Composition
"Keep It Together" is a pop and funk song with an upbeat rhythm and groove. It was produced by Madonna and Bray, and features Paulinho da Costa on percussion, brass playing by David Boruff and Steven Madaio, Bill Bottrell as the audio engineer and guitars by Chester Kamen. Musician Prince played guitar. According to Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine, the song is influenced by the Sly and the Family Stone track "Family Affair" (1971). It starts as the sound of slap bass plays along with sequenced synth bass, as Madonna sings the opening lines, "Keep, keep it together, keep people together forever and ever". As the first verse starts, a guitar comes into play with Madonna's voice being backed by percussion and banjo. After the second chorus comes near the end, Madonna utters the line "Brothers and sisters, They hold the key, To your heart and your soul, Don't forget that your family is gold", the percussion sound is thinned out and a mixture of the sound from a live drummer and conga comes into the picture. The song ends with the main groove sound gradually fading out.
According to Rikky Rooksby, author of The Complete Guide to the Music of Madonna, although "Keep It Together" sonically pays tribute to Sly and the Family Stone, the lyrics talk about the realization of how important Madonna's family has been as a form of stability in her life, especially in the line "Brothers and sisters, They've always been there for me, We have a connection, Home is where the heart should be". The lyrics follow the course of Madonna's rise from figuratively being a "hungry sibling" ("I'm gonna leave this place, So I can forget every single hungry face") to being a superstar ("I hit the big time but I still get the blues, Everyone's a stranger, City life can get to you").
Read more about this topic: Keep It Together (Madonna Song)
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“There is singularly nothing that makes a difference a difference in beginning and in the middle and in ending except that each generation has something different at which they are all looking. By this I mean so simply that anybody knows it that composition is the difference which makes each and all of them then different from other generations and this is what makes everything different otherwise they are all alike and everybody knows it because everybody says it.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The naive notion that a mother naturally acquires the complex skills of childrearing simply because she has given birth now seems as absurd to me as enrolling in a nine-month class in composition and imagining that at the end of the course you are now prepared to begin writing War and Peace.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“When I think of God, when I think of him as existent, and when I believe him to be existent, my idea of him neither increases nor diminishes. But as it is certain there is a great difference betwixt the simple conception of the existence of an object, and the belief of it, and as this difference lies not in the parts or composition of the idea which we conceive; it follows, that it must lie in the manner in which we conceive it.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)