Track Listing

1. Papa Don't Preach
2. Open Your Heart
3. White Heat
4. Live To Tell
5. Where's The Party
6. True Blue
7. La Isla Bonita
8. Jimmy Jimmy
9. Love Makes The World Go Round
10. True Blue
11. La Isla Bonita

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20493 in Music
• Released on: 2001-05-21
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
A quintessential 1980s pop artifact, Madonna's third album was a huge musical leap forward and ranks with Like a Prayer and Ray of Light in the top echelon of her works. Only the title track (a bit too obviously a 60s girl-group homage) and the fine-but-nothing-special "Jimmy Jimmy" slightly lower the quality bar. Most of the songs share a jittery dance-pop sound, edgy, distracted, and nerve- jangling but simultaneously invigorating and exhilarating and almost dangerously giddy--a perfect soundtrack for the mid-1980s. Highlights include the hedonist's credo of "Where's the Party", the subtle and pretty Latin pastiche "La Isla Bonita", and, towering above all, three stunning mega-hits. "Papa Don't Preach", with its gorgeous pseudo-classical strings intro, is a sumptuous airwaves banquet, as Madonna wrestles with the have-the-baby-or-give-it-up dilemma (abortion's not in the picture) in newly gritty tones. "Open Your Heart"'s marriage of jitter-pop and wistful melody underscores the singer's yearning but forceful stance ("You better open your heart to me, buster"). And "Live to Tell" is a riveting ballad, lushly melodic yet spare and haunting--a place, as the song says, where beauty lives. --Ken Barnes

CD Description
Not to take away from the two fine party albums that preceded it, but TRUE BLUE is arguably the first great Madonna album, the one on which she discovered that great soul music isn't just a beat; it usually requires delving into one's own soul. As originally released on LP, the album's first side, featuring a dizzying single about teen pregnancy ("Papa Don't Preach"), a perfect Tin Pan Alley pop song ("Open Your Heart") and the amazing "Live To Tell", a ballad on which she discovers, for the first time, the low end of her vocal range, is almost undoubtedly the finest album side she ever cut.
TRUE BLUE also includes "Where's The Party", a catchy throwback to the forget-your-cares dance pop of her debut album, and "La Isla Bonita", which represented the beginning of Madonna's fruitful obsession with Latin beats and culture. Five songs from the album, including the girl-groupy title cut, made the top five of the pop chart; three of them hit #1.

Customer Reviews

A true classic
This the point where Madonna became critically acclaimed, and it is still a stand out album. It sold by the bucket loads, and whilst the album only comes with 9 tracks (+ the 2 added remixes on this remastered version), its not hard to see why.

Packed with hits such as: Papa don't preach, Open your heart, Live to tell, La Isla Bonita, and True blue, and fan favourites, Love makes the world go round and Where's the party, this album is like a trip down memory lane.
The best remix here is for La Isla, which uses the gorgeous backing vocals to full effect, and is basicaly an extended version.

A very strong Madonna album
With five major international hits - True blue, La Isla Bonita, Open your heart, Papa don't preach and Live to tell - this is yet another brilliant album from Madonna, who set the standards for others to follow in the eighties.

Papa don't preach is about a teenager with an unintended pregnancy who decides to keep her baby. Live to tell is about an older and wiser woman who has learned not to believe men. True blue is, by contrast, a song about a woman who is happy with her man. La Isla Bonita is about memories of a holiday romance. Open your heart is about a woman who shows interest in a man but he does not reciprocate.

On this album, the five hits are unquestionably the best tracks, but the other four, all catchy, upbeat songs, are also worth hearing. This is an excellent album that includes some of my favorite Madonna hits.

The first pinacle move
The fact that Madonna rarely refers to this album leads me to believe it's not one of her favourites. If you see an interview with her, she refers plenty to Holiday and Like A Virgin then completely skips to Like A Prayer.

Since The Blond Ambition Tour she's hardly included the songs from the album on any of her tours (La Isla Bonita featured as the only song from this era in the Girlie Show and The Drowned World Tour (if you don't include the tiny Open Your Heart sample, the Re-Invention Tour - even tho considered a "greatest hits" tour - only featured a heavily edited Papa Don't Preach. Her latest Confessions Tour included to most references to the True Blue/Who's That Girl era since Blond Ambition - Live To Tell, the Where's The Party sample and - yet again - La Isla Bonita). All very pitiful considering the album sold by the millions and millions all around the world.

Any artist will tell you their third album is the most difficult. You need a new direction, you need to show you have staying power and on top of it all, you need to offer something new and fresh and still keep peoples interest! Madonna achieved all of these with the release of True Blue. A big Madonna fan will offer their left arm to see her perform Open Your Heart on her next tour (which she's apparently planning for 2008 to celebrate her 50th birthday AND 25 years at the top), as would I. The True Blue album is an important one for her. She grew up and tackled important coming of age subjects (Papa Don't Preach) whilst showing she still had good times ahead (Where's The Party) and showed she can still be sexy on top of it all (Open Your Heart, La Isla Bonita).

The True Blue album also premiered what would become a staple in her career - her very first re-invention. Just one year earlier she was dressed in 3 different lace see-thru tops at one time, ripped skirts and jeans and rags tied up in her hair writhing around in a wedding dress on her Virgin Tour. This Madonna was completely different and nobody can re-invent themselves in such a successful way AND still produce great music.

To sum it up the True Blue album is a fun, yet grown up look on what Madonna wanted to do with her music. It paved the way for Like A Prayer, Vogue and Erotica. Without True Blue she couldn't have done all the other things she did afterwards and luckily for us, the music on this album lived up to it.