“Angel” by Madonna is one of her most overlooked singles!

OP = Madonna, hoping for a Kate Bush-style renaissance.

I always enjoyed that single. How about this one. Love Tried to Welcome Me

This was in the album era and by that point “Like a Virgin,” “Material Girl” and “Dress You Up” had driven enough sales that everyone had the album, ergo, already owned the song. That cow had been milked.

I miss melody in pop music.

[quote]That cow had been milked.

The first of a million times, believe me.

My favorite track off that very overrated album. Like A Virgin is my least fave of her classic albums.

I preferred the DSS & Vision Quest tunes over the official releases at the time.

A great remix

R3 Angel was the third single, before Dress You Up.

OP, I think part of the issue is that it never got a proper music video. It only got that montage video in the UK that was cut at 2:30. Although to be fair, Dress You Up only got a live video.

[quote] That cow had been milked.

This was pre Mariah right?

Hardly overrated. One of the best pop albums of the 80's. Nile got her quirkiness in a way that no one else has. 84-85 was probably her best era, watching her go from a hot dance act to a full-fledged superstar.

She never looked more beautiful than at the black and white ending of the Virgin Tour VHS.

Number five on the US billboard hot 100 is hardly a failure.

R11 who said it was a failure???

You have to remember Madonna had an astounding 6 songs hit the top 5, two hit #1, in a span of 5/6 months. Add to that Lucky Star and Borderline were also being played on radio, so her songs were competing against themselves for radio play (counting towards chart position along with sales), in a era where the competition was fierce. In one of the recent biographies of her, many radio analysts said it is likely all would have hit #1 had her singles not been released so close to each other. They cannibablized each other’s radio play and sales. Warner also didn’t allow her to release Into The Groove, which was #1 in sales and #1 in airplay (thus it would have 100% hit #1). Back then, the rules were you had to officially release the song for it to be eligible to hit.

That shows how insane and intense Madonnamania was. That stats don’t always tell the story. Her success was far greater than the numbers imply.

Her singles were selling 500,000 to a million copies themselves. Material Girl was denied a #1 due to radio play since radio was still playing the hell out of LAV and LS. Crazy For You clawed its way to #1 over USA for Africa despite fighting for radio play against LAV and MG. ITG did hit #1, though denied it officially. Gambler was due to be released, but Warner blocked it after the success of Crazy For You.

It was one of several Top 5 hits that didn’t make it onto her Immaculate Collection greatest hits album in late 1990. Dress You Up, True Blue, Causing a Commotion and Who’s That Girl didn’t either.

R13 I think pretty much everywhere that Into The Groove was officially released as a single it hit #1. In the US they did this funky thing where they released it as the B side of the Angel 12” single.

Angel and Dress You Up both should have had proper official music videos.

They played both of those songs on the radio, so they surely could have aired both videos on MTV.

I have heard some people say that there were already so many Madonna videos on MTV at the time so that was perhaps one of the reasons Angel and Dress You Up didn't get proper videos but wouldn't that be true about songs on the radio too?

Another theory is that she didn't have the time to film music videos for those 2 songs but she did film the video for Vogue not long before the Blond Ambition tour so surely could have filmed an Angel video before The Virgin Tour. And she would have had time to film a Dress You Up video after the tour.

And for those who think that it had to do with money, had there been videos for those 2 songs the singles and album would have sold even more and they would have more than made up for the money spent on the videos.

Also, a video for Holiday would have been nice.

And the Into The Groove video could have used some proper footage of her interspersed with the film clips like the way the Who's That Girl video was done.

I cannot imagine how exciting 1985 was to Madonna fans. I was born in 87 and didn't become a fan until the late 90s when I heard LAP for the first time as a 10 year old and then listened to TIC and Ray of Light. Anyways, I think her debut is much better than LAV. LAV sounds bland in comparison to the debut. There are no bad songs on the debut and none of the songs, not even Holiday, dominate or tower over the others.

Dec 1984 to May 1985 was unbelievable in terms of her domination.

Don’t forget Sidewalk Talk, which she solo wrote for Jellybean, was a hit and being played on radio during this time.

She sang on Sidewalk Talk, too. Was it advertised as another Madonna song?

Did she first officially become a star after the 1984 MTV VMA performance of LAV?

