Madonna
Bedtime Stories

THE REVIEW

In 1992, Madonna had released "Erotica," her most provocative, ambitious, outrageous, and experimental album.

The result was disastrous: critics spoke of empty sensationalism and for the first time in nearly a decade, the public didn't enthusiastically follow Ciccone's choices; even some die-hard fans glossed over it and didn't purchase the album.

With 5 million copies sold, it was (and still is) the least sold album of Madonna's career (although today critics tend to strongly reevaluate it as pioneering and innovative).

Two years later, Madonna, being the good chameleon and shrewd manager of her music, reinvented herself for the umpteenth time: she released "Bedtime Stories" and decisively changed her look and sound.

While "Erotica" was cold and detached, "Bedtime Stories" is warm and enveloping. Just look at the two cover photos to realize the change: in "Erotica," we see a drawn Madonna simulating a gesture of pleasure with parted lips (on the back, you could even see the singer voluptuously sucking a big toe) while on "Bedtime Stories," there's a photo of the artist in a close-up smiling serenely in a robe: on the back, she's seen lying on a bed.

The entire album is marked by a very warm sound, pulsing with embracing rhythms and influenced by R'n'B sounds. Madonna abandoned previous collaborators and enlisted help from Nelly Hooper, Babyface, and for one track, Bjork.

The result is uneven: some songs sound saccharine ("Forbidden Love") or tired and monotonous ("I'd Rather Be Your Lover", "Don't Stop") while others align with simple and melodic pop standards ("Inside Of Me").

However, there's part of the album that contains some Madonna gems: the very experimental "Bedtime Stories" co-written with Bjork, which is a description of an erotic dream, where the singer makes heavy use of electronics, creating a dark and dreamlike atmosphere. The track was the third single from the album and was supported by the most expensive video in Madonna's history. However, the single's success was quite limited because the track was too avant-garde for the pop standards of the time.

Another beautiful track is "Secret", one of Madonna's absolute masterpieces: a syncopated beat runs through the entire track and the singer, with her usual warm timbre, sings about a love secret that will never be revealed in the song, leaving the listener free to interpret the song's meanings, just as every true work of art should do. The support video for "Secret" (the first single from the album) is a splendid black-and-white clip shot in the streets of New Orleans: the track achieved good success both critically and publicly, reaching the 3rd position on the U.S. singles chart.

A noteworthy mention also goes to "Take a Bow", perhaps Madonna's most famous ballad: the track is to this date, Madonna's most successful single in the United States. It managed to remain number one on the Billboard chart (the U.S. singles chart) for seven weeks: in Europe, the success was less, and it didn't manage to enter the UK chart (one of the few instances where Madonna missed the target, with around sixty singles placed there: "Take a Bow" is one of the few excluded from the favor of the British).

Another track worth mentioning is "Human Nature": in the song, the old lioness lashes out against U.S. conservatism, fiercely defending her previous work "Erotica" and going on to sing "I'm not your bitch, don't hang your shit on me". In this cheerful slow-dance piece, Madonna defends her artistic freedom and claims the possibility for herself to talk about sex. Additionally, Madonna accuses the listener, saying that if she had been a man, the "Erotica" uproar wouldn't have happened. The song was the fourth and last single from the album and was supported by a video featuring the singer in black latex and high heels parodying herself in the "Erotica" video, demonstrating a strong dose of irony.

Time has proven her right in seeing precisely in her tenacious will to break sexual taboos in Western pop music her most characteristic and original trait.

Overall, "Bedtime Stories" is a calm and relaxing album, which in the mentioned tracks reaches some of the artist's climaxes, but unfortunately, in the rest of its production, it is too standardized and lacks originality.

The album had a fairly good success with critics and the public, reaching the top 3 in major world charts and selling about 6 million copies, a much greater success than the 5 million of "Erotica" (in fact, times had changed, the record industry was going through a deep crisis from which it has never recovered, and in 1992 20 million albums could still be sold, while by 1994 an album that managed to sell 10 million copies was already considered a bestseller).

Last curiosity: with "Bedtime Stories" Madonna casts her last look (although relaxed and melancholic) on sexuality: the singer was preparing for "Evita," but above all for the great metamorphosis of "Ray of Light," which represents the beginning of Ciccone's spiritual phase and the almost total abandonment (at least for the time being) of her opinions on sexual taboos.