Single
Single: True Blue
Album: True Blue
Album release: June 1986
Single release: September 1986
Written by: Madonna, Stephen Bray
Produced by: Madonna, Stephen Bray
Released as a single in September 1986, after appearing on the True Blue album in June, True Blue is one of Madonna’s brightest tributes to old-school pop romance. Written and produced by Madonna and Stephen Bray, and mixed by Michael Verdick, the song draws on the sound and spirit of 1960s girl groups, Motown harmonies and doo-wop sweetness, while still sitting firmly inside Madonna’s mid-1980s pop world. It is open-hearted, melodic and deliberately charming: a love song dressed in vintage colours, but delivered with Madonna’s unmistakable snap.
True Blue gives the album its most uncomplicated burst of romantic optimism, but its simplicity is carefully built. Beneath the sunny surface sits a clever act of musical time travel, with Madonna and Stephen Bray folding 1960s pop memory into a glossy 1986 single. In the wider True Blue era, it balances the drama of Live to Tell, the controversy of Papa Don’t Preach and the heat of Open Your Heart with something lighter and more affectionate. It is Madonna at her most loved-up, but still alert to style, structure and pop mythology.
Madonna 