"Erotica" is a song by American singer Madonna from her fifth studio album of the same name (1992). Madonna and Pettibone produced the song; they wrote it with Anthony Shimkin. Maverick, Sire, and Warner Bros. Records released it on September 29, 1992, as Erotica lead single. The song continued Madonna's exploration of spoken word vocals, which she had introduced in "Justify My Love" (1990). "Erotica" is a pop hip-hop and dance song with Middle Eastern influences whose lyrics talk about sadomasochism; the singer uses the alter ego Dita and invites her lover to be submissive while she has sex with him.
Music critics deemed "Erotica" dark, experimental, and sexy. Others considered it derivative of "Justify My Love". Retrospective reviews refer to it as one of Madonna's best songs. Its debut on the US Billboard Hot 100 at number 13 was one of the highest ever at the time; it peaked at number three. It topped the charts in Finland, Hungary, Italy and Greece, as well as the US Dance Club Play chart. It peaked in the top 10 of several countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark, and Portugal.
Directed by Fabien Baron, the music video features scenes of Madonna dressed as a masked dominatrix interspersed with footage of the making of her Sex book; it is combined with appearances by Naomi Campbell and Isabella Rossellini, among others. The video was highly controversial, being aired by MTV only three times, all after the 10pm watershed, before being completely banned. Madonna has included "Erotica" on four of her concert tours, the most recent being the Celebration Tour of 2023—2024. It was also included on Madonna's compilations, GHV2 (2001), and Celebration (2009), and has been covered and parodied by several artists, including Julie Brown and Sandra Bernhard.
Background and development In 1992, Madonna founded her own multi-media entertainment company Maverick, consisting of a record company (Maverick Records), a film production company (Maverick Films), and associated music publishing, television broadcasting, book publishing, and merchandising divisions. The first two projects from the venture were her fifth studio album Erotica and a coffee table book of photographs featuring Madonna, entitled Sex. For Erotica, Madonna primarily collaborated with American producer Shep Pettibone; Pettibone first began working with the singer during the 1980s, providing remixes for several of her singles. Pettibone would build the base music of the songs in a style similar to his remixes, while Madonna wrote the melodies and lyrics. According to the producer in an article titled "Erotica Diaries", published on Madonna's Icon magazine, he created a tape of three tracks for Madonna to listen to; he traveled to Chicago, where she was filming A League of Their Own (1992), played the songs for her and she liked all of them. In October 1991, Madonna met with Pettibone in New York City to start working on demos. According to Mark Bego, the first batch of songs they worked on were "Erotica", "Deeper and Deeper", "Bad Girl", "Thief of Hearts", and "Rain". Anthony Shimkin, who also worked on the album, recalled that Madonna had with her a "book full of lyrics and melody ideas".
At first, the singer did not like the songs she had recorded. She wanted Erotica to have a raw edge, as if it were recorded in an alley in Harlem, and not a light glossy production, according to Pettibone. In the case of the title track, the producer revealed that it underwent "numerous radical changes" during the recording process, with four different versions being recorded; Madonna would first sing it one way, and then decide to erase everything and start all over again. Shimkin affirmed that the original version was not "as slinky and sexy and grimy and dirty", until the mixing process; at that stage, the song was still an "experimentation", but when they realized it was going to be the lead single from the album, a "different, darker vibe" was taken on. While recording Erotica, Madonna was also working on Sex; for the book, she incorporated a dominatrix alter-ego named Mistress Dita, heavily inspired by German actress Dita Parlo. To accompany the book, Madonna had recorded a song titled "Erotic", described by Pettibone as an "ode to S&M". However, after actually seeing the book, Pettibone suggested that the singer incorporate the dominatrix theme into the song's lyrics: "'You have all these great stories [in the book]', I told her, 'Why don't you use them in the song?'" Madonna left the studio with a copy of Sex with her, came back and recorded her vocals to "Erotica" in a "very dry" way; Pettibone then realized the song "would never be the same again". The chorus and bridge were changed entirely and the song's "psyche" became "sexier, more to the point".
Composition and release "Erotica" was written by Madonna, Pettibone and Shimkin, and produced by Madonna and Pettibone. Recording took place at Astoria's Sound Work Studios on June 8, 1992; personnel working on the song included Pettibone on the sequencing, keyboard arrangement, and programming, alongside Shimkin and Joe Moskowitz; Dennis Mitchell and Robin Hancock worked as recording engineers, while George Karras was the mixing engineer. The track continued Madonna's exploration of potent spoken-word vocals, which she had previously introduced in her 1990 single "Justify My Love". It samples Kool and the Gang's "Jungle Boogie" (1973), and "El Yom 'Ulliqa 'Ala Khashaba" by Lebanese singer Fairuz. The former sample was Pettibone's idea, as he felt it gave the song a "dark, mysterious" vibe, while the Fairuz sample caused controversy after she stated her vocals had been used without her consent, and said the lyrics He was crucified today, sung in Arabic, were taken from a religious song that is traditionally heard during Good Friday services. This led to a lawsuit that was settled out of court; however, both the single and the album were banned in Lebanon.
