I agree Who’s That Girl is a case of Madonna playing safe and coasting a bit, which was exactly the opposite of most of the songs in her fantastic early career. It’s the epitome of average, so a 5.

For the most part I think Madonna has a pretty immaculate singles discography, however this is a complete non-entity.

I go through phases with WTG, I don't hear it for ages then when I do I normally find it a decent enough tune (especially the "light up my life" part)- but neither is it "Into The Groove"...

I like WTG, its not as overplayed as some of her other songs.

I like Who's That Girl, and bought it at the time, though its not amongst her greatest hits of the 80's - but it is better than most of her other movie spin-offs!

Generally speaking my view of Who’s That Girl is that when I listen to it I find it isn’t as bad as I remember it being.

But it’s still not brilliant so no grumbles about it dropping out

14. Los Lobos - La Bamba (score 6/10)

Number 1 for 2 weeks

From Madonna to the song that knocked it off the top of the charts! La Bamba (or La Bomba originally) is a folk song from Mexico and was first made famous by Ritchie Valens (more on him in a bit) in 1958. However, it is a much older song (probably 17th century), originating from the phrase to wobble o shake and the earliest recording dates back to the 1930s. Forward then to the 1980s, Los Lobos (meaning the wolves in Spanish) had been around since the 1970s with very limited success on the charts mainly playing American jazz before deciding to get back to their Mexican roots in the early part of the 1980s.

So, back to Ritchie Valens. Luis Vadez wrote and directed a film of the musical career and life of Valens and this was titled La Bamba after his biggest hit. The soundtrack needed a cover of said hit and Los Lobos were approached to cover La Bamba. The video is typical of a film soundtrack, showing the band interspersed with film clips. The result was a hige worldwide smash for Los Lobos, the song spent 2 weeks at number 1 in the UK and was a chart topper in the USA and throughout Europe.

I have always liked this cover, its really uplifting and a massive earworm (even the Weird Al Jankovich cover Lasagne works well!). The Spanish guitars work particularly well with the melody and the song rarely fails to cheer me up.

I'm not a big fan of La Bamba or Who's That Girl but would certainly put La Bamba above the latter.

La Bamba is such fun and joy, I love it and used to hear it a lot growing up. I guess my dad would have played the Ritchie Valens version a lot.

Not keen on Who's That Girl, very middling for a Madonna No.1, considering some of her classic 80s No.2s especially.

On 25/03/2026 at 21:44, Jessie Where said:

For the most part I think Madonna has a pretty immaculate singles discography, however this is a complete non-entity.

This made me laugh but not sure it's intentional, "Who's That Girl" was one of the singles that was excluded from "The Immaculate Collection". I agree it's a poor record.

I do like the other 3 records that have featured here since I last posted.

Being a primary school kid at the time I was probably the right audience for "Star Trekkin" and remember seeing the mad video on Top of the Pops very well.

"Reet Petite" was really ahead of its time in the 50s when you compare it to what else was around at the time.

"La Bamba" was the first song I remember hearing sung in a foreign language which was something I found interesting. I also remember thinking at the time the singer looked like Tony Green on Bullseye.

la Bamba is fun, and it's a good version of a song I always vaguely was aware of as I grew up in the 60's and 70's. So it was nice it got a moment to shine, but I did overdose on it a bit that year so I'd rather hear Madonna's these days - there's no question which one would pop up in an oldies party though!

Just echoing the sentiments of others, La Bamba is good fun and it was unusual, especially at the time, to have a non English language #1. I’d agree with your 6/10.

13. M/A/R/R/S - "Pump up the Volume" (score: 7/10)

Number 1 for 2 weeks

 

Dance, dance! Now this is the much better innovation in dance music from 1987 imo. Pump up the Volume was a huge milestone for both house music and the use of sampling (the title being derived from Eric B & Rankim’s I Know You Got Soul from earlier in 1987) and hit number 1 in several other countries. 

 

M/A/R/R/S were a mix of a group called Colourbox which produced electronic music and ban A.R. Kane which were known for their dream pop. The A side (Pump up the Volume) was primarily by Colourbox and the B side was a A.R. Kane production called Anitina – this came about as the two bands didn’t massively get on so they produced a track each, but then had input post production on each others songs. The original version of Pump.. was instrumental with the sample that included the song title, then A.R. Kane over dubbed some extra guitar. The real difference though came from some scratch effects and samples. 

 

The two tracks were originally released on white label to clubs in July 1987, with no artist names or credits. Pump… proved much more popular in clubs and was then released properly as a 12” single where it charted at 35. But, the song really only took off when a new remix was released a week after charting which contained the many samples (Public Enemy, Bar-Keys and Criminal Element Orchestra to name a few) we are used to hearing to this day. This was then edited to a 7” mix and the single started to rise in the charts. But (there is always a but in sampled song stories!) when the song reached number 2 it had an injunction issued by Stock, Aitken, Waterman as the sample from Roadblock wasn’t cleared beforehand. But, this was lifted provided that the overseas market did not contain the sample as it was too late to change it in the UK! (Ironically, it was pointed out that the bassline from Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up produced by SAW cheekily contained the bassline from Trapped by Colonel Abraham!). Legal issues aside, the song hit number 1 anyway (knocking off Astley haha). M/A/R/R/S never released anything again, making this a genuine one-hit wonder.

 

The influence of this song cannot be under-stated, it massively poplarised House music in the UK and directly led to the success of early House hits such as Bomb The Bass’ Beat Dis, S-Express and Coldcut’s Doctorin’ The House. I loved this track so much back in the day, the video seemed so futuristic with the satellite and space theme (and they were called Mars!) and the samples made more than the sum of its parts. A solid dance track and in another year this would be easily in my top 10.

I was waiting for this one to come up, sorry in advance about the incoming enthusiasm guys!

One of my all time favourite singles and an absolute epiphany for me when I first heard it back in ‘87. Even now it still sounds like the future. House, hip hop, indie, dub, sampling, innovation, true one hit wonder and controversy over that SAW ‘Roadblock’ sample resulting in a new radio edit and contributing to a precipitous drop down the charts, all adding to its mystique. The sound of club culture taking over UK pop and, as mentioned, resulting in many often fantastic imitators.

But the original is still best. It’s very rare that a song can be pinpointed as a true game changer but this is one of them. An easy 10/10 for me (11 if I’m allowed)!

And Anitina is also good too.

Nothing that I would have in my top 10 has gone yet so I think we're pretty aligned thus far... Michael Jackson next please