Bedtime Story (Madonna song)
"Bedtime Story" is a song by American singer Madonna from her sixth studio album, Bedtime Stories (1994). It was released as the third single from the album on February 13, 1995, by Maverick Records. The song was written by Björk, Nellee Hooper and Marius De Vries. She re-wrote a demo of the song to the current version, which was then produced by Madonna and Hooper. A mid-tempo electronic and house song with acid, ambient and techno influences, "Bedtime Story" has an underlying skeletal synth melody influenced by minimal trance music. The track's unconventional, electronic sound was a departure from the pop-R&B-based tracks throughout the rest of the album. Lyrically, the song talks about the joys of the unconscious world.
"Bedtime Story"
"Bedtime Story" received favorable reviews from music critics, who praised the song's hypnotic and electronic style, and deemed it an underrated song which could have had great potential. Commercially, the single reached the top-ten in the record charts of the United Kingdom, Italy and Australia, but missed the top 40 in the United States, while peaking at number one on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart. The accompanying music video for "Bedtime Story" was directed by Mark Romanek and is listed as one of the most expensive music videos of all time with a cost of $5 million ($10 million in 2023 dollars[1]). It features surrealistic and new age imagery, with influences from artists such as Remedios Varo, Frida Kahlo and Leonora Carrington. The video received acclaim from critics and is permanently displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
"Bedtime Story" was performed at the 1995 Brit Awards in London with Madonna wearing a silver Versace dress and long blonde extensions, becoming one of the 30 best moments of the awards show history according to Marie Claire. A remixed version of the song was also used as a video interlude on her Re-Invention World Tour in 2004, and was later performed by Madonna on her 2023–24 Celebration Tour. Critics and scholars noted that the song foreshadowed Madonna's move towards electronic music in her future work.
Recording and composition[edit]
"Bedtime Story" is an electronic song, a notable departure from the other tracks on its parent album, which are more R&B and new jack swing-driven.[8] Unlike Madonna's more up-tempo, melodic work, the song is slower and has less melody but a more complex rhythmic structure.[11] It has an ambient-influenced tone, with a "pulsating" and a "deep, bubbling" house beat.[3][12] There are stylistic comparisons to acid house music with its "skeletal" synth arrangement, influences of minimal trance, as well as techno.[13][12] The song's instrumentation is synthesized, consisting of drum machine loops, organs, strings, gurgles, handclaps, as well as a digitally-altered "homophonic" choir.[11] According to sheet music published by Musicnotes.com, "Bedtime Story" is written in the key of G minor and has a moderate tempo of 108 beats per minute. Madonna's vocals span from the nodes of A3 to G♭5 and follows a basic sequence of Gm9–Dm–E–A–G as its chord progression.[14] The song is linked to the ending of the previous album track, "Sanctuary", and starts with its chords. The ending of the track has a pulsating beat and a mix of the lead synth, with Madonna's voice whimpering and uttering "Ha-ha-aahs". It ends abruptly saying "And all that you've ever learned, try to forget, I'll never explain again" making the listener believe that it was all the part of a dream.[13]
According to Victor Amaro Vicente in his book The Aesthetics of Motion in Musics for the Mevlana Celal ed-Din Rumi, the song's music bears many resemblances to new age-era music and different forms of Sufi music.[11] Its slow atmospheric qualities have drawn comparison to "Mevlevi-Sufi Relaxation" and the song's intricate, "steady and continuous" rhythmic structure has also drawn comparison to the zikr ceremony.[11] Björk, one of the song's writers, has been credited for giving the song its particular style and according to De Vries, the track's architecture is "distinctly Björkian" and she "has such a particular and idiosyncratic approach to the construction of lyrics and phrasing".[15] In a chapter of Music and Technoculture written by Charity Marsh and Melissa West, it is stated that one can hear the influence of Björk in Madonna's vocals during the song.[16]
