Bedtime Story (Madonna Song)

Bedtime Story (Madonna Song)

"Bedtime Story" is a song by American singer-songwriter Madonna from her sixth studio album Bedtime Stories. The song was released as the album's third single on February 13, 1995 by Maverick Records. Written by Björk, Nellee Hooper and Marius De Vries, the Icelandic singer-songwriter was offered the chance to write a song for Madonna's album; she composed a demo which was later partially re-written and whose title was changed to the present one, after which the actual song was produced by Madonna and Nelle Hooper. "Bedtime Story" was the third single from the album. It also appeared on her 2001 compilation album GHV2 in a shorter edit form.

"Bedtime Story" is a mid-tempo electronic song with acid-influenced "pulsating" house beats, ambient and techno tendencies and an underlying skeletal synth melody influenced by minimal trance music. The song also contains the presence of a drum machine, organs, gurgles, handclaps and has an intricate rhythmic structure. Furthermore, it has drawn comparisons to the style of new age music. A considerable departure from Madonna's work at the time, the track abandoned the singer's then pop-R&B-based repertoire in favor being more unconventional and electronic. The song starts with groans and eventually progresses into whispered speak-sung vocals, and the lyrics are about the joys of the unconscious world; scholars and academics have noted that the song contains lyrical subtexts.

Critically, "Bedtime Story" received favorable reviews; music critics praised the track's hypnotic and electronic style, and deemed it an underrated song which could have had great potential, claiming that it could have been the new "Vogue". Commercially, the song was a moderate international success, reaching the top ten in the United Kingdom, Italy and Australia, yet missing the top 40 in United States, peaking at 42. Nonetheless, the song was a major club hit, peaking at number one in the Hot Dance Club Songs.

The music video for "Bedtime Story" was directed by Mark Romanek in Universal Studios, and features surrealistic and new age imagery, with influences from artists such as Remedios Varo, Frida Kahlo and Leonora Carrington. At a cost of $5 million, it is also one of the most expensive music videos of all time. In the video, Madonna is seen as being the subject of a scientific test, in which she falls asleep and travels into a dream world. The video received acclaim from critics, being deemed as one of Madonna's most artistic music videos, and it was stored in a collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The video was additionally screened in various film theatres in the United States.

"Bedtime Story" has left a legacy, with several critics, writers and scholars claiming that the song foreshadowed the singer's move towards electronic music in her future work; it was also written that it was part of the singer's influence in popularizing Sufism and the Mevlevi tradition in mainstream Western culture. Nevertheless, it has been described as one of her most unfulfilled potentially successful singles. "Bedtime Story" is also one of Madonna's less represented and performed songs; despite this, the song was performed at the 1995 BRIT Awards in London, and a remixed version of the track was used as an interlude on her Re-Invention Tour in 2004, with a whole new video, directed by Dago Gonzalez, being used.