Album: You Can Dance (1987)
Songwriters: Madonna/Stephen Bray
Producer: Stephen Bray

Spotlight resembles Everybody via Stephen Bray’s more recent drum machine/synth bass sound - Madonna’s roots, but not as flawless as you remember them. It was originally recorded during the sessions for True Blue, though left off the album for obvious reasons. Madonna’s innate ability for quality control is a big part of her success - hence why the majority of her many unreleased tracks are so vastly inferior. Spotlight is no exception, with clunky lines like “When you feel the rhythm, I’ll be by your side/Now you have the power baby, love is on your side” - and it doesn’t help that the melodies are perhaps the most uninspired she’d put to record that entire decade.

The thing is, the Who’s That Girl singles may have been a letdown after the sheer strength of True Blue, but at least they approached Madonna’s music from a slightly different direction. The entire You Can Dance release, however, is and was redundant beyond belief. It was marketed as an album of remixes - and they’re adequate, though heavily dated, not that anyone needed an eight-minute version of Into the Groove in 1987 either. The songs also segue together continuously, but it’s a botched job - despite being in totally different keys, Spotlight and Holiday crossfade into each other without any editing, and clash spectacularly. The promise of an unreleased track may have been quite the selling point, too, but Spotlight is on par with the rest of the release - mediocre.

Despite being more of a stopgap than a serious release, Madonna’s first compilation still sold over a million copies; similarly, Spotlight was only released as a physical single in Japan, but gained enough circulation to appear on Billboard’s Top 40 airplay chart in 1988. They were the last gasp of Madonna the teen idol - by then, an outdated style that she would thankfully never revisit. And good riddance - with Like a Prayer arriving a little over a year later, the music and the self-empowerment message would become vital like never before.