Мадоннаның «Who's That Girl» әлемдік турнесі (1987)

1987 concert tour by Madonna

The Who's That Girl World Tour (billed as Who's That Girl World Tour 1987) was the second concert tour by American singer and songwriter Madonna. The tour supported her 1986 third studio album True Blue, as well as the 1987 soundtrack Who's That Girl. It started on June 14, 1987, at the Osaka Stadium in Osaka, Japan, and ended on September 6 of the same year at the Stadio Artemio Franchi in Florence, Italy. It was Madonna's first world tour and marked her first visits to Japan and Europe. Musically and technically superior to her previous Virgin Tour, Who's That Girl incorporated multimedia components to make the show more appealing. Madonna trained physically doing aerobics, jogging and weight lifting, to cope with the choreography and the dance routines. For the costumes, she collaborated with designer Marlene Stewart, expanding on the idea of bringing her popular video characters to life onstage, reworking scenes from her music videos. The stage had four video screens, multimedia projectors and a flight of stairs in the middle. Patrick Leonard, who was the music director, encouraged Madonna to go with the idea of remixing and presenting her older songs for the show. The show consisted of seven costume changes, with song and dance routines, theatrics and addressing social causes. The tour was critically appreciated, with reviewers commending the extravagant nature of the concert and Madonna as a performer. It was a commercial success, grossing in total of US$25 million by playing in front of 1.5 million audience. According to Pollstar, it was the second highest grossing female concert tour of 1987, behind Tina Turner's Break Every Rule Tour. Who's That Girl was broadcast in a number of international television channels and was released on VHS titled Ciao Italia: Live from Italy. Biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli commented that "Many female artists behave like a diva for a period when they reach superstar status, and the 'Who's That Girl?' tour marked the beginning of Madonna's." however the soundtrack of the film proved to be a big success. The album consisted of four Madonna songs, along with tracks by Warner Bros. Records' acts including Club Nouveau, Scritti Politti and Michael Davidson. Three of Madonna's songs were released as singles, namely: "Who's That Girl", "Causing a Commotion" and "The Look of Love"; all of them were critically and commercially successful. But still they wanted to "milk in" the success of Madonna, a view shared by Peter Guber and Jon Peters, executive producers of the film. Hence they felt a worldwide concert tour was the appropriate thing to do, since it would promote both the soundtrack and the film, as well as Madonna's successful third studio album True Blue, released the year before.

The show started with a performance by Level 42. As their performance ended, the lights started blinking all around the stadium and Finch appears on stage, looking for Madonna. She performs dance moves behind the screen, which starts going up slowly. She wore a custom made black pointy corset by Trashy Lingerie and fishnets like the costume in the music video of "Open Your Heart". For "True Blue", Madonna came up on the stage wearing a blue, silk taffeta dress over her corset and a blue scarf hidden in her bosom. During "Papa Don't Preach" Madonna wore a black leather jacket over her dress and walked around the stage while singing. along with scenes of John Perry III's short film, The Nightmare, ending with the words "Safe Sex", as Madonna finished the song. She dedicated the song to the Pope, marking her first conflict with the Vatican, as Pope John Paul II urged Italian fans to boycott her concerts. During "White Heat"—which featured dialogues from the 1949 James Cagney film of the same name—a video screen displayed a scene from the film, with Cagney saying the dialogue: "A copper  a copper fellas". She followed it with "Causing a Commotion" which ended with Madonna pointing to her dancers and musicians across stage and uttering the line "He/She's got the moves baby" numerous times. Then a red phone booth appears on the stage, in which Madonna's silhouette appears to be changing costume. She emerges from the booth wearing the Edna Everage inspired costume and starts singing "Dress You Up". A backdrop then started showing the newspaper reports on Madonna's 1985 Playboy nude picture release. The backdrop moves up as Madonna appears, wearing a loose fitted black pant and top, with bejeweled glasses, for singing "Where's the Party". For "Into the Groove" Finch joins her on stage to dance alongside. Madonna then wore a pink bolero jacket which had the can of soup and the words "U" and "DANCE" flanking it. At the end she is joined by her backup singers and dancers. Together they take a bow to the audience and finish the performance. Next Madonna sang "La Isla Bonita" as a part of the encore, wearing the same red flamenco dress she had worn in the video.

