18 July 1987
The animated Madonna that appears halfway through the video (below) for ‘Who’s That Girl’ is by Elinor Blake, who under her later nom de pop of April March sang ‘Chick Habit’ which appeared on the soundtrack to the ’00s Quentin Tarantino movie Death Proof and on a car ad. I saw Blake as April March perform ‘Chick Habit’ as a guest on stage with French indie-electro-pop cult hero Bertrand Burgalat at a sparsely-attended show in the civic arts centre of a Paris satellite town called Chelles, this all falling within the purview of my then-life in Paris chronicling the French music scene. Prior to being April March, Blake was in US bands called The Pussywillows and The Shitbirds. “This will all make a diverting anecdote,” I said to myself as I ran to catch the last train back to Paris, “when someday I need to write a fascinating introduction to an otherwise unremarkable Madonna number one.”
The other pertinent fact about ‘Who’s That Girl’ is that it’s the title song of a screwball romantic comedy starring Madonna. I haven’t seen this movie, and Madonna may very well be good in it, but the glimpses of it in the video aren’t reassuring. The song ‘Who’s That Girl’ shares a Latino vibe with Madonna’s other big 1987 hit, the slightly better ‘La Isla Bonita’, a UK number one that stalled at number two in Ireland behind The Pogues and The Dubliners’ ‘The Irish Rover’. This is breezy and pleasant, but Madonna’s superstar status is the sole reason this item of marketing collateral got to number one.
