Songoftheday 3/11/15 - I see you on the street and you walk on by, you make me want to hang my head down and cry...


"Open Your Heart" - Madonna
from the album True Blue (1986)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 14

Today's Song of the Day is by Madonna, whose third album True Blue had already shuffled out three huge hits with a pair of #1s on "Live To Tell" and "Papa Don't Preach" and the top-3 title track. The fourth single from the record was the "party single" of the set (even more so than the non-single "Where The Party?"), "Open Your Heart". Written by Gardner Cole and Peter Rafelson for Cyndi Lauper (I could totally hear her covering this) with some lyrical changes by Madge herself, the record drew on the frenetic pace of Hi-NRG dance music with her flirtatious delivery bubbly and erotic at the same time. Patrick Leonard's bright production was a perfect look back at her disco beginnings after the more mature "Live To Tell" and "Papa". The music video featured a young boy trying to get into a peep show starring Madonna as a myriad a wacky guys ogle her...


"Open Your Heart" became Madonna's fifth #1 pop hit in the U.S. in February of 1987, as well as also being her fifth chart-topper on the dance club play list in Billboard magazine. The record also crossed over to the adult contemporary (or "easy listening") chart at #12. Internationally, the single went to the top ten in the UK (#4), Ireland (#2), Italy (#6), Australia (#6), Canada (#8), Belgium (#4), and the Netherlands (#6).

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Here's "Open Your Heart" live on her Who's That Girl tour in 1987 (which I ecstatically saw in Chicago)...



...and again on her Blonde Ambition show in 1990...


In 2010, Glee mashed-up "Open Your Heart" with "Borderline" in their Madonna "tribute" episode, and the result went to #78 on the Hot 100 and #66 in England...


Finally, we're back to Madonna with her rework of "Open Your Heart" on her MDNA tour in 2012...


Up tomorrow: Cuban-Americans are getting warily romantic.



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