Composition
"Deeper and Deeper" was one of those songs she always had a problem with. The middle of the song wasn't working. We tried different bridges and changes, but nothing worked. In the end, Madonna wanted the middle of the song to have a flamenco guitar strumming big-time. I didn't like the idea of taking a Philly house song and putting La Isla Bonita in the middle of it. But that's what she wanted, so that's what she got.
-Co-producer Shep Pettibone talking about "Deeper and "Deeper" in "The Erotica Diaries""Deeper and Deeper" is a disco inspired song. Lyrically it talks about a boy coming to terms with his homosexuality The song has been remixed by Shep Pettibone, who both co-wrote and produced the track with David Morales. Some of their remixes featured the use of the pitch shift. In Pettibone's Classic 12" version, when Madonna sings "pretend", the syllable "-tend", which echoes at the same pitch in the original, is lowered quite a few octaves, raised to normal for a few seconds, and is then raised to an almost childlike pitch for about 3 or 4 seconds before going to the final line. In Morales' club mix, after she sings, "never gonna hide it again", the pitch in "deep" is alternated between the original and a slightly lowered version for nearly 32 seconds.
According to Anthony Shinkin, who is a co-writer of the song, Madonna wanted to add flamenco style guitar to the song after hearing him play Spanish flamenco style lead on his acoustic guitar. Castanets and voila were also added and that is how the Latin style bridge of the song was created. Shep Pettibone was opposed to the idea of having a flamenco guitar used in the song, but Madonna insisted on including it.
In the "David's Love Dub" version, Madonna's heavily-phased "deeper and deeper" is at normal pitch for the first 15 seconds of the song, then gets lowered an octave until the bass starts a few seconds later; however, you can barely understand her, because the loop's phased quality distorts her words quite a lot. Pettibone described the song as "Philly House music". The song also has references to the song "Do-Re-Mi" from the musical The Sound of Music in the opening line for the first verse ("When you know the notes to sing you can sing most anything") as well as another reference to Madonna's previous hit song "Vogue" in the lines "You got to just let your body move to the music/You got to just let your body go with the flow".
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