Madonna’s uncredited synthpop vocal appearance from 1983

Madonna Fact Of The Day – February 24th – Madonna’s uncredited synthpop vocal appearance from 1983!

In 1983 Madonna recorded an uncredited vocal for sythnpop duo Naked Eyes on their US No.11 hit single ‘Promises, Promises‘. Naked Eyes had quite a decent success in the US and Canada in the early 80s, certainly bigger than their success in their native England.

A Naked Eyes compilation featuring the Madonna version on CD for the first time was released a few years ago: However, her vocal was only used on the Jellybean 12″ Mix, so until recently it was never known that it was her. The single only scraped to No.95 in the UK charts, but the song did feature in an episode of David Hasselhoff’s hit show Knight Rider.

When asked about Madonna‘s vocal recently, band memebr Pete Byrne said:

“Rob and I were in New York doing a remix of Promises with Jellybean. Madonna was an up and coming young performer and as luck would have it, just happened to be going out with Jellybean. She performed a very sexy voice over, that for some reason best known to the record company, was never used. I have long wanted to release this version and at last, here it is…”

Madonna’s spoken vocal is as follows:

I’ll always love you, now and forever,
You can trust in me, it’s gonna be all right,
I’ll be right by your side, every day and every night,
Don’t be afraid, this time I know it’s right

Eagle-eyed fans will recognise some of those lyrics from her own songs – e.g. don’t be afraid and it’s gonna be all right could have been lifted straight out of ‘Stay‘ from the Like A Virgin album. Even her delivery of them is very similar! Considering the ‘Promises Promises’ single pre-dated Like A Virgin by at least a year it’s not inconceivable that this recording was the inspiration for that part of ‘Stay’.

Madonna Fact Of The Day is brought to you by our team member Tony from London