FEATURE:
Groovelines
Madonna – Human Nature
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A single that should…
have been a much bigger hit than it was, I wanted to focus on Madonna’s Human Nature for this Groovelines. Its thirtieth anniversary is in June. The final single from her sixth studio album, Bedtime Stories (1994), maybe there was a feeling that the album had been out a long time and people had already heard the song. The track was a response to the backlash and criticism Madonna received after releasing Erotica and the book, Sex, in 1992. Written by Madonna, Dave Hall, Shawn McKenzie, Kevin McKenzie and Michael Deering, I think it is one of her most important songs. I am surprised it was not the first single released from Bedtime Stories. I guess, as the album was a sort of change and reflection following the reception Erotica got, it might have been a mistake or too bold going in with a lead single that took aim at critics. Those who criticised Madonna for talking about sex. Tongue in cheek and with plenty of humour, the song samples Main Source’s 1994 tracks, What You Need (Shaun McKenzie, Kevin McKenzie and Michael Deering were members of Main Source). Ahead of its thirtieth anniversary on 6th June, I wanted to bring in some features around Human Nature. I am going to start by sourcing from Dig! and their feature of last year. A song that urged fans to express themselves (Express Yourself turns forty soon), I think that some critic were unsure what to make of Human Nature:
“Madonna would have the final say
Madonna spent much of her Erotica promotional duties defending her sexually charged artistic choices in a series of confrontational TV appearances and magazine articles, but Human Nature would be the first time on song that she would comment on the furore caused by her work.
From “Express yourself, don’t repress yourself”, the song’s opening line (consider the contrast to Express Yourself’s “C’mon, girls, do you believe in love?” from just five years earlier) to “Oops, I didn’t know I couldn’t talk about sex; I must’ve been crazy”, the message couldn’t be clearer. And for anyone who might have missed the point, there was the closing kiss-off: “I’m not your bitch, don’t hang your shit on me.”
Human Nature maintained her presence on the dance charts
Coming off the back of her biggest-ever US hit, Take A Bow, the experimental Bedtime Story single (co-written by Björk) had proved too out-there for mainstream North America, but Madonna’s loyal UK market took it into the Top 10.
The next track lifted from the album, Human Nature, was a more radio-friendly option. Released on 6 June 1995, it peaked at No.2 on the US dance charts, narrowly missing out on qualifying for inclusion on Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones, the 2022 collection that would chronicle Madonna’s record-breaking run of US No.1 singles.
Human Nature’s promo video is one of Madonna’s most memorable clips
Arguably now more famous than the song that inspired it, the video for Human Nature is one of the best Madonna promo clips. Partnering for a third time with Jean-Baptiste Mondino, after Open Your Heart and Justify My Love, it features terrific choreography by long-term dance collaborator Jamie King.
Taking a visual brief from erotic artist Eric Stanton, this video is a sharp send-up of the Sex book and the public’s misunderstanding of the project (Madonna’s then pet dog, Chiquita, even makes a hilarious appearance). But there’s a message behind the parody: “Absolutely no regrets” is Madonna’s definitive statement to camera at the video’s end”.
There are a couple of features I want to end on. The first is from Billboard. Published in 2016, they looked at Madonna in 1995. Maybe large sections of the public exhausted by her sexualised lyrics. In fact, she was being herself and there was nothing controversial at all. Just this perception that Madonna was sex-obsessed or too provactive. Human Nature was released at a time when many were looking for something different from Madonna. Perhaps a reason it was not a major hit. A song that deserved a lot better:
“One of the few hip-hop-inflected singles in her discography (it samples a song from Main Source, the same rap group that gave Nas his first on-wax appearance), “Human Nature” has a deeply funk foundation while maintaining the spacious, thin production common to many ’90s R&B hits.
While “Take a Bow” — released just a year earlier from the same album, Bedtime Stories — was a smash No. 1 for Madge, “Human Nature” stalled at No. 46 despite a killer video and a defiant, empowering message. Lyrically, Madonna brushes off the prudes who faulted her for fixating on sex, pointing out that the “taboo” subject is simply human nature — the most basic element of human nature at that. She also correctly points out that she’d have gotten less flak for exploring sexuality so bluntly if she were a man (“Would it sound better if I were a man?” is one of her whispered rhetorical questions throughout). And it’s hard to argue with that — have any of the male directors behind sexually explicit hit movies been put through the wringer like she has?
Furthermore, the “Express yourself, don’t repress yourself” refrain is classic — the kind of line built to be repeated decades later. So why didn’t “Human Nature” at least knick the top 10?
Part of the reason may have been the fact that previous single “Bedtime Story” isolated too many radio programmers and casual fans. The Bjork co-write, while adventurous and exhilarating, didn’t make sense on radio in the mid-’90s, and it was just too weird for most of her younger fans (and in 1995, she still had plenty of those).
Ultimately, though, it’s the content of the song itself that prevented it from penetrating mass culture like previous dancefloor-ready singles. “Human Nature” is crafted as a challenge to those who thought she went too far by releasing an entire book devoted to erotic photos, and those are the people who don’t want to discuss sexuality — they just want to chastise you for talking about it. Even though the “I’m not your bitch/ Don’t hang your shit on me” line was excised for radio, the message of “Human Nature” was still too much for those who hated her Dita Parlo persona.
