Express Yourself (Madonna Song) - Composition

Composition

"Express Yourself" begins with the sound of brass tinkling along, as Madonna chimes the opening line: "Come on girls, do you believe in love? 'Cause I got something to say about it, And it goes something like this." Handclaps and drum beats start as Madonna moves into the chorus of the song, with a thick vocal texture and high-pitched background singing. The chorus is aided by instrumentation from a saxophone and percussion. Madonna then sings the first verse of the song, as a violin sound is added after she finishes the bridge, "Make you feel like a queen on the throne, make you love it till you never come down", a male voice repeating the last line. A synthesizer is played after the second verse as Madonna continues chanting the words "Express yourself" with background vocals singing "Hey, hey, hey, hey" along side her.

After a small saxophone interlude, a break-down comes with Madonna singing in a fuller voice, as horns and percussion beats continue. Madonna changes the lyrics at the end to "express himself", and after another repetition of the bridge and the intermediate verse, the chorus comes where she changes the lyrics back to the original title. The song ends with the words "Respect yourself", fading out. Set within a simple song structure, "Express Yourself" plays with ambiguity through a subtle control of harmony and the avoidance of diatonic closure. The introduction of the song suggests a key of G major, but the first note of the melody, "don't" in B♭ major, implies both a minor inflection and lack of tonal stability. This is also evident in Madonna's vocal nuance on the words "express yourself", which initially centers on G, before moving down a semitone to E minor. Per the sheet music published by Alfred Publishing Co. Inc., "Express Yourself" is set in time signature of common time, with a tempo of 120 beats per minute. Madonna's voice range spans from G₃ to C₅ with a chord progression of G–C–F–G; this suggests use of G major Mixolydian mode. According to Rikky Rooksby, author of The Complete Guide to the Music of Madonna, the lyrics of "Express Yourself" make it a simple love song, with Madonna exhorting the women in her audience not to go for second-best, to express their feelings and get their men to express theirs. Lucy O'Brien, author of Madonna: Like an Icon, described them as a "feminist call-to-arms", with Madonna dismissing the satin sheets and gold baubles of material pleasures. As she said in the interview with Rolling Stone, "the lyrics are my way of saying if it doesn't work, then you're better off on your own. Quite possibly there were some personal feelings mixed in the lyrics as well." Subtexts are employed throughout the song, especially in the line "What you need is a big strong hand, to lift you to your higher ground", where the "big strong hand" is implied as one's own hand, and not the typical male helping hand.