Nobody Knows Me

The song received generally favorable reviews from music critics, with many of whom calling it as a highlight from American Life. Four remixes were released in club stations around the United States, with one of them peaking at number four on the US Hot Dance Club Play chart. The song, along with "Nothing Fails", topped the US Hot Dance Singles Sales chart and also charted on the ARIA Club Tracks in Australia. Madonna did a performance of the song alone on stage on her Re-Invention World Tour in 2004. It was also used as a video interlude on the MDNA Tour in 2012, showing Madonna's face morphed with a number of famous figures. French far-right politician Marine Le Pen sued Madonna for superimposing a swastika and Adolf Hitler's face with hers.

Recording and composition[edit]

"Nobody Knows Me" was written and produced by Madonna and Mirwais Ahmadzaï.^[9] The recording sessions for American Life started at late 2001, then was put on hold as Madonna filmed Swept Away in Malta and starred in the West End play Up for Grabs. She returned to the Olympic Recording Studios in late 2002 and finished off the sessions.^[9][10] The mixing for the track was done by Mark "Spike" Stent at the Westlake Recording Studios in West Hollywood, California, while Tim Young did the mastering of the song at Metropolis Studios in London.^[9] Ahmadzaï played the guitars, and also did the necessary programming.^[9] Two machines were used for the vocal editing in songs like "Hollywood" and "Nobody Knows Me". Madonna preferred the Antares Auto-Tune plug in, while Ahmadzaï chose an AMS pitch shifter.^[11] Madonna chose Auto-Tune because she wanted "Nobody Knows Me" to have a more dance-like feel to it, although Ahmadzaï was against it.^[11][12]


"Nobody Knows Me" has vocoder effects, spacey synths, bubbly bass.^[13] IGN Music's Spencer D. described that the song blips, glurgs, and shuffles with a Jetsons' styled disco ebb and flow and sounds like as an outtake from Music (2000).^[14] It begins with vocoder treated vocals over a bleeping synth, on a minor chord. Heavy drum hits stress the melody during the verse.^[12] "Nobody Knows Me" is written in common time with a moderately fast tempo of 120 beats per minute.^[15] It is composed in the key of C major with Madonna's voice spanning from B₃ to C₅.^[15] The song follows a basic sequence of C–Am–D–Am–A–E as its chord progression.^[15] Lyrically, she rejects tabloid culture's "social disease", denouncing both TV and magazines. The chorus features repeated echo shifts of "nobody knows me" while she ponders thoughts like, "It's no good when you're misunderstood, but why should I care what the world thinks of me?".^[16][17] O'Brien described it as a trancey track with a sense of childlike defiant lyrics, dismissing critics who have no knowledge of her "jealously guarded inner self".^[18]

Chart performance[edit]

The song, along with "Nothing Fails", topped the Hot Dance Singles Sales while the Peter Rauhofer remix peaked at number four on the Hot Dance Club Play chart.^[31][32] According to Fred Bronson, the single release of the remixes of the song debuted at number-one on the Hot Singles Sales and Hot Dance Single Sales chart, on the issue dated December 27, 2003, the same week it also moved up to the top-twenty of the Dance Club Play chart.^[33] "Me Against the Music" by Britney Spears, on which Madonna was featured, and "Nobody Knows Me", both were also present in the top-twenty, making Madonna the only artist to have three songs within the top-twenty on the chart simultaneously.^[33] At the year-end Hot Dance Singles Sales recap, "Nothing Fails / Nobody Knows Me" was at number two position, while "Me Against the Music" and "Love Profusion" was at numbers one and three respectively. Billboard reported that Madonna was the first artist in its chart history to have the top three Dance Sales song.^[34] In Australia, the Peter Rauhofer/Above & Beyond Remix debuted at number 80 on the ARIA Club Tracks, peaking at number 49 the next week.^[35]