R22 oh yes!

Her world domination didn’t start until Like A Prayer, though. 6 years.

Never cared much for this one. I wasn't upset it was left off The Immaculate Collection. Who's That Girl, well that I'm still angry about.

R24, why do you say that?

[quote]Her world domination didn’t start until Like A Prayer, though. 6 years.

I thought that was True Blue. It debuted at #1 in some 30+ countries.

Have you ever watched “Who’s That Girl - Live In Japan?” That audience went crazy. That was 1987.

This song is like a nursery rhyme. Maybe good for skipping rope but little else.

I’m sure it was good filler for light aerobics classes in the mid-80s.

Definitely not greatest hits material.

Yes I like it a lot. It's simple, but great. Like it better than Dress You Up, which I loved as a kid, but has become more "meh" (not that I dislike it) as I've gotten older. I like a lot of Madonna albums, but I really don't have that much love for Like A Virgin. Two of the huge singles - Material Girl and Like a Virgin never hit for me. I like all of her other 80s albums - Madonna, True Blue, Like a Prayer - more than Like a Virgin.

True Blue was her masterpiece. Not one bad song on there. For her first two albums, the only good songs were the singles.

Bedtime Stories is her masterpiece for me.

Hopefully we'll get to see the full uncut The Virgin Tour released one of these days on DVD/Blu-ray with Angel, Borderline, and Burning Up.

I love this song!

I love the instrumental bridge! It always makes me want to dance.

Someone says they miss the melody in pop and I agree. I miss the different arrangements. Today you after the first minute of the song, you’ve heard it all.

This song is a great example. The chorus vocals grow more powerful and change up throughout the song.

Instead of like the loops we hear today.

The original “Stay” from that album is one of my favorite Madonna songs, the one she recorded in 1981.

It’s the mother of “Confessions on a Dance Floor”.

R35, I wonder why they changed it.

I love this song. It's fun and catchy. Very G-rated. I was a 13 year old gayling at the time. The 12" mix is also fantastic and fun. I STILL have that 12" record - which I touted around in my school bag (at link). I haven't heard if for years.

Listening to it again - her voice is much better when not singing too low. She does the higher octaves better.

R27 that was because she was now a massive star due to Like A Virgin. See how that works?

R32 that’s a 90s album. They’re stating her 80s albums

R7 YESSS. I was gonna post that. That extended version with the crowd chanting "Madonna" is intoxicating. My brother had that record and I would just stare at it.

Madonna was an international superstar with Like A Virgin, not Like a Prayer.

Angel is a great song. Very understated. Great lyrics, melody, bridge, vocals.

She cut Angel from the Virgin Tour DVD due to her being dissatisfied with the vocals, but you can hear them on the Dallas bootleg. She doesn’t sound as good on Angel, but in Dallas she nails Borderline vocally very well.

[quote] True Blue was her masterpiece. Not one bad song on there.

Jimmy Jimmy and Love Make the World Go Round beg to differ. But it DOES have her best singles.

[quote] Dress You Up, True Blue, Causing a Commotion and Who’s That Girl didn’t either.

What's crazy is that Who's that Girl was actually more popular than LIB at first. It's crazy now because LIB is so massive on youtube and does well on spotify while Who's that Girl is forgotten. Probably because the latter was never included on TIC.

R41, didn't she cut Borderline too? Anyways, I think she sounded great on Borderline on the clips I've seen for the Virgin tour.

I've read on another website that Madonna's popularity increased every month from 1984 until the end of 1987, which is just wild. People today really don't understand how much bigger Madonna was than every other 80s star minus Michael Jackson. Sure, there were some 80s stars that had one album that was bigger than either LAV or True Blue. but they weren't able to sustain that (Bruce Springsteen, GNR, Prince, etc.).

I love the extended mix of Dress You Up. It's amusing how this was on Tipper Gore's list of X-rated songs or whatever.

[quote] Jimmy Jimmy and Love Make the World Go Round beg to differ. But it DOES have her best singles.

Those are the two weakest songs but still listenable IMO.

R45 I mean...she had an entire generation of young girls dressing like her. I cringe when I see anything from the 80s with an actress dressed liked her, but that was her impact. That doesn't happen anymore. She was like Elvis for two decades. I can see why she's having difficulty accepting her place in the contemporary cultural zeitgeist.

