"Bad Girl" is a song recorded by American singer and songwriter Madonna for her fifth studio album, Erotica (1992). Maverick, Sire, and Warner Records issued it as the album's third single on February 2, 1993. Madonna and Shep Pettibone wrote the song and they produced it with Anthony Shimkin. The lyrics of "Bad Girl" depict a woman in a toxic relationship who tries to escape from reality by engaging in self-destructive behaviors, including one-night stands, drinking, and chain-smoking. Featuring synthesizers, drum programming, and piano, "Bad Girl" is a pop ballad, on which Madonna sings in a low vocal register.
Music critics evaluated the level of emotion in "Bad Girl" and complimented its introspective lyrics. Others felt that the song exposed the limited range of her vocals. In the United States, it peaked at number thirty-six on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart and ended Madonna's streak of twenty-seven consecutive top-twenty singles dating to "Holiday" (1983). A moderate success internationally, "Bad Girl" reached the top three of the charts in Ecuador, Iceland, Italy, and the Netherlands, and peaked in the top ten in Finland and the United Kingdom.
David Fincher directed the music video for "Bad Girl". Madonna depicts a successful businesswoman who engages in one-night stands with men until one of them murders her. Christopher Walken appears as a guardian angel who watches over her. Madonna performed "Bad Girl" during a visit to Saturday Night Live in 1993 and on the Celebration Tour in 2023. It has been included in retrospective lists of her best songs; critics regard it as an underrated entry within her discography.
Background and recording Sire Records released American singer and songwriter Madonna's fourth studio album, Like a Prayer, in 1989. It spent six weeks atop the US Billboard 200 and sold over 15million copies worldwide. Critics universally acclaimed Like a Prayer and believed it established Madonna as a credible artist rather than just a pop star, as she had been previously perceived. Madonna founded the entertainment company Maverick in 1992. It included a record label, film production unit, and divisions for music publishing, television, book publishing, and merchandising. The company's first two ventures were Madonna's fifth studio album and a coffee table book, respectively titled Erotica (1992) and Sex (1992).
Madonna recruited Shep Pettibone to remix some of her songs throughout the 1980s, and the two co-wrote and co-produced her 1990 single "Vogue". She then enlisted him to work with her on some songs for Erotica. A year after the release of "Vogue", Madonna began working on demos with Pettibone in New York City. Among the first songs they created for the album were "Erotica", "Deeper and Deeper", "Thief of Hearts", "Rain", "In This Life", and "Bad Girl". According to Pettibone, the latter two tracks were the result of a period in December 1991, during which Madonna's songwriting became more personal and serious. He believed he may have influenced both "Bad Girl" and "In This Life" as he composed them in a minor key.
Composition Music and vocals
"Bad Girl" is a pop song influenced by R&B and disco music. The album version of the song lasts five minutes and twenty-three seconds and the single version is four minutes and thirty-eight seconds. "Bad Girl" is a ballad set to a slow tempo. Critics have compared the track to Madonna's other compositions, including "Live to Tell" (1986) and "This Used to Be My Playground" (1992). A writer for the Journal and Courier specifically observed that it was Madonna's vocal performance on "Bad Girl" that resembled "Live to Tell". She mostly sings in a low vocal register and occasionally uses falsetto when the melody rises into higher notes.
"Bad Girl" begins with a slow arrangement featuring a swing-style piano and wind chimes. Synthesizers and understated drum programming begin to dominate the track soon after. Parry Gettelman of The Orlando Sentinel wrote that the production evoked the sound of string synthesizers. Madonna and Pettibone produced "Bad Girl" and wrote it with Anthony Shimkin. The song was recorded at the Soundworks Recording Studio in New York City, with Dennis Mitchell and Robin Hancock acting as recording engineers. Pettibone and Shimkin arranged the keyboards to, sequenced, and programmed "Bad Girl"; Joe Moskowitz contributed additional keyboards. Goh Hotoda mixed the song, and then Ted Jensen conducted mastering at Sterling Sound in New Jersey.
Lyrics and themes Madonna explained that the lyrics of "Bad Girl" describe a woman in a toxic relationship who attempts to escape from reality. To do so, she engages in self-destructive behaviours such as one-night stands, chain-smoking, and intoxication, singing: "Bad girl drunk by six / Kissing someone else's lips / Smoked too many cigarettes today". However, she is still dissatisfied with these behaviours and declares: "I'm not happy when I act this way". Critics gave different interpretations of the narrator's motivations: Adam Sweeting of The Guardian thought that it was because her boyfriend had cheated on her; Harry Tafoya of Pitchfork believed it was due to her drifting apart from her partner but being reluctant to tell him; and Chuck Campbell of The Knoxville News-Sentinel concluded that it was caused by "bitter loneliness".
Reviewers considered "Bad Girl" melancholic, haunting, and intimate. They variously characterized it as a melodrama and a hymn, and have discussed it in relation to the other tracks on Erotica. Some observed that "Bad Girl" departs from the album's main theme of sexual intercourse and instead explores the consequences of the act. Others viewed it as revealing a more genuine and remorseful side of Madonna on the album. According to Newsday Frank Owen, the song contributed to Eroticas character as one of Madonna's darkest albums despite its dance-oriented sound. Pettibone never thought of "Bad Girl" as an autobiographical composition but one that many could relate to. Shimkin compared it to her other vulnerable songs such as "Papa Don't Preach" (1986) and "Oh Father" (1989).
