Development
"Remixing is a form of secondary creativity. Dance music elevates the DJ and the mixer to being almost on a level with the musician. In my opinion this is false. Manipulation of pre-recorded sound sources may be creative in a secondary sense, and may be valid in its own field, but it is pseudo musicianship. That's why we tried to have a fresh approach to the songs for You Can Dance, as if we were developing and composing them for the first time.
—Patrick Leonard talking about working on the album.Madonna turned to her old friend and producer John "Jellybean" Benitez to help her remixing the songs, and also enlisted the help of Patrick Leonard, the producer of True Blue. Together they chose six of Madonna's old songs and decided to give it a remixed form. The songs chosen were "Holiday", "Everybody" and "Physical Attraction" from Madonna (1983), "Into the Groove" and "Over and Over" from Like a Virgin (1984), and lastly, "Where's the Party" from True Blue. Along with the pre-released tracks, a never-before released song called "Spotlight" was included as a bonus. Madonna said that she was inspired by the song "Everybody Is a Star" (1970), by American rock band Sly and the Family Stone. Written by Madonna, Stephen Bray and Curtis Hudson, "Spotlight" was originally recorded during the True Blue recording sessions. It was omitted from the album because Madonna felt that it was similar in composition and structure to "Holiday".
After the remixing of the songs started, Benitez noted, "We decided on basic questions like 'How loud should the drums be? How much should the vocals stand out?' These are creative decisions which will change the finished piece of music." Shep Pettibone, one of the producers of the album commented that "normally, without some music to work on, the remixer has nothing. But we already had Madonna's catalogue of danceable songs which was enough material for lifetime." The mixes on You Can Dance exhibited a number of typical mixing techniques. Instrumental passages were lengthened to increase the time for dancing, which undermined the tighter structure of the original pop song. Vocal phrases were repeated and subjected to multiple echoes, panned across the stereophonic sound outlets. At certain points, almost no music is heard except the drums and at others, the drums are removed with only the high-hat left to keep time.
The album cover denoted Madonna's continued fascination with Spanish culture and fashion. She wore a female toreador outfit with a lacy bustier, embroidered bolero jacket and a cummerbund with a flouncy bustle. Jeri Heiden, who had worked on the cover art for True Blue, was given the task of editing the photos and making them compatible for appearance in an album cover. Shot by Herb Ritts, the cover showed Madonna again as a platinum blond. Heiden explained in an interview with Aperture magazine in October 2006 that the cover was not meant to be a tie-in with the True Blue cover. "It was just Madonna's look at the time – Platinum Blond. And of course the handwriting reappears on that album." The album sleeve included a free poster and the gold wrap-around liner notes contained approximate running time to indicate the difference between the length of the remix and the original track. Brian Chin, a Rolling Stone journalist, wrote the liner notes for the album, explaining the process of remix and why the seven songs were chosen for the tracklist.
Read more about this topic: You Can Dance
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