Just as I mentioned in my Japanese EP blog, my discovery of Madonna in the late 80s coincided with what seemed to be a never-ending wealth of import singles, which were difficult to avoid even in more “local” towns. Whilst I did, within a few years, complete my complete run of UK 12 inch releases (with the exception of the odd alternate version), the first time I came across a lot of these titles was actually courtesy of their existence on 12” singles imported from the USA, complete with a not too outlandish price of about £7.
What fascinated me about these releases, was that the majority of the ones I bought were brand new - still shrinkwrapped - despite the fact that some of these singles were fast approaching their tenth birthday. As the CD was quickly establishing itself as the format of choice, these slabs of vinyl thus felt curiously out of place, a throwback to an earlier time. Being able to pick up a picture sleeved copy of the “Everybody” 12”, which in a way invented the entire future pop movement later taken up by Britney and Girls Aloud, making it a fairly monumental piece of pop history, in my local HMV some ten years after the event, was surreal.
So this blog is a little celebration of the earliest of these releases. Indeed, in some instances, these singles are of more interest than their UK counterparts, thanks to the inclusion of non-UK remixes, whilst many of the picture sleeves of the earlier releases bear no resemblance to those used for the releases in the United Kingdom. The blog is only concerned with releases up to, and including, “Vogue” - for two reasons. One, I have a few gaps where the later releases are concerned, and I don’t like to write too much about things I want, as opposed to things I own. Second, the 1995 German CD Singles reissue campaign stopped at “Vogue”, so that gives me an excuse to use it as a cut off point here as well. May I remind you those releases were covered in four blogs that you can find on this site, all published during 2010.
Let’s start by looking at the design of the singles themselves. Unlike the UK pressings of the UK singles from the time, the US editions were all issued in spined sleeves. Earlier releases were barcode free, so they could only be registered as a sale in shops which used a barcode on the price sticker. The first single to feature a barcode was 1985’s “Material Girl”. Singles that were imported into the UK usually came with a green sticker on the back, with a ‘12”’ legend on (there were obviously different codes for other formats, although I seem to have CD Singles as well with a ‘12“’ sticker on!) and as the singles were shipped over from the US, and were thus shrinkwrapped, these stickers had to be applied onto the shrinkwrap itself. Shops would then usually add an “Import” sticker of their own design onto the front, which was basically code for “we will charge you more for this than usual”.
The singles had catalogue numbers in the “9 XXXXX-0” range, but this catalogue number only appeared on the sleeve itself, including the spine. The labels instead used a “0-XXXXX” system instead. So, “Everybody” was 9 29899-0 from the outside, but 0-29899 inside. This strange anomaly, albeit an anomaly that existed for years, is vaguely along the lines of double albums and double CD’s, where you will sometimes get a number for disc 1, another for disc 2, and then another for the “set”. The zero denoted it was a 12”, and this approach was a fairly standard Warners procedure (German pressed 12” singles designed specifically for sale in Germany did the same thing). Many of the singles, at first, also featured the letter “A” at the end of the catalogue number, although “Open Your Heart” omitted this code - only for it to reappear again from “True Blue” onwards. However, the process stopped again the following year, when “Who’s That Girl” appeared with a purely numeric catalogue number, and this design continued from this point onwards.
The spine also gave the recommended retail price for the single ($4.98), although the price was omitted completely from, again, “Who’s That Girl” onwards. The vinyl, if you opened the shrinkwrap, was housed in those irritating, curved at one end, flimsy clear inner bags. Chances are, if you start hunting down these releases on the second hand market, these inner bags have a good chance of no longer being in situ, and don’t be surprised to see the shrinkwrap having been either opened, or removed completely. Very few copies seem to surface in “unsealed” condition.
The first two releases, “Everybody” and the “Burning Up”/”Physical Attraction” double-A, featured side opening sleeves, just like a regular LP. But every release onwards used a top opening design, meaning that if you stored these on a shelf with the spines showing outwards, the subsequent releases would appear on the shelf with the picture sleeve essentially on it’s side at right angles.
