Songoftheday 10/19/14 - I know where beauty lives I've seen it once I know the warmth she gives...

Madonna - "Live To Tell"
from the album True Blue (1986)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 13

Today's Song of the Day is by the queen of the 80s, Madonna, who's sophomore album Like A Virgin spun off four top-40 pop hits including the longest-staying #1 in 1984-1985 with the title track. She also topped the pop chart with a song from the movie Vision Quest, "Crazy For You". After a tour that took her from small clubs to sports arenas in no time, Madonna set out to record what would be her third album, True Blue. The first single from the project was an atypical somber ballad she co-wrote with her producer Patrick Leonard. "Live To Tell", used in the movie starring her husband Sean Penn, At Close Range, spotlighted her lower register, while the visuals kept her at a dark and rather plainly dressed yet still beautifully made up. And the complexity of the production, to the stark false ending that preceded the bridge, was miles beyond any of the dance music she's been peddling so far...

"Live To Tell" became Madonna's third America #1 pop hit in June of 1986, while also topping the Adult Contemporary radio chart in Billboard magazine. Internationally, the single went to #1 in Canada and Italy, as it reached the runner-up spot in England, Ireland and Norway, and pretty much top-ten everywhere else.

As much as "Like A Virgin" put Madonna at A-list status, it truly was this record that changed her the most as an artist, maturing her sound and putting no doubts as to her range and any reliance on gimmicks. And with it being released three months before the True Blue album, it allowed for the focus to be on her and that record for quite a while relatively, in the age before internet album leaks and what not. By the time the full record was out, her more evolved dance fare was much easier to sell.

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Madonna first took "Live To Tell" on the road during the Who's That Girl tour in 1987...

In 1990, during her Blond Ambition tour, the song appeared in her Truth Or Dare documentary...

Los Angeles-based new wave band Berlin put a little "Top Gun" into the song in a cover for a Madonna tribute album in 1999..

 Italian dance music singer Lucrezia made a club version of "Live To Tell" in 2001 that climbed to #2 on the American club play chart in Billboard...

Finally, Madonna brought back "Live To Tell" for her Confessions concert, in over-the-top mind-fucking style...

Up tomorrow: the bearded Texans are rugged.