Composition
Composed as a dance-oriented song, the intro of "Like a Virgin" consists of two hooks. According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by Alfred Publishing, the song is set in common time, with a moderately dance-groove tempo of 118 beats per minute. It is composed in the key of F major with Madonna's voice ranging from the tonal nodes of high-tone G3 to low-tone C5. According to Rikky Rooksby, the bassline on the intro is a re-working of the three-note bass motif present in the Four Tops' 1965 song "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)", where Chuck Berry provided the chord arrangement. The bassline also has some similarity with Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" especially during the second verse. Madonna sings the song in her high register while drum arrangement by Tony Thompson is heard alongside the bassline, which is also supported by a synthesizer arrangement, giving it a circular progression through all the seven diatonic chords of I–IV–VIIo–III–VI–II–V–I.
Regarding the lyrics, Madonna had commented: "I like innuendo, I like irony, I like the way things can be taken on different levels." This statement highlighted the ambiguity of the lyrics of the song, which is hung on the word 'like'. Rooksby interpreted the meaning of the song in different ways to different people. He said that for women who were really virgins, the song encouraged them to hold their compose before they engaged in their very first sexual act. For sexually experienced girls, the song meant that they would be able to re-live the feelings of their first sexual encounter all over again. For the boys, the song presented a narcissistic image of them making the girl forget her past encounters and enjoy the sexual act as if for the first time.
Read more about this topic: Like A Virgin (song)
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“It is my PRIDE, my damnd, native, unconquerable Pride, that plunges me into Distraction. You must know that 19-20th of my Composition is Pride. I must either live a Slave, a Servant; to have no Will of my own, no Sentiments of my own which I may freely declare as such;Mor DIEperplexing alternative!”
—Thomas Chatterton (17521770)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (18121870)
“When I think of God, when I think of him as existent, and when I believe him to be existent, my idea of him neither increases nor diminishes. But as it is certain there is a great difference betwixt the simple conception of the existence of an object, and the belief of it, and as this difference lies not in the parts or composition of the idea which we conceive; it follows, that it must lie in the manner in which we conceive it.”
—David Hume (17111776)