4 October 1986
As we’ve seen so far in our ’80s number ones, ’60s throwbacks were all the rage. Even Motown royalty like Diana Ross with ‘Chain Reaction’ was in 1986 harking back to her own classic sound. And Madonna is from Bay City, Michigan, just out the road from Detroit, so when it comes to Motown she’s playing for her parish.
None of that makes ‘True Blue’ any better, though. This is a twee, flat notion of the ’60s Motown-Brill girl-group sound, an impression not helped by its corny video (below) and all-round cookie-cutter approach to the lyrics and music. Discounting if we must the unwittingly gory “Your heart fits me like a glove” in the chorus, the only genuine highlight for me is the bright middle section, where the whole song suddenly steps out of the retro wax museum and actually sounds like (as its lyric goes) “the sun is bursting right out of the sky”, followed by the relatable yearning of “I searched the whole world for someone like you”. Then it’s back to the ’60s tribute act.
Not every Madonna single can be as groundbreaking and thrilling as ‘Papa Don’t Preach’. We’ll see another of those statement hits at number one in a few years’ time. ‘True Blue’, however, feels more like a modest album track elevated above its level of competence.
