immaculate Collection‘ would eventually fail to do three years later. For the more nerdy out there, the edit of ‘Borderline‘ contained on the cassette is actually unique, although the differences are so small you’d be forgiven for not noticing!
The video remains the source of super-excitement for collectors though as it was the first official video to feature the rarely seen clip for the ‘Angel‘ single and also the Top Of The Pops appearance recorded to promote ‘Holiday‘ back on the 26th January 1984.
Apart from a subsequent promotional only compilation created in 1990 and the super super rare 1-track videos sent out to promote the songs at the time, this video is the only place where the videos for ‘Into The Groove’, ‘Angel’, ‘Dress You Up’, ‘Live To Tell’, ‘True Blue‘ and ‘Who’s That Girl‘ have been made available. The lack of the Geffen singles and the early flop Everybody is a major loss in terms of completeness of her UK release schedule, but they are a far better resume of Madonna’s 80s career history than anything made available in the shops!
For that – we should all thank Sire UK with a big sloppy kiss!