Erotica (Madonna Album) - Development

Development

"I remember when Madonna and I first started working together on Erotica. We were listening in my home studio to one of the first songs and I turned to her and said "It's great, but it's no 'Vogue'." She told me that not every song could be 'Vogue' - not every cut could emerge as the top-selling record of all time. She was right, but I pressed my case anyway: "I guess I'm always trying to out-top myself, the next thing should be bigger than the last." Madonna just turned and looked me straight in the eye. She said, "Shep, no matter how fierce something is, you can't ever do the same thing twice."

Producer Shep Pettibone on his article chronicling the album's production, "Erotica Diaries".

According to Pettibone in his article "Erotica Diaries", he said that he produced a tape for Madonna listen to, and went to Chicago, where she was filming A League Of Their Own. She listened to the songs, and liked all of them. After the filming was complete, Madonna met with Pettibone in New York to begin recording the album, on November 13, 1991. Pettibone said, "'Deeper and Deeper', 'Erotica', 'Rain' and 'Thief of Hearts' made up the first batch of songs we worked on together. I did the music and she wrote the words. Sometimes I'd give her some ideas lyrically and she'd go: 'Oh, that's good,' or "That sucks.' I remember when I gave her some ideas lyrically for 'Vogue' and she said, very curtly, 'That's what I do.'" "Deeper and Deeper" was not working for Madonna. Pettibone commented, "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." In March 1992, they had fifteen songs. When Madonna traveled to work on her next film Body of Evidence, Pettibone had time to work on some songs with Cathy Dennis and Taylor Dayne.

Madonna and the producer did the mixing for a song called "Erotic", that she wanted to include in her book, Sex. She felt it should sound the same as 'Erotica', from the album. Pettibone said: "'You have all these great stories in the book . Why don't you use them in the song?' I knew that Madonna was developing a 1930s dominatrix look for Erotica, but I didn't realize how far she was willing to go before I saw Sex. It contained stories authored by her mysteriously dark alter, Dita. Madonna took the book and walked out of the room and didn't come back until about half an hour later. Suddenly she was on the mic, speaking 'My name is Dita,' she said, 'and I'll be your mistress tonight.' I knew that the original 'Erotica' would never be the same again, and it wasn't." Shep Pettibone also said that a cover version of Little Willie John's song called "Fever" substituted a song called "Goodbye to Innocence". The producer said that the song "was not working" and they had to "fix it." He further commented that he "worked overnight in my studio and came back to Soundworks with a brand new bass line that seemed to do the trick. Madonna put on headphones and got ready to lay down the vocals for 'Goodbye to Innocence'. But instead of singing the original words, which were written last year, Madonna started toying with the lyrics, singing the words to the lounge-lizard act staple, 'Fever'. At first we thought: 'This is cool,' and it was. It sounded so good that we decided to take it one step further and actually cover the tune. Too bad no one knew the words. What we needed was a copy of Fever if we were going to record it that day. So, Madonna got on the phone with Seymour Stein at Sire Records, and within an hour, we had the lyric sheets, the Peggy Lee version, and the original version of the song in our hands. I was really impressed by how quickly we got it all." This song was the last to be recorded for the album, on August 15, 1992. The producer said that all songs were produced very smoothly, except the songs "Why's It So Hard" and "Words". The album was finished on September 12, 1992.