"Drowned World/Substitute for Love" is a song performed by American recording artist and songwriter Madonna, which was used for her seventh studio album Ray of Light (1998). The song was written by Madonna, William Orbit, Rod McKuen, Anita Kerr and David Collins, while produced by Madonna and Orbit. Musically, the song is a pop ballad song, which incorporates fused elements including trip-hop, electronica and minor guitar riffs towards the end. The song samples the song "Why I Follow the Tigers" by The San Sebsatian Strings. Lyrically, the song describes the negativity and positiveness in the world of lovers. The song was released as the album's third single off the album worldwide except in North America due to the late release of her previous single "Ray of Light".
"Drowned World/Substitute for Love" received positive reviews from most music critics, who noted its restrained and mature out bring from the album and enjoyed the song as an opener to the album. Commercially, the song had generally modest success, peaking in the top ten in countries including Spain, Japan, Italy and the United Kingdom. Though the song was not released in North America, resulting it not to chart, the B-Side single "Sky Fits Heaven" managed to chart at number 41 on the US Hot Dance Club Songs.
An accompanying music video was released for the single, as it featured Madonna running away from the paparazzi, but the video received controversy during 1998 due to the scenes that feature Madonna being chased by paparazzi on motor-bikes, a scenario similar to Diana, Princess of Wales's death in 1997. The song was performed in two of Madonna's tours, these being the Drowned World Tour (2001) and The Confessions Tour (2006).
Read more about Drowned World/Substitute For Love: Background, Composition, Critical Reception, Chart Performance, Music Video, Live Performances, Track Listings and Formats
Famous quotes containing the words substitute for love, for love, drowned, world, substitute and/or love:
“In this loveless everyday life eroticism is a substitute for love.”
—Henri Lefebvre (b. 1901)
“Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.”
—Mother Teresa (b. 1910)
“The ancestral deed is thought and done,
And in a million Edens fall
A million Adams drowned in darkness,
For small is great and great is small,
And a blind seed all.”
—Edwin Muir (1887–1959)
“If the world is a precipitation of human nature, so to speak, then the divine world is a sublimation of the same. Both occur in one act. No precipitation without sublimation. What goes lost there in agility, is won here.”
—Novalis [Friedrich Von Hardenberg] (1772–1801)
“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“O you singers solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me,
O solitary me listening, never more shall I cease perpetuating you
Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,
Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what
there in the night,
By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon,
The messenger there aroused, the fire, the sweet hell within,
The unknown want, the destiny of me.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)