CD Spotlight -- 11/30/2004

Original Soundtrack -- Who's That Girl (1987)

Another apparently random choice this week but for some reason, I've blown the dust off this CD and have given it another spin. It's the soundtrack from Madonna's 1987 movie flop Who's That Girl. Even as a Madonna fan, I have to say that the movie itself is pretty insufferable--it captures forever one of Madonna's worst-ever looks (the fact that her eyebrows are so dark and her hair is so white has always bugged the hell out of me) and she's just not all that good in it. However, the music is not bad. It's fluffy and forgettable in a mid-to-late 80s sort of way, but you have to hand it to Madonna--even when it's fluff and forgettable, it's still pretty good fluff. I think the reason I've been thinking about this soundtrack recently is because of the Scritti Politti song that's on here called "Best Thing Ever"--and whenever I see the VH1 show "Best Week Ever" it always makes me think of that song. So blame it on VH1, I guess.

The Madonna songs on here do make the movie worth the effort--that is to say, if suffering through this abysmal movie is what it took to get "Causing a Commotion" it's probably worth it. Truth be told, I think I've read that most of the songs on the Who's That Girl soundtrack were True Blue rejects. But there's something fun about the giddiness of "Can't Stop"--it's something that we really don't get from Madonna anymore since she's so busy being all serious and all that. I certainly can't begrudge her for following her heart in the kind of music she's doing, but she doesn't really cut loose anymore, and that's a bit sad.

Here's something I wrote about "Who's That Girl" (the song) a long time ago, back when I was on the Madonna listserv and we were doing Song of the Week (SOTW). It seems apropos to post it now.

I really like this little song. It's not very substantial, and I suppose that's a trait that it shares with last week's SOTW "Don't Stop." However, there's something that separates WTG from DS, even though they are pretty much in the same vein musically--slow groove pop music. Lyrically, the song is pretty well constructed with yet another Madonna patented-brilliant bridge "Light of my life/So blind I can't see." The instrumentation is fun and lightweight. I was surprised to see that it had such a Latin feel to it considering that it came on the heels of "La Isla Bonita."

Yeah, I was just a little bit obsessed.