“Human Nature” is the original “Unapologetic Bitch,” but it came at a time when the idea of an unapologetic woman was far too threatening for most — not just radio programmers and parents, but even many of her fans. To a Puritan, the only thing worse than a woman wearing a scarlet A is a woman proudly wearing a scarlet A.
Regardless, “Human Nature” holds up as one of her finest ’90s singles, and today we’re saluting this anthem to not apologizing when you know you were right in the first place”.
I am going to end with a feature from Vice. Published in 2014, they talked about the importance of the unapologetic Bedtime Stories. From the emotional and sweeping Take a Bow to the beautiful Secret, this is an album that remains underrated. I think that Human Nature is one of Madonna’s best songs:
“When you’re a celebrity, you’re allowed to have one personality trait. Which is ridiculous,” Madonna told the Detroit News in 1993. When Bedtime Stories was finally released on October 25, she addressed both aspects of the shaming process. Despite the promises in her promo, she continued to acknowledge her sexual desires, although she also experimented with the sound and subject matter. Beginning with “Survival,” a song she co-wrote with Dallas Austin, Madonna doesn’t hesitate to address the backlash and sings “I’ll never be an angel / I’ll never be a saint it’s true / I’m too busy surviving.” The lyrics continue to convey a loosely drawn narrative of the punishment she endured from the media and her feelings leading up to the release, and the songs are carried mostly by R&B melodies produced by Austin, Nellee Hooper, and Babyface.
The definitive single on the album is an explicit rebuke of the backlash. In “Human Nature,” she confirms that wasn’t sorry and that she’s not anyone’s bitch, and she paired the song perfectly with a video that toys with bondage like an Erotica throwback. Right when she is about to drop the mic she whispers, “would it sound better if I were a man?”
Madonna asserted her lack of apology on the grounds that she had not said or did anything unusual; it was simply unusual for a woman to say it. In an interview with the LA Times, she defended Bedtime Stories by saying “I’m being punished for being a single female, for having power and being rich and saying the things I say, being a sexual creature—actually, not being any different from anyone else, but just talking about it. If I were a man, I wouldn’t have had any of these problems. Nobody talks about Prince’s sex life.”
Beyond offering Madonna’s final word on the scandal of her sexuality, the album pivots to address the misconception that her sexual persona limited her versatility as an artist. The narrative in Bedtime Stories immediately turns introspective, relating “I know how to laugh / but I don’t know happiness.” While the album borrows mostly from R&B and new jack swing, it becomes more experimental with the Bjork-penned title track, accompanied with a video that could not have explored the collective unconscious better if Carl Jung directed it. The video for “Bedtime Story” is the first instance of what would become Madonna’s long history of culture-plucking spiritual inquiry, and to this day is stored in a collection at the Museum of Modern Art. As a pair, “Human Nature” and “Bedtime Story” prove that Madonna owned her sexuality and would not be eclipsed by it. While the former fully embraces the decisions she made with previous albums, the latter dismantles the “slut” narrative that her overt sexuality discredits her depth as a performer. Surely people would see this as a feminist masterpiece, no?
Still, critics didn’t get it. The New York Times’ Jon Pareles waxed nostalgic for when “Madonna thrived in the 1980s on being sensational and suggestive against a tame mainstream backdrop,” calling her more recent work “vulgar instead of shocking.” Critical reception continued to focus on the scandal of her attitude rather than the actual record. “Madonna’s career has never really been about music; it’s been about titillation, about image, about publicity,” began one TIME review, which wasn’t unique in its premise. Any mention of the album’s experimental sound or numerous collaborations were overshadowed by her promiscuous image and once again left cheapened. Bedtime Stories as an album was not the clear apology the public demanded, and its emotional depth was largely ignored. At best, it was thought of as Madonna’s return to a safer expression of sexuality”.
In 2018, when ranking Madonna’s seventy-eight singles, The Guardian ranked Human Nature in fifteenth. Rolling Stone placed Human Nature twenty-first in 2016 (“The song is basically saying, 'Don't put me in a box, don't pin me down, don't tell me what I can and can't say,'" Madonna said of this pointed response to conservative scolds. "It's about breaking out of restraints." The lyrics directly take on the media firestorm Madonna started with her Erotica album and tour and her 1992 photo book, Sex. "Did I say something wrong?/Oops, I didn't know I couldn't talk about sex," she sings matter-of-factly. Musically, the song is a foray into hip-hop and R&B, sampling a jazzy beat from Main Source and biting some vocal phrasing from A Tribe Called Quest's "Electric Relaxation."). A track that has won more favour with critics of today than it might have done in 1995, it is a shame there was this sense of apathy or annoyance from some. That Madonna was pushing things too far. Human Nature has inspired songs by artists like Britney Spears, Demi Lovato, Christina Aguilera and Billie Eilish. Its standout video, directed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino, is another reason to love the song. As Human Nature turns thirty on 6th June, I wanted to give some overdue love to…
THIS Madonna classic.