R48, not disagreeing with you. Nobody is out here dressing like Taylor Swift (nor should there be) despite how popular she is. Also, as silly as it may seem now, Madonna did inspire a lot of dialogue via controversy. I remember there was an entire Donohue episode during the Vogue/Justify My Love period and everyone in the audience was defending her against some of the criticisms leveled against her. And many of these women were older, these weren't teens. It was fascinating to watch. I cannot find it anymore on youtube, maybe it was pulled.

There were no videos for Keep it together and Hanky Panky either. They might have used movie clips from Dick Tracey for HP. I was surprised that Keep it together did so well on the charts without any music video or performance clip. Then Rescue me as well. I don’t recall ever hearing either on the radio.

R50. tbh, Keep it Together is mediocre, Oh Father was a much better song (and a bold choice for a single which is why it missed the top 10). Hanky Panky was another bold choice for a song. A song about spanking? Now I'm Following You (Part II) would have probably done better. Actually, I'm Breathless is probably one of the boldest choices made by a mega music star at their peak. Madonna was/is always trashed for being a bad singer, so for her to make an album of torch songs was audacious.

Hanky Panky was hardly bold and it wasn’t her being bold, it was a song for Dick Tracey.

[quote] Hanky Panky was hardly bold and it wasn’t her being bold, it was a song for Dick Tracey.

It was a torch song about spanking co-written and sung by a woman routinely criticized for being a shitty singer. It was a very bold choice to release that song on the radio and it went gold!

She was so dominant worldwide. Her height was incredible.

[quote] Her height was incredible.

4'11"? Just how tall are YOU!?

Only Madonna didn’t write the Dick Tracy songs.

So many hits a hit like Angel is forgotten. All with shitty Warner Bros as a record company. If she'd been with ANY other she'd have been even more massive. WBR didn't take care of her, or Prince, after the late 80s.

R57, which record companies were bigger?

R58, that poster was saying that WB is a shitty record company that didn't care much about its talent (nothing to do with size). That may be true, Prince HATED Warner Brothers and trashed them throughout the 90s. I wonder if there are any record companies at the time that were better? Maybe Sony under Mottola but Michael Jackson had his own opinions on him (he called him the devil) and Mottola obviously sabotaged Mariah when she left.

Mottola was an evil man.

Happy to be reminded of Angel--hadn't heard it in a long time. It's cute and catchy.

I don't mind that Dress You Up didn't have a proper video. I loved everything about the concert video: zaftig Madonna, the psychedelic colors/costumes, the kitschy choreo and the back-up dancing boys.

Concert videos were common

I don't know why Love Don't Live Here Anymore is so underappreciated.

She sounds great on it.

It’s a ridiculous melodramatic song that isn’t at least fun to make up for how ridiculous it is. r63

Lady Gaga as Madonna on the LAV album cover

Gaga as Madonna on all of M's album covers

An alternate shot from the LAV album cover photoshoot.

Dress You Up concert vid was perfect. It generated a lot of interest in her because it showed she could sing live, and she was a great, charismatic live performer. Live Aid had showed that, too, but the Virgin Tour video cemented it.

Which Virgin Tour hair was the best?

No matter what you may think of Madonna, she was instrumental in advancing the acceptance of gay men in society. She did a helluva lot for us in a time when it was not fashionable at all.

Agree, I love that song. It’s one of my favorites of hers, but she never does it in concert anymore.

It’s one of my favorite Madonna songs

It got lost in the blizzard of hits she had in winter/spring of 1985. Sadly. It would’ve benefited from being released later in ‘85 IMO. Warner Bros should have just let her release Into The Groove officially since it was already dominating radio. That would have left room for Angel later, after Dress You Up.

Dress You Up sucked

R73, I agree.

R70 And she did a lot behind the scenes that didn’t get press like routinely visiting dying AIDS patients at St. Vincents who were left abandoned by their families. She held them, cried with them, paid medical bills, for funerals. I don’t know why these stories don’t get out as much as the bad behavior ones. She’s not a bad person. She’s a very complicated person, and probably someone I personally wouldn’t get a long with, but wouldn’t feel is a bad person. And I despise most people.

Gambler is truly her forgotten hit from 1985.

