Posted By: Jon
Posted On: Dec 30, 2008
Views: 417
| YCD remixes
I know this isn't exactly every fan's favorite Madonna album and I can't
say it is mine even, but I have nonetheless always really liked it,
thinking then as now that putting together a collection of 12"-like
mixes of popular songs that hadn't had official 12" mixes made of them
despite sounding as though they ought to have was a fine idea. (You
could however argue that Everybody and Holiday already had 12" versions,
but I'd be inclined not to count these personally seeing as they were in
the US at least nothing more or less than the unedited, full-length
versions, while the UK 12" remix of Everybody was probably never that
accessible anyway.)
Besides the choice of tracks, the fact that most of the mixes on YCD are
extended and jazzed-up forms of the originals yet without departing too
radically from them (in common I gather with the vast majority of 1980s
12" mixes) is what I particularly like about it. Indeed, the added
sounds and livelier feel of the YCD version of Over And Over caused me
to go off that on the Like A Virgin album as soon as I first heard the
former (even if they do sound similar), and the more 'beaty' and
up-to-date nature of Everybody makes this one, too, an improvement on
the original in my opinion (though I do still like the First Album
version a lot). Into The Groove on the other hand has many echoes or
vocals repeated over and over again in rapid succession which I can
imagine might start to grate on me a bit if I listened to this mix more
than twice in a short space of time and which perhaps make it seem a
little dated now; but since they were so in vogue in the 1980s, they
undoubtedly helped to make it sound pretty cutting-edge back in its day
and hence very good for a 12" version that never was.
The previously unreleased Spotlight is I guess in somewhat of a class of
its own - not one of Madonna's best I wouldn't say, but decent enough to
have been deserving of a release as a single worldwide rather than (as
was the case) in Japan only.
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