Oh Father - Recording and Composition

Recording and Composition

When Madonna went to record "Oh Father", her troubled role in Speed-the-Plow was on her mind, with the result being that she vented her emotions in the recording of the song. Bill Meyers, who did the string arrangement for most of the songs on Like a Prayer, including "Oh Father", recalled that Madonna worked on the song with Leonard in "this really dingy, awful little studio in the Garment District in New York. It was grotesquely dirty and cramped, and that's what came out of it." According to him, Madonna was moved while singing the song, since the theme suggested incest and controversial things like closet beatings. However, her insecurities about her childhood showed up in anxieties during her vocal performance. Meyers said that if Madonna bended a note or sang flat in a certain spot, she would go on doing that consistently as she did not like to vary her voice or change the tone. After the mixing was over, Meyers complimented Madonna by saying that it was her "strongest" vocal performance.

For the song, which is a pop ballad, Madonna uses a contrast of timbre, her higher smoother voice with her lower one. The song begins with the sound of violins for about 20 seconds. After this, a drum machine, string arrangement and piano ushers on top of the violins, as Madonna sings the chorus line "You can't hurt me now, I got away from you, I never thought I would." The violins and the drum beats drop after the chorus, but come back again during the next bridge. As Madonna sings the verse "Oh father I have sinned", the violins change their pitch to a higher one. After the second chorus, there is an instrumental break where she sings about the realization that her father did not want to hurt her but she still ran away. The song ends with the guitar and violins fading out with Madonna's voice. According to the sheet music published by Alfred Publishing, "Oh Father" is set in the time signature of common time with a low tempo of 96 beats per minute. It is composed in the key of A minor with Madonna's voice spanning from B♭ to D₅. "Oh Father" follows a chord progression of B♭–F–C–E♭-B♭-F-C-D-F in the verses and D♯–F–C–A♯–Am–G in the chorus.