Songoftheday 8/3/18 - If I take you from behind push myself into your mind, when you least expect it will you try and reject it?
from the album Erotica (1992)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #3 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 9
Today's song of the day is from Madonna, who had veered left after releasing her tell-all documentary Truth Or Dare, then returning to #1 on the pop charts with the soft ballad "This Used To Be My Playground", from her starring-role movie A League Of Their Own in the summer of 1992. That fall, she rebounded back into the "dirty-girl" lane with a double-feature: she released her lascivious coffee-table book Sex in October of 1992, the day after Madonna released her fifth studio album Erotica. The title track from the album, put out the month before, was a seductive slow-jam song to grind to, much like her recent #1 "Justify My Love". Written by the artist with remixer supreme Shep Pettibone along with Andy Shimkin, with the first two producing it, "Erotica" went even farther than the tone poem "Justify" portrayed. For the first single released on her brand new "boutique label" Maverick Records, this was quite a risk, including a black-and-white video that MTV almost completely ignored, even with Isabella Rossellini and Naomi Campbell appearing in it...
Due to the rabid faithfulness of her fans, "Erotica" returned Madonna to the top three on the American pop chart in October of 1992. However, because it was so polarizing, and the sound so experimental, the song was short-lived beyond the initial buy, spending a mere nine weeks in the top-40 (and 18 total on the Hot 100). The remixes of the track from Shep as well as the likes of the Masters At Work team helped it top Billboard's Dance Club Play chart for a week. Internationally, the single topped the charts in Italy and Greece, and reached the top ten in Norway (#2), Portugal (#2), the UK (#3), Sweden (#3), New Zealand (#3), Ireland (#4), Australia (#4), Spain (#4), Denmark (#6), the Netherlands (#8), Belgium (#8), and Switzerland (#8). It also made the top-40 in Canada (#13), Germany (#13), and France (#23).
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An earlier version of the track, titled "Erotic", was included in the SEX book, and had Madonna renaming herself Dita...
Madonna of course included this, the biggest hit from the Erotica album, in her accompanying tour The Girlie Show in 1993...
The house music throwdown of the Masters At Work remixed helped the song top the dance chart...
Thirteen years later, Madonna brought "Erotica" back for her Confessions tour, but transformed the song into an ethereal disco funk that took lines from the demo and was almost unrecognizable from the original single...
For her MDNA shows, the singer "mashed up" "Erotica" with her album cut "Candy Shop"...
And lastly, the William Orbit remix of the track, which would guide her musical path for the next few years...
Up tomorrow: Hard rockers not from Vietnam promise incoming romance.
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