Madonna spent the 1980s blowing up boundaries, but her most provocative album Erotica was released on this day 25 years ago.

Erotica debuted at Number Two on the Billboard charts. It was her fifth album, the first on her own Maverick label, and the first since her debut to not to enter the charts at Number One. Garth Brooks’s The Chase out sold her by just 4,000 copies. You think she might have purchased 4001 copies at Tower Records just to be on top. Still, it sold a respectable two million copies in its first year. It’s one of my favorites.

Madonna presents the songs on Erotica with a self-satisfied candor that is not found on her previous albums. She expresses a bold interruption of female sexuality. She shares sharp X-rated bedroom talk, unafraid of taboo topics.

The first track, Erotica, celebrates the agony and ecstasy of sex with muscular hip-hop grooves and glittery beats, touching on S&M.

Where Life Begins is a sensual slow jam filled with frank double entendres. With Thief Of Hearts, she unloads a fierce rap about a woman who has taken her man.

Erotica’s more modern sound comes courtesy of producers André Betts and Shep Pettibone. Pettibone was Madonna’s collaborator on the smash hit Vogue. Together they really understood the early 1990s Dance Pop / Hip-Hop DJ culture.

I especially dig the silvery disco sound of Deeper And Deeper and her cover of the Fever, a worthy successor to the Peggy Lee version.

Madonna was unafraid to look at the darker sides of sex with songs on Erotica. The mournful ballad In This Life is an homage to the friends she lost to HIV/AIDS.

I always found Erotica to be filled with honest emotional depth, despite its chilly sound. Erotica’s overt sexuality caused quite the controversy at the time, even for Madonna. The title track’s video was banned from NBC’s Friday Night Videos, and MTV only aired it three times before removing from rotation. Yet, Erotica brought Madonna four Top 40 Pop hits and three Number One Dance chart hits.

Few female musicians, before or since Erotica, have been so forthright about their fantasies. Madonna sang songs that showed shame and sexuality are mutually exclusive.

Erotica embraced and espoused sexual pleasure, and Madonna was the Pop Music minister of the sexual revolution. This back before she wrote children’s books. It also has some of her best and most accomplished songs. Its meticulous production is calculated and domineering, but also funny and, well, arousing. The album has her best lyrics up to this point. She sounds mature.

By October 1992, Madonna was an icon, untouchable, literally and figuratively. Erotica was the first time Madonna’ songs music took on a decidedly threatening tone. It has more to say about the Sex=Death mindset of the era than any other album its time. It may not be Madonna at her musical apex, but Erotica was important and relevant. No other pop star at the time dared to talk about sex, love, and death with such frankness and fearlessness.

Erotica had the biggest backlash of any other album of that time. Madonna’s music was condemned and banned by The Vatican and so was she. It was the first album of her career to have Tipper Gore’s “Parental Advisory” label. Erotica was also banned in several countries, including China, Indonesia, Lebanon, and Singapore.

Erotica received very mixed reviews. It was released just a day before Madonna’s coffee-table book Sex (more on that tomorrow), which made matters worse: Madonna:

“The fact that my Erotica album was overlooked because of the whole thing with the Sex book. It just got lost in all that. I think there’s brilliant songs on it and people didn’t give it a chance. That disappointed me, but I’m not disappointed in the record itself… Every review of the movie or the album was really a review of the book. It was transparent: they weren’t even talking about the songs or the music. OK, I thought, I get what’s happening here. It was a shame, but I understand it.”

Erotica was ahead of its time. In the early 1990s, The Seattle Grunge sound was the thing. Madonna is not the sort of artist to release an album slap-dash. She had just started Maverick records, she had put together Sex, the film Dick Tracy had been released with Madonna sing Sondheim, and she was dating Warren Beatty. Erotica was the first album that was all her concept. She turned the music biz inside out, and they had to deal with the shock of it. Madonna paved the way for the next generation of female pop artists, Music with a woman’s point of view. I like to think that she opened things up creatively for Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears. Think of Janet Jackson’s album The Velvet Rope in 1997. Beyoncé’s self-titled 2013 album was described as “The most X-rated pop album since Madonna’s Erotica“.

 

Erotica, romance

My name is Dita

I’ll be your mistress tonight

I’d like to put you in a trance

If I take you from behind

Push myself into your mind

When you least expect it

Will you try and reject it

If I’m in charge

And I treat you like a child

Will you let yourself go wild

Let my mouth go where it wants to

 

Give it up, do as I say

Give it up and let me have my way

I’ll give you love, I’ll hit you like a truck

I’ll give you love, I’ll teach you how to

I’d like to put you in a trance, all over

Erotic, erotic, put your hands all over my body

Erotic, erotic, put your hands all over my body

Erotic, erotic, put your hands all over my body

Erotic, erotic

 

Once you put your hand in the flame

You can never be the same

There’s a certain satisfaction

In a little bit of pain

I can see you understand me

Tell that you’re the same

If you’re afraid, well rise above

I only hurt the ones I love

 

Give it up, do as I say

Give it up and let me have my way

I’ll give you love, I’ll hit you like a truck

I’ll give you love, I’ll teach you how to

I’d like to put you in a trance, all over

Erotic, erotic, put your hands all over my body

Erotic, erotic, put your hands all over my body

Erotic, erotic, put your hands all over my body

Erotic, erotic

 

Erotica, romance

I’d like to put you in a trance

Erotica, romance

Put your hands all over my body

I don’t think you know what pain is

I don’t think you’ve gone that way

I could bring you so much pleasure

I’ll come to you when you say

I know you want me

I’m not gonna hurt you

I’m not gonna hurt you

Just close your eyes

 

Erotic, erotic, erotic

Put your hands all over my body

All over me

Erotica, give it up, give it up, romance

I’d like to put you in a trance

Erotica, give it up, give it up, romance

I like to do a different kind of

Erotica, give it up, give it up, romance

I’d like to put you in a trance

 

Erotica, romance

Put your hands all over my body

Only the one that hurts you

Can make you feel better

Only the one that inflicts pain

Can take it away

Erotica

 Madonna / Pettibone