Although it was only the “Burning Up” release that was marketed as a double-A (reference was made to the “Fast side” and the “Slow side”), a number of these releases actually listed the B-side as well on the spines. At first, this made sense, as most of the early period singles simply featured one song per side, but the process continued on and off until the end of 1989. Aside from “Burning Up”, the other singles to have their tracks paired up on the spine were “Borderline”/”Lucky Star”, “Like A Virgin”/”Stay”, “Material Girl”/”Pretender”, “Angel”/”Into The Groove” (which, of course, became a radio staple in the US, and so superseded it’s B-side status eventually), “Dress You Up”/”Shoo Bee Doo”, “Open Your Heart”/”White Heat”, “Who’s That Girl”/”White Heat” (again), “Causing A Commotion”/”Jimmy Jimmy”, “Like A Prayer”/”Act Of Contrition” and “Express Yourself”/”Look Of Love”. The first single, after “Everybody”, to not feature this double listing on the spine was “Live To Tell”, simply because different mixes of the track filled up the entire single. But “Papa Don’t Preach” was also similarly marketed, despite the fact that “Pretender” was on the flipside (as was the multi-track “True Blue“).
By the end of the eighties, the CD was starting to make it’s mark, and “Keep It Together” was issued as a CD Single, alongside the 12”. Copies of the latter originally came with a circular sticker on the front, advising purchasers of the existence of the other format (the 7” Remix was absent from the 12”, but could be found on the CD). “Vogue” was issued in Maxi-Single form on both Cassette and CD, and again, the 12” came with a rectangular sticker on the front advertising the other formats. Madonna’s Maxi-Singles on other formats would be worthy of a separate blog in the future, but I need to get hold of a few more before feeling happy about writing about them.
By virtue of them being 12” singles, the first batch of US 12 inches were pressed at 45rpm. But as the world of multiple remixes began to gain momentum in the late 80s, so it was that the running time of “Causing A Commotion” was long enough for it to be deemed preferable to play at 33 1/3 instead, to avoid groove cramming. The running time of the next US single, “Like A Prayer”, was even longer. The two sides of this one were pressed at 33rpm, a necessity as the “East Side” of the record had a running time of over 20 minutes (side 2 was labelled, of course, the “West Side” BTW). All the remaining singles covered in this blog also played at 33rpm.
In terms of interest when compared to their UK counterparts, there’s plenty of note. Indeed, it’s probably easier to just list those that are very similar to the UK versions instead. It is worth noting that there is a connection to the 1995 German CD Singles, as a number of these appeared in sleeves that matched the US 12” releases, as opposed to the UK ones. Whilst we are not strictly concerned with the US 7” releases here, it is worth noting that several of the earlier releases appeared on 7” in the US in the same sleeve as the UK editions (mainly “Like A Virgin” and “Dress You Up”), but that the US 12” editions opted for different covers.
“Everybody” and “Burning Up” are possibly the most important, thanks to the picture sleeve of the former (no picture cover was used for the UK release) and the fact that both sides of the single featured, for the best part of 20 years, mixes unavailable in the UK. The 12” mix that adorned the A-side now appears on the 2001 remastered edition of the self titled debut LP, in preference over the slightly shorter mix that was originally used. “Burning Up”, of course, is of interest due to the fact it was never issued as a single in the UK. The single played a longer version than can be found on subsequent versions of the LP, and again, this 12” mix made it’s first official UK appearance when it was tagged onto the 2001 remaster of “Madonna” as one of two bonus tracks. There was no commercial US release for the single on 7”, although a heavily edited “Physical Attraction” was issued as a promo (and later released commercially on the UK “Borderline 7”).
There were no 12” releases in the States for “Holiday” or “Lucky Star”. The reason seemingly was because the LP versions of these tracks were quite lengthy, and they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) be made longer for a 12” release. The idea of releasing a 12” with the LP version on the A-side was seen as a pointless event by the US division of Sire, and so, the two singles were only issued in the USA on 7”. By Spring 1984, there was a change of heart, when the equally lengthy “Borderline” was the subject of an extended remix, and thus issued as Madonna’s next US 12”. “Lucky Star” was then also extended for the B-side (and became known as the “US Remix” in the UK), with both mixes simply listed as the “New Mix” of each on the single. The sleeve of the US 12” bore no resemblance to the UK one (even the track listings shared little in common), and the release is made more fascinating by the fact that the German CD reissue opted to use the UK sleeve, making this one of the most fascinating of all the US releases.
