Madonna - Who's That Girl (CD 1995)

With some clever marketing this album shifted millions worldwide, and was more successful than the film itself. However, it's not really a Madonna album. Although she has four songs on the soundtrack - (three of which were successful singles), a tour of the same name and she dominates the sleeve - her singles aren't of the usual Madonna standard.

The title track is the stand-out track of hers, and on the whole album incorporating the Spanish-pop as done previously on her hit "La Isla Bonita". "Causing A Commotion", "Can't Stop" and the ballad "The Look Of Love" can only be described as average compared to Madonna's other singles of that decade. It seems like they were left over from another project rather than specially produced tracks for a film, and are better seen and heard on the DVD of her live tour of 1987 "Ciao Italia".

The rest of the soundtrack is disappointing in that the only other well established performer featured is Scritti Politti. Duncan Faure's "24 Hours" (produced by Stephen Bray coincidentally) is a good sing-a-long synth-pop song as is Scritti's contribution "Best Thing Ever". The other songs aren't really worth listening to unless you're really into them having seen the movie. Club Nouveau's "Step By Step" is a dated funk track and Coati Mundi's "El Coco Loco" sounds so bad I don't even know where it was found! Even the Stock, Aitken & Waterman offering by Michael Davidson "Turn It Up" is a terrible Euro-synth dance track, considering SAW had created so many better hits in the late '80s.

As a soundtrack I wouldn't recommend this album to listen to on its own. I'm sure it did work well on the film (which I've seen once); and the Madonna tracks can thankfully be appreciated elsewhere - on CD singles and on the live DVD.