Composition
"La Isla Bonita" is a Hispanic styled pop song. It is one of the characteristic works of the collaboration between Madonna and Patrick Leonard. The single mixes the sound of different instruments like Cuban drums and Spanish guitar, maracas and harmonicas and a mix of synthesized and real drumming. The song is written in the key of C♯ minor and is set in the time signature of common time like most pop songs, moving at a moderate tempo of 95 beats per minute. Madonna's vocal range spans two octaves, from G3 to C5. The song starts with a musical introduction performed on a Cuban drum, before descending into synthesized beats and Spanish guitar fusion. Madonna sings the chorus in the same G3 to C5 range. After the second chorus there is a Spanish guitar interlude whence Madonna's voice expands to F♯ minor as she sings "I want to be where the sun warms the sky" and then comes down to a C♯ minor when she sings "loves a girl". There is another musical interlude with a harmonica and the song, after another chorus, ends with fading out and Madonna's voice uttering the words "El dijo que te ama (He said he loves you)".
The phrase "La Isla Bonita" translates as "The Beautiful Island" in English. The song has four lines sung in Spanish, a theme which Madonna later incorporated in her 1987 single "Who's That Girl". The lyrics begin by describing Madonna as a tourist who prays "that the days would last, they went so fast" simultaneously isolating the other Latin people as them ("you can watch them go by"). In her book Women and popular music, author Sheila Whitley said that the chorus of the song places its emphasis on the incantatory present participle ("Tropical the island breeze, all of nature wild and free, this is where I long to be"). The song draws connotations from the supplicant before its explicit focus on the chorus.
The title and first line of the song refer to an island called San Pedro, held by some to be Ambergris Caye in Belize, referencing the town of San Pedro, which has since adopted the song's title as the town's principal nickname. However, Gaitsch has mentioned that at that time, Madonna was spending time in a U.S. town of the same name, and both Madonna and her then husband Sean Penn were good friends with a poet called San Pedro and novelist Charles Bukowski. Madonna herself has not clarified this in any interview. Instead, she referred the song as being a tribute to Latin America and its people, along with an island and to herself.
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