Rikky Rooksby, author of The Complete Guide to the Music of Madonna, noted that the lyrics of "Bedtime Story" are a hymn to the joys of unconsciousness and a rejection of the supposed constraints of reason and language, hence the line "Words are useless, especially sentences, They don't stand for anything, How could they explain how I feel?"[13] Lyrically, despite being a song about a trip to the unconscious, scholars have noticed subtexts within the song's meaning. Vicente noted that postmodernism and new age themes are prevalent within the lyrics, especially with regards to their incapability of articulating the concept of the truth, as well as the song's theme of meditation and relax. Islamic mystic and sexual themes have also been noted within the song's lyrics.[11] Vicente further found that the cliché references to "honey", "longing and yearning", and the sexual connotations of being "wet on the inside" does not relate to "secular" love, but to "ecstatic" Sufi poetry. The lyrics allude to concepts of movement which are "central" to Sufi philosophy: "It indicates achieving fana through sema (getting 'lost' and 'leaving logic and reason to the arms of unconsciousness')".[11]
Commercial performance[edit]
In the United States, the song debuted at number 72 on the US Billboard Hot 100, on the issue dated April 22, 1995 and it sold 12,000 units in its first-week.[29][30] One week later, the song peaked at number 42, becoming the first Madonna single since "Burning Up" (1983) not to reach the top 40.[31] If "Bedtime Story" would have been able to reach the top 40, Madonna could have become the third woman in the "rock era" with the most top 40 hits, behind Aretha Franklin and Connie Francis. She would have achieved a consecutive string of 33 top 40 hits, starting from her single "Holiday" (1983). Fred Bronson from Billboard explained that the song's loss of radio airplay and sales prevented it from peaking within the US top 40.[32] "Bedtime Story" spent a total of seven weeks on the Billboard Hot 100.[33] However, it was successful on the US Hot Dance Club Songs chart, where it peaked at number one and spent 16 weeks on the charts.[34] Furthermore, it also charted on various Billboard genre charts, including the Rhythmic Top 40 at number 40,[35] and the Top 40 Mainstream at number 38.[36] On the Canadian RPM Top Singles chart, it reached a peak of number 42.[37]
In the United Kingdom, the song entered the UK Singles Chart at its peak of number four on the week of February 25, 1995. It left the top 20 two weeks later, eventually spending nine weeks on the charts.[38] In other European countries, the song also found some success. It peaked at number 38 in Belgium for one week only.[39] On the Dutch Single Top 100 chart, it entered and peaked at number 46 on April 15, 1995, and stayed on the same position the next week, with a total run of two weeks.[40] "Bedtime Story" debuted at number nine in Finland, and peaked at number four the next week.[41][42] In Australia, the song debuted and peaked at number five on April 9, 1995, where it stayed in that position for three weeks. It fell out of the top ten in the fifth week, and eventually exited the charts after a total run of nine weeks, falling to 44 on its last week in the charts.[43] In New Zealand, it debuted at number 40 on May 7, 1995, moving up two positions to 38 which was its peak, and leaving the charts the next week.[44]
Legacy[edit]
"Bedtime Story" has been cited as one of the songs with the most unfulfilled potential in Madonna's career;[23] nonetheless, the song did enjoy some success, being a club "favorite" in the mid-1990s.[11] It has been described as the record that foreshadowed Madonna's usage of electronic music in her later work, especially Ray of Light (1998), which according to Vicente, owes "its contemplative and electronic techno rave character to 'Bedtime Story'."[11] O'Brien wrote in Madonna: Like an Icon, that the song "foreshadowed [the singer's] move towards electronica". De Vries recalled that tackling the song "seemed to set something free in Madonna. She was straining at the leash a little bit, to find some other languages to speak, and 'Bedtime Story' was an embryonic moment that went a lot further on to the next few albums."[15] In a review for the Bedtime Stories album on a whole, Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine wrote that the song was "the germ that would later inspire Madonna to seek out and conquer electronica with the likes of William Orbit and Mirwais".[23] While ranking Madonna's 60 best singles, Chuck Arnold from Entertainment Weekly listed "Bedtime Story" at 54, calling it an "important" song in the singer's catalogue as, according to the author, it provided a "jumping-off point for the avant-garde electronica of Ray of Light".[77] Arca stated: "This song in particular and its video hit me hard and then stroked me soft, presented an infrastructure of widescreen unapologeticness so empowering that to this day, when the song starts, I smile from ear to ear and want to lick my own skin".[78]