Tracks: Give It To Me Shake Get Down Time To Dance Wild Dancing Let's Go Dancing We Are The Gods Cosmic Climb On The Street Oh My! Basics: Released: 1989 In 1981, when Madonna was hard-up for money she took a job singing back-up for avant garde German artist Otto Von Wernherr. She lent her vocals to three of his songs, "Wild Dancing", "Cosmic Climb", and "We Are The Gods". Her actual participation on the tracks was minimal consisting of repetitive chorus lines behind Otto's monotone, spoken, flat and German accented vocals. When Madonna hit the big time, he remixed the songs to bring Madonna's voice out to the front of the mixes and released them on the UK label, Receiver Records which is now marketed as the package "Madonna (& Otto Von Wernherr) In The Beginning" and features extended dance mixes of the songs. The tracks and Madonna's voice are all horrific and his countless re-releases and picture discs are a rip-off. If you're a completist collector, you'll probably want to have at least one version of it, but other than that, it's a complete waste of time and money. Shop: Buy The Early Years Review AllMusic.com -- by Heather Phares The audio equivalent of an embarrassing high school photo, Madonna: The Early Years is a collection of her earliest recordings and her first forays into dance music. However, anyone looking for songs along the lines of "Holiday" or "Lucky Star" will be sorely disappointed — the clunky rhythms, tuneless melodies, and annoying samples on "Time to Dance," "Wild Dancing," and "On the Street" are a far cry from the caliber of work Madonna produced just a short time after these tracks were recorded. Most disappointing for fans is the fact that on several tracks, Madonna shares the vocal duties with a pretentious male singer who makes the songs impossible to listen to with a straight face. The throwaway "We Are the Gods" is probably the collection's best track because it's so silly, but nothing on Madonna: The Early Years does justice to the artist or her fans.

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