Composition
Musically "Burning Up" has a starker arrangement brought about by bass, single guitar and drum machine. The guitar riffs in the songs were not characteristics of Madonna's later records. The tom-tom drum beats used in the song were reminiscent to the records of singer Phil Collins. It also incorporated electric guitars and the most state-of-the-art synthesizers of that time. The chorus is a repetition of the same three lines of the lyrics, while the bridge consists of a series of double entendres in regards to the lyrics of the song which describes what she is prepared to do for her lover and that she is individualistic and shameless. According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by Alfred Publishing, "Burning Up" is written in the time signature of common time with a dance beat tempo of 138 beats per minute. The song is composed in the key of B minor, with Madonna's vocals ranging from the tonal nodes of A3 to B4. "Burning Up" follows a basic sequence of Bm–Bm–A–E as its chord progression.
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