One offs!

To find Madonna‘s two least widely released commercial singles, you have to go to completely opposite ends of the world.

Firstly, we have to head down to South America and back to 1983 for the Brazilian only release of ‘Physical Attraction‘ as a stand-alone full single in its own right. In the reverse of what was released in the rest of the world, the Brazilians got treated to ‘Burning Up‘ on the B-side. Copies are almost impossible to track down these days (as my battered copy plays testament to!) but sadly it didn’t warrant a lovely thick cardboard picture sleeve like the later Brazilian singles. Instead copies were slipped into die-cut black WEA sleeves. The song was also sent out as promos in the US to promote the ‘Burning Up’ release, but Brazil was the only place that you could pop down the shops and buy a proper release copy:

OK, OK, put the biro down, this is the A side, we get it!

To locate the only other of Madonna’s singles which was only fully commercially released in just one country we need to fly half-way round the world from Brazil up to the Philippines for the 1986 release of ‘Where’s The Party‘. Seemingly slipped in between the single releases of ‘True Blue‘ and ‘Open Your Heart‘, the jolly pop song ‘Where’s The Party’ was backed with ‘Virgin’ album track ‘Love Don’t Live Here Anymore‘ and again, didn’t warrant a picture sleeve. But that’s not so surprising as neither did any other Filipino 7″ singles. The song was also concurrently promoted in South Africa on 7″, but had no known commercial release, and it also later received promo exposure thanks to the ‘You Can Dance‘ project. Equally as hard to track down as the ‘Physical Attraction’ single, finding ‘Where’s The Party’ in mint condition will prove a headache for any collector, although thanks to ebay the hunt is a little easier these days:

Many other singles received very limited release, such as ‘Over And Over’, ‘Love Don’t Live Here Anymore’, ‘Spotlight’, ‘Dear Jessie‘ and ‘Bye Bye Baby‘ but these two are the only ones to receive truly unique status.

It should, of course, be noted that it is entirely possible there are other super-limited releases out there that are currently not widely known about – if that’s the case and you can provide pictoral proof I’ll be more than happy to change this