Release and artwork Maverick and Sire Records released Erotica on October 19, 1992; "Bad Girl" is its sixth track. The labels promoted the song as the album's third single and issued it on February 2, 1993. Maverick and Sire provided it to American adult contemporary and contemporary hit radio stations that month. The radio edit of "Bad Girl" was distributed to retailers as a 7-inch vinyl, 12-inch vinyl, cassette single, and CD single. In the United States, "Fever" is the B-side on the 7‑inch and cassette, and is included as an additional track on the CD single. Maverick issued "Bad Girl" as a 3-inch mini CD in Japan on March 10, 1993, with "Fever" once again included as an additional track.
Steven Meisel shot the artwork for the single cover of "Bad Girl". Inspired by Eve Arnold's 1960 portrait of Marilyn Monroe, Meisel's photo depicts an unclothed Madonna caressing her left breast with a cigarette dangling from her mouth. José I. Prieto‐Arranz, writing in The Journal of Popular Culture, called the photo a "clear sign of postcoital satisfaction".
Critical reception Music critics deemed "Bad Girl" one of the best songs on Erotica. The song has been included in retrospective rankings of Madonna's work. On lists of her best songs, it ranked fourth (The Independent), twenty-seventh (Gay Star News), fortieth (Billboard), and forty-second (Rolling Stone). Slant Magazine, Entertainment Weekly and The Guardian placed it at numbers thirty-five, forty-five, and forty-nine on their respective lists of Madonna's best singles. Critics consider "Bad Girl" an underrated entry in her discography and a deep cut enjoyed primarily by her fans.
The song's lyrics were a topic of commentary. Neil Randall of the Waterloo Region Record found their ambiguity intriguing and argued that it offset what he considered the clichéd and dull lyrics of the preceding tracks "Fever", "Bye Bye Baby", and "Deeper and Deeper". In contrast, Rick de Yampert thought the lyrics were marred by clichés and argued that its depiction of romance evoked the teen drama series Beverly Hills, 90210. Critics assessed the emotional depth of "Bad Girl"; some found its level of vulnerability unexpected for Erotica. Considine found the song thematically compatible with the album because it examines the emotional consequences of sexual relationships. Tom Ford of the Toledo Blade viewed its sentiments of love as more teasing. Telegram & Gazette Craig S. Semon called it histrionic and Edmonton Journal writer Tom Moon found it boring.
Madonna's vocal performance on "Bad Girl" received mixed reviews. Semon and Newsday Frank Owen agreed that the track showed how limited her vocal range was. For Sweeting and Lynden Barber of The Sydney Morning Herald, it demonstrated Madonna's average singing voice. Conversely, Lafoya judged it to be one of her best vocal performances and believed it captured the "subtle agonies of her character's joyless spiral from guilt and loneliness to heartbreak and resignation". Considine wrote that the tremble in her voice on the line "You'll always be my baby" could "break any listener's heart". In reviews concerning its production, Priya Elan of New Musical Express found "Bad Girl" sonically lacking finesse, and Gettelman felt that its synthesizers overwhelmed the song.
Chart performance In the United States, "Bad Girl" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 75, in the issue dated February 20, 1993. As the weeks went by, the song climbed places and finally peaked at number 36 on the week of March 27. "Bad Girl" became Madonna's first single to not reach the top 30 or top 20 of the Hot 100, breaking a streak of 27 consecutive top 20 singles that began with "Holiday" (1983) and ended with "Deeper and Deeper", as well as her lowest-charting song since "Oh Father" (1989). Fred Bronson attributed the single's poor chart performance to the controversy surrounding Madonna with Erotica, the Sex book, and the film Body of Evidence (1993). Similarly, Promis felt that the public was tired of the artist's "bratty bad girl posturing", which was in "full swing" at the time of the single's release. Matthew Rettenmund pointed out that, "record-buyers rejected what was perceived as Madonna's attempt at atonement for her wicked, wicked [Sex] ways". On the Hot 100 component charts Top 40 Radio Monitor and Top Singles Sales, it reached numbers 44 and 36, respectively. "Bad Girl" peaked at number 26 on the Mainstream/Top 40 chart. The "Fever"/"Bad Girl" release reached the first position of Billboards Maxi-Singles Sales chart, and came in at number 46 on the year-end chart. In Canada, the single peaked at number 20 of RPMs 100 Hit Tracks chart on the week of March 27, 1993.
In the United Kingdom, "Bad Girl" debuted at number 11 on the UK Singles Chart and peaked at number 10 on March 13, 1993; it was present on the chart for a total of seven weeks. According to Music Week magazine, over 74,915 copies of the single have been sold in the UK as of 2008. In other European countries, such as France, Germany, and Belgium, the single saw a weak commercial reception as it failed to crack the top 30. The song fared better in the charts of Switzerland and Ireland, peaking at 25 and 20, respectively. In Australia, "Bad Girl" entered the ARIA Singles Chart at number 40, eventually peaking at 32 and lasting seven weeks on the chart. In countries like Italy, Iceland, and Ecuador, the song reached the top 3 of the charts.
Music video Background and synopsis