The tour received rave reviews. Biographer Taraborrelli commented, "Madonna had more confidence in her stage presence, her music was showing a deeper maturity, her voice was fuller, and the show was expertly choreographed with complex numbers. Peter Goddard from Toronto Star reviewed the concert in CNE Stadium and said, "Madonna proved that she may be a lost girl in the roads of life, like her film, but she ain't lost when she is singing. Especially during songs like 'Papa Don't Preach', her vocal prowess was substantially notable." Scott A Zamost and Elizabeth Snead, writing for Chicago Tribune, felt that "For the most part, the premiere concert on Madonna's Who's That Girl tour was a success, an extravaganza of multiple videos, flashing lights and precision dancing. If the high tech accoutrements and inferior sound system made it difficult to hear the singer, one hopes that will be refined as the tour continues across the United States. [ ] As a dancer, Madonna is supreme on stage. Her trademark skip to a funky beat highlighted the constant acrobatics. One minute she was stage left, another minute stage right. She ran up a wide staircase center stage to party with her three back up singers, then scooted down to the stage floor, swinging her hips, accompanied by other dancers." Deborah Wilker from The Day commented that "Madonna's got an almost rabid energy about her, which she maintains for the duration of 90 minutes. In fact she rarely leaves the stage—preferring to change costumes in a phone booth instead. Boy can she change. One minute she's a 50's teenager in a party dress, next she's playing a speak easy chanteuse. It's almost difficult to believe that a career as young as Madonna's could contain so much popular material that on stage the star can barely get to half of it." Don McCLeese from Chicago Sun Times reviewed the performance at Soldier Field stadium said that "'Shine' seems like a dim possibility for her Soldier Field performance this month, because Madonna invariably takes the stage after dusk has turned to dark and brings back the sun again for the two hours that she played." In another review, McCleese commented: "[Madonna] proceeded to show Soldier Field a few moves that would gain Walter Payton some yardage, while putting a whole new twist on the term 'backfield in motion'. The girl really knows how to cause a commotion." Richard Harrington from The Washington Post felt that the tour "would have played better to a full house at the Capital Centre or Merriweather Post Pavilion. But to her credit, Madonna performed last night as if the house was full, and the show is splendid pop theater. Madonna has described it as 'Broadway in a stadium', and with her nonstop dancing, costume changes, mini dramas and dynamic pacing, it is sort of a 'Liza With an M.'" Jon Pareles from The New York Times reviewed the concert at Madison Square Garden in New York and felt that "For all its effort and professionalism, the concert wasn't exactly moving; Madonna had to ask the audience to get up and dance twice. But as shallow, kitschy, pop entertainment—no big messages, no revelations, familiar sounds and images, plenty of catchy tunes—the show was easy to enjoy. [ ] The tunes stick to her limited vocal range and usually use short phrases—the better to keep her from running out of breath as she dances across the stage. And her band knocked the songs out with solid precision, recreating the gleaming sound of her records. On their rankings of Madonna's tours, VH1's Christopher Rosa and The Odyssey's Rocco Papa both placed Who's That Girl in the fourth position; according to the former, it includes "some of M’s most effervescent performing" and a "setlist that rivals any Madonna tour to date", while the latter deemed it "much more simple compared to what we're used to seeing from Madonna" and pointed out "a certain spark and joy captured during this show which has never been duplicated" and how the singer "proved her ability to command an audience". From The Advocate, Gina Vivinetto placed it on the eight position of her ranking.

After the tour was announced, the first two shows at Wembley Stadium in London sold out at a then record breaking time of 18 hours and 9 minutes for 144,000 tickets. A concert was also planned in Basel, Switzerland for August 31, 1987, but negotiations between Madonna's management and local organizers failed due to the high fee of one million ($ million in dollars) that Madonna's camp demanded.

The concert at Korakuen Stadium, Tokyo was broadcast on June 22, 1987, in Japan only. It was later released on VHS and LaserDisc as Who's That Girl: Live In Japan. It was the first television broadcast using Dolby Surround Sound and was promoted by Mitsubishi, as Madonna had previously starred in television commercials for their video recorders. The concert was released commercially in 1988 as Ciao Italia: Live from Italy and was later available on LaserDisc and DVD. The video contains the full Who's That Girl show, produced using footage from three different shows: Tokyo on June 22, 1987, Turin on September 4, 1987, and Florence on September 6, 1987. Heather Phares from Allmusic said: "A much simpler, less choreographed performance than her later extravaganzas like The Girlie Show World Tour, Ciao Italia is still entertaining in its own right, and will definitely please fans nostalgic for some old school Madonna hits." Mark Knopher from the Los Angeles Daily News commented that "Ciao Italia shows the glitz and the glamor that made this tour so remarkable." It charted at the top of the Billboard music DVD chart on for six weeks and ranked at two on the "1988 Year end Top Ranked Tapes". Ciao Italia also charted at number three on the Finnish DVD chart in 2009.

Adapted from the Who's That Girl World Tour 1987 program.