For the “Like A Virgin” singles, there was a slight alignment between the UK and US 12s. Each of the four singles issued in the US were also issued in the UK, and the track listings had something in common. The material featured on “Like A Virgin” and “Material Girl” matched the UK ones, although both singles were housed in different covers. The German CD reissue of “LAV” uses the US sleeve, the CD reissue of “MG” uses the (superior) UK one. “Dress You Up” changed B-sides, with “I Know It” on the UK release being changed to “Shoo Bee Doo” for the US. Again, the US 12” comes in a different cover to the UK one. “Dress You Up” was the first Madonna US 12” to include more than two tracks, as a 12” mix was joined with an instrumental version, plus the B-side.
“Angel”, of course, differs for other reasons. The UK and US single releases both use the same cover, but the US 12” included a new song Madonna had written for use in the “Desperately Seeking Susan” movie, a certain “Into The Groove”. Given that the current versions of “Like A Virgin”, the 2001 CD remaster, and the 2012 vinyl reissue, both omit “Into The Groove” a la the original 1984 pressing, this does mean the US “Angel” 12” probably still has a certain amount of quirky interest.
Slightly outside the remit of this article, but worth a mention, are the two singles Geffen released in the UK in conjunction with the “Vision Quest” film - “Gambler” and “Crazy For You”. Only the latter was released in the US, and like the UK, was not released on 12” due to it’s “ballad” nature. Some European countries did put it on the format though, rather pointlessly.
There was a great deal of similarity, especially sleeve wise, between the UK and US releases from the “True Blue” LP. All five singles appeared in the same covers, and “Live To Tell” and “La Isla Bonita” had track listings that were identical. The US release of “Papa Don’t Preach” was slightly underwhelming, consisting of just the 12” mix of the A-side, backed with “Pretender” (it’s second time on a US 12”) instead of the (3 track) UK’s “Ain’t No Big Deal”.
“Open Your Heart” differed slightly. Unlike the UK 12”, no attempt was made to list the track listing on the cover of the US 12”, whilst the UK b-side, “Lucky Star”, was swapped for “White Heat”. But the biggie is “True Blue”. The first Madonna US 12” to consist of four tracks, it included (alongside “Ain’t No Big Deal”) both the 7” and 12” mixes of the A-side, making it outshine the simpler 2 track UK 12” somewhat. The icing on the cake is the inclusion of an instrumental mix of “True Blue”, which has never been issued in the UK. Even the German CD single reissue replicates the UK release, thus making the US edition quite desirable.
Both the US single releases from the “Who’s That Girl” soundtrack, overall, trump their UK editions. “Who’s That Girl”, on the face of it, matched it’s 2-track UK version, but once the shrinkwrap was broken, the vinyl revealed itself to include three tracks, with a “Dub” mix of the A-side on side 2. In the UK, “WTG” was famously issued as both a standard 2-track 12” and a “Limited Edition” 3-tracker, with the Dub mix appearing on the latter. I do wonder if the US bods phoned up the UK ones when the single was first released to say to them, “we forgot to tell you about the other mix”, causing a mad rush to release a “Special” single with the missing mix in situ. But that seems too much of a coincidence to be true, surely?
“Causing A Commotion”, in the UK, was of interest, as the rules on running times of 12” singles resulted in flipside “Jimmy Jimmy” needing to be edited down to comply with chart rules. But it’s swings and roundabouts, as the US 12 included a “Dub” mix of the track which, this time, never made it onto a UK release. As an aside, my copy of this one is promo stamped, but that doesn’t really affect the value either way. It’s a safe bet that little chunks of all of the singles in this article were similarly treated in the same way.
By the time we got to “Like A Prayer”, Madonna’s dark and gloomy confessional album, which perversely was the one where the remixers started to really go to town, the gap between the usefulness of the UK singles versus their US ones was becoming more noticeable. The five remixes of “Like A Prayer” (plus B-side “Act Of Contrition”) which were spread across the two 12” singles issued by Sire in the UK, were simply stuck onto one slab of vinyl in the US - so, disaster averted. But when it came to “Express Yourself”, another remix went AWOL in the UK, when the US edition of the single included the two remixes from the UK 12” on the A-side, along with the never-released-in-Britain “Local Mix” version of the A-side. The UK label obviously couldn’t work out a way to sneak this remix out into the public domain, despite the fact that the single itself was issued on a number of formats, all of which just seemed to replicate one another music-wise.
