I was not ready for the fall - too blind to see the writing on the wall

Starting my trip back through the 1986 album charts

28/12/86 : True Blue - Madonna

This is our sixth visit (including a rare acceptable best-of visit) with Her Royal Madgeness and it's fair to say they've been quite the mixed bag. This has to be pretty much peak Madonna era though and it's going to feature some top singles, but I'm still not convinced I'm going to find it a great album experience.

Well, it certainly kicks off with some top singles opening up with "Papa Don't Preach" and "Open Your Heart", neither of which I can fault. The album also includes "Live To Tell" (one of my faves of hers), "La Isla Bonita" and (of course) "True Blue" - she really was on a strong streak around this time. And that's over half the album already covered, so it would be churlish to complain about the rest really. And, for the most, I don't feel the need to be - but "Jimmy Jimmy" is a bit shit though.

We're at #2 in the charts this week on her 26th week of an 81 week run - she spent the first six weeks at #1, didn't leave the top ten until her 32nd week and was last seen for a single solitary week in '16. The rest of the top five is a compilation heavy Now 8, Paul Simon, a Kate Bush best-of and Hits 5 and there were no new entries in the entire chart (it's Christmas, after all!)

Wikipedia has a huge amount on the album (465 milliPeppers), a lot of which seems to be related to her marrying Sean Penn around this time (which I had completely forgotten had happened). It also goes into great depth on the tracks and the tour, none of which I bothered reading. The album was well received critically, but what they thought didn't really matter commercially because the girl could do no wrong with it getting to #1 in the all the countries Wikipedia lists except for Norway, Sweden and Austria where it only got to #2 - it also spawned three #1 singles in both the UK and the US.

"Customers also listened to" Cyndi Lauper, Paul Abdul and Jeff McPherson (huh?). There's only one Madonna though and this is her at the peak of her fame. Yes, it's best known for the singles but the rest of it was surprisingly bearable - but that's not to say I'll be rushing back to it.

1958 - Another one down
21/12/86 - A mostly forgotten group

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