R76, I don't think she wants those stories out there. She hates being viewed as soft. She wanted that "Sean" moment from Truth or Dare taken out but the director refused. But I actually DID dig up an article from back then about those hospital visits she did. It also mentioned that Madonna was not one to spend a ton of money and she was very frugal.

R78 Yet she did spend for those poor souls.

R79, it was specifically referring to her spending on trasnportation and things like that. Madonna was very shrewd that way.

R48 It’s interesting that someone who has had such a grasp on pop culture and marketing for decades - being the pioneer of the music video artist on MTV, being one of the first artists to embrace the internet, being one of the first artists (she was actually the second by a month from Fleetwood Mac) to release a digital download single - she’s had a hard time with social media.

You would have thought social media would have been so easy for her. Most people will even say she would have been an influencer in the 80s if social media was a thing.

But she’s been posting unflattering photos and saying stupid shit since she first started. It’s so weird how Madonna of all people, failed social media.

R78 She denies, even testified, that he didn’t do anything.

I’m pretty sure I read the police report that was leaked when it happened and the cop said Madonna had escaped to the neighbors and she was pretty beat up and disheveled.

R50 I was both in 1987 and didn’t actually buy a Madonna album until 2001 as I fell in love with her watching the Drowned World Tour on HBO. Although I’ve always loved her music. Maybe she was on MTV so much I never bothered to buy an album.

But I remember really diving into discovering her music and the one thing about songs like “Causing A Commotion”, “True Blue”, “Keep It Together”, “Rescue Me” is while they’ve been forgotten about, you can play them to any 50 year old and they know them.

r83 all of the songs you listed were played on the radio in heavy rotation at the time they were all released.

[quote] She denies, even testified, that he didn’t do anything.

The "Sean" moment in Truth or Dare was referring to the moment when she is asked who her true love was/is. She replied with Sean. She wanted that moment removed from the movie.

Why? It showed the only sympathetic moment for her.

R86, that's the point. She doesn't like being seen as vulnerable.

No one wants to be seen as vulnerable in a marriage or relationship.

It makes you weak, Madonna was a major superstar at the time.

It makes you human.

It's Human Nature. A shitty non-hit song that I will include in every tour.

R90, for some reason, her fans love it. I'm a fan who finds it obnoxious.

Gaga has never seemed fun. Madonna, from the '80s to the late 90s, at least SEEMED like she would be cool to hang out with. I never got that from Gaga. Nah, she seemed artsy and insufferable from day one.

R92, I think Gaga seemed fun in her first two years. But not since Born This Way. By then, she was going on about how artistic she was and she was really convinced she was an "artist" versus an entertainer.

Madonna looks so beautiful on the Angel single cover

Why was the song cut so short in the Angel compilation music video?

Also, where all was this video aired? I know it wasn't aired in the USA...

I wouldn't say beautiful. She had harsh Italian features.

R96, which features don't you like?

Italians tend to be quite attractive.

Why didn't this song get a video?

It deserved one!

She was on tour, wasn't she? Maybe she didn't have time.

Yes, Madonna was everywhere around this time in 1985 so maybe part of the reason she didn't release a video is due to fear of overexposure by WB.

The song was played on the radio though so it doesn't make sense that there was no video. Airplay is airplay. If the radio played it, MTV surely could have.

WB is such a shitty record company.

Angel is a fun song. From Like a Virgin, I always thought "Love Doesn't Live Here Anymore" was really great.

Madonna filmed the Vogue video right before the Blond Ambition tour so she could have filmed a video for Angel before The Virgin Tour.

It went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Overlooked?!

R106, it did not. It was a top 5 hit. Mostly because it was a B-side to Into the Groove.

Why didn't Holiday, Angel, and Dress You Up get proper videos?

I really love "Cherish".

It's very sweet, and sounds like it could have been written for The Partridge Family.

That is not a negative for me.

It looks like I was correct, WB was afraid of her hits competing with each on the charts (which seemed to happen anyways).

R109, maybe I'm weird, but Cherish always sounded downbeat to me. It always sounded superficially happy while it was really mournful about the death of her marriage to Sean Penn.

R110, airplay is airplay though. The radio played it, so MTV surely could have too. It's the same thing. It wouldn't have hurt anything.