Musically, "Erotica" has been described as a pop hip-hop dance song with "scratchy, trip-hop loops" and Middle Eastern influences. According to the sheet music published by Alfred Publishing Inc., "Erotica" is set in common time with a moderate tempo of 120 beats per minute; composed in the key of F-sharp minor, Madonna's vocals span from F3 to A4. It follows a chord progression of D/F–Fm–D/F–Fm in the introductory verses. Lyrically, it talks about S&M and begins with a "put-a-record-on scratchiness" sound that mimics a record player; 40 seconds in, the "Jungle Boogie" sample plays in a "disembodied and eerie" way. Madonna invites her lover to be submissive while she has sex with him, and suggesting him to explore boundaries between pain and pleasure, demanding: Give it up, do what I say/ Give it up and let me have my way. The song features "taunting, aggressive" sexually suggestive lyrics, such as, Will you let yourself go wild/Let my mouth go where it wants to, and Put your hands all over my body during the refrain. Also present are maracas and "shimmying horn riff[s]". "Erotic", the version recorded for Sex, described as "more hardcore" by academic Georges-Claude Guilbert, includes lyrics not heard in the final version, such as We could use the cage/I've got a lot of rope/I'm not full of rage, I'm full of hope/This is not a crime and you're not on trial/Bend over baby, I'm going to make you smile.
In Australia and most European countries, "Erotica" was released as the album's lead single on September 29, 1992. In the United States, the planned release date was September 30, but five days prior, several radio stations were already playing the song. According to Billboard, on September 25, Don Stevens from CFTR Toronto had obtained a copy of the single and played it at 10:30 a.m., before getting a cease and desist by Warner Bros. Stevens then accused the label of leaking the single to "benefit from the accompanying publicity", which was denied by Warner Music Canada VP Kim Cooke. In Los Angeles, both KIIS-FM and Power 106 played the song once, but stopped at "the request" of the label. Open House Party aired the single at night on September 26 and 27, via 150 affiliates. "Erotica" was officially released in the US on October 13, 1992. The single was included on Madonna's compilation albums GHV2 (2001) and Celebration (2009), while a remixed form can be found on Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones (2022). In 2022, 30 years after the release of the single and album, Madonna officially released the cancelled 3-tracks vinyl picture disc. This features the famous “toe sucking” photo featured on the front.
Critical reception Upon release, "Erotica" was generally well received by music critics. For Billboard, Larry Flick referred to it as a "sensual slice of aural sex" that "twists the vibe of 'Justify My Love'", and highlighted the "deep and complex" arrangement. From the same magazine, Joe Lynch named the song a "bold sonic departure" for the singer. Writing for AllMusic, Jose F. Promis classified it as one of the "darkest, most sinister, and most interesting" singles in her catalog. Rolling Stones Arion Berger wrote that, unlike "Justify My Love", which gathered its "heat from privacy and romance", "[The Madonna of] 'Erotica' is in no way interested in your dreams [...] [the song] demands the passivity of a listener, not a sexual partner". Berger concluded his review by referring to "Erotica" as "insistently self-absorbed — 'Vogue' with a dirty mouth, where all the real action’s on the dance floor". Slant Magazines Sal Cinquemani deemed it "brilliant". J. Randy Taraborrelli, author of Madonna: An Intimate Biography, pointed out that "['Erotica'] wasn't a surprise for anyone who had been paying attention to [Madonna's] recent music. She had shown her hand earlier with Breathless when she sang 'Hanky Panky', the song about spanking [...] then there was her single 'Justify My Love' [...] 'Erotica' though, was the full-blown music exploration, an exhibition, of what we were to believe was Madonna's sexual reality." The New York Times Stephen Holden praised the singer's "foggy growl [that] contrasts dramatically with the shrill little-kid voice from [her] earliest records". For Gavin Martin from The Seattle Times, the singer's voice "sounds as though it's coming from somewhere dark and menacing: as far as you can tell it sounds like a man".
Allen Metz and Carol Benson, authors of The Madonna Companion: Two Decades of Commentary, said the track was "a bondage update on 'Justify My Love'". Similarly, while reviewing GHV2, Cinquemani called it a sequel to "Justify My Love", that is "as distantly icy as it was erotic", and a "creative high for a career on the verge of public turmoil". At Blender, Tony Powers considered the song one of the album's standout tracks. In less favorable comments, Anthony Violanti from The Buffalo News said the track was the album's weakest, and dismissed it as a "carbon copy" of "Justify My Love". Cashboxs Randy Clark said that, musically, the single did not offer anything new, and called it a "melody-less 'Vogue'". Charlotte Robinson of PopMatters was also negative on her review; she felt the song did not age well, and referred to it as a "cold, dispassionate sexual fantasy" with "adolescent" lyrics intended to shock. Jude Rogers, writing for The Guardian, opined "Erotica" is an "oddly sexless Sex-era single, not helped by awkward synthesised sighs". Finally, Entertainment Weeklys David Browne panned it as "depressingly trite [...] between its frigid melody and your scary 'My name is Dita' spoken bits, it’s about as sexy as an episode of the Shelley Hack-era Charlie's Angels".