There were no 12” releases in the US for “Cherish” (the retro styled “Extended Mix”, harking back to the mid 80s in it‘s design, that appeared on the UK release, was simply deemed irrelevant by the US division, it seems) nor “Oh Father”, the latter being far too downbeat for a Shep Pettibone reworking. The lack of multiple remixes of these two meant that these singles were only issued in the US on the 7” and Cassette formats. At the other end of the scale, “Keep It Together” returned to the world of the “40 minute long" 12”, with six remixes of the track being created for the US release. There was no UK release, although the white label “SAM” promo 12” which exists offers up the same track listing as it’s US cousin.
“Vogue” continued the trend of the US releases outdoing their UK counterparts. The 12” released in the US included the 12” mix, and a pair of “Dub” remixes, one of which failed to get a release in the UK, despite Sire, once again, going down the multi-format route, by issuing the single in the UK in no less than eight different formats. This situation would simply get magnified with the majority of future releases, and I would like to try and look at the next batch of releases (at least) in a future blog.
Collecting all of these will take some time, unless you already have a head start and have a few, as I did just before I started research for this blog. Copies that have been played a fair bit can still be picked up at the same price as they were when first on sale - if not less - whilst shrink-wrapped copies will obviously attract a premium. It’s obviously only worth looking for shrink-wrapped copies if you have no intention of opening them and playing them, unless you stumble across a copy for next to nothing. Paying £25 for a sealed “Open Your Heart” is you basically paying for the condition it is in (Mint), and opening it will take a tenner off the value immediately. I do sometimes wish I’d never opened some of mine...not that any will ever be offered for sale, mind you.
I also have some of these singles from Canada. The basic principle was the same, the main differences - of my ones, at least - is some printing changes in how the catalogue number is displayed on the record (the basic number remains the same), and, of course, the “Made In Canada” legend on the back of the sleeve. “Burning Up” has a maple leaf logo in the top left corner on the back cover as well, which is a sweet touch.
DISCOGRAPHY
Fairly simple this time around. Each 12” single, of course, only exists in one edition, and these are all listed below. Cat numbers are those shown on the label, rather than the sleeve.
Everybody (12” Version)/(Dub Version) (Sire 0-29899)
Burning Up (12” Version)/Physical Attraction (Sire 0-29715)
Borderline (New Mix)/Lucky Star (New Mix) (Sire 0-20212)
Like A Virgin (Extended Dance Remix)/Stay (Sire 0-20239)
Material Girl (Extended Dance Remix)/Pretender (Sire 0-20304)
Angel (Extended Dance Mix)/Into The Groove (Sire 0-20335)
Dress You Up (The 12” Formal Mix)/(The Casual Instrumental Mix)/Shoo-Bee-Doo (Sire 0-20369)
Live To Tell (LP Version)/(Edit)/(Instrumental) (Sire 0-20461)
Papa Don’t Preach (Extended Remix)/Pretender (Sire 0-20492)
True Blue (The Color Mix)/(Instrumental)/Ain’t No Big Deal/True Blue (Remix/Edit) (Sire 0-20533)
Open Your Heart (Extended Version)/(Dub)/White Heat (Sire 0-20597)
La Isla Bonita (Extended Remix)/(Instrumental) (Sire 0-20633)
Who’s That Girl (Extended Version)/(Dub)/White Heat (Sire 0-20692)
Causing A Commotion (Silver Screen Mix)/(Dub)/(Movie House Mix)/Jimmy Jimmy (Sire 0-20762)
Like A Prayer (12” Dance Mix)/(12” Extended Remix)/(Churchapella)/(12” Club Version)/(7” Remix/Edit)/Act Of Contrition (Sire 0-21170)
Express Yourself (Non-Stop Express Mix)/(Stop & Go Dubs)/(Local Mix)/The Look Of Love (Sire 0-21225)
Keep It Together (12” Remix)/(Dub)/(12” Extended Mix)/(12” Mix)/(Bonus Beats)/(Instrumental) (Sire 0-21427)
Vogue (12” Version)/(Bette Davis Dub)/(Strike-A-Pose Dub) (Sire 0-21513)