Albums: Like a Prayer (1989), Something to Remember (1995)
Songwriters/producers: Madonna/Patrick Leonard

The most undeservingly overlooked song of Madonna’s entire ’80s body of work, Oh Father was by far her least commercial single to date. Its original release as a single in late 1989 (excluding the UK, where it was finally released as the second single from Something to Remember in 1995) took guts - predictably peaking at number 20 on the Billboard charts, it ended her run of 16 consecutive top five singles. But it was a necessary sacrifice - for more than sales or populism, the already-world dominating New Madonna wanted respect no matter the cost.

The first shock is how outright lush the song sounds - the piano alone is beautiful enough, but Bill Meyers’ sweeping string arrangement just soars. In a true departure from precedent, there’s not a single synthesized instrument in the song. The second shock is the sheer rawness of Madonna’s vocal performance - where almost any other singer would have scaled typically balladic heights, she’s restrained, but resolute and infinitely more honest for it.

Whilst Promise to Try, a pledge to her younger self, was about the pain of her mother’s death, Oh Father appears to open with the same childhood anguish, but from her father’s side. Coming from a 30-year-old Madonna, “you never loved me” sounds like an accusation, and the chorus virtually an account of child abuse - but is it really? Or is the act of blaming her father merely “what a child will believe”? The girlish, pure backing vocals in the chorus feel like a memory - nothing like the wounded vibrato of Madonna’s lead vocals.

On the other hand, the second verse casts some of the blame on herself. In 1985, she told Time, “I have a lot of feelings of love and warmth for her but sometimes I think I tortured her. I think little kids do that to people who are really good to them. They can’t believe they’re not getting yelled at or something so they taunt you. I really taunted my mother.”

There is a common story that Madonna Fortin Ciccone, exhausted from her treatment for breast cancer, sat down to take a break from looking after her kids - and a five-year-old Madonna Louise Ciccone climbed on top of her, hitting her, demanding attention. But her mother lacked the strength - “I was so little and I put my arms around her and I could feel her body underneath me sobbing and I felt like she was the child.” No doubt the young Madonna had feelings of guilt, however unfounded, over her mother’s death. But on the other hand, the way “Oh Father I have sinned” prefaces the second chorus, it becomes as much an indictment of Catholicism, and perhaps God himself, for taking her mother away prematurely. “I never felt so good about myself” - but was that God’s fault, or her own, or her father’s?

As honest as the song may be, there is not much literal truth to be found here. Madonna has never claimed her father intentionally abused her, physically or mentally, but as for the metaphorical? The art ultimately exists for its own sake - it doesn’t have to be literally true to be honest or biographical.

Interestingly, the Like a Prayer album booklet prefaces those two lines with an “if” that’s not on the recording. It’s a minor detail, but left in, it changes Madonna’s faith in her father’s good intentions into a questioning cynicism that would’ve been at odds with the song’s more reconciliatory conclusion.

That “maybe” is as cautious as forgiveness gets - she knows it’s true, but she doesn’t quite feel it in her heart yet. Essentially, Oh Father concludes with the understanding that the trauma of her mother’s death, subsequent guilt and her repressive Catholic upbringing weren’t truly her father’s fault - in a way, all three stemmed from God himself, a higher Father. But she never quite points the finger; and when she finally sings the last choruses in full, she knows “you can’t hurt me now”. It’s a bitter Madonna, but one who’s now at peace.

As with most of Madonna’s more personal, biographical efforts, Oh Father has a fairly literal visual interpretation of the music. The black-and-white, wintry look draws inspiration from the grand, archetypal cinema of Citizen Kane - and more than any of her other videos, there’s something truly cinematic about the moody low-key lighting. There’s an incredible attention to detail - from her mother’s death and funeral (the sewn lips representing her silence, a true story), to having three separate actors with uncanny resemblances to her father Silvio Ciccone, to recurring themes like the scattered pearl necklace. Most remarkable is how it blurs the past and present - the adult Madonna comfortably observes from the fringes of her childhood memories, and vice-versa towards the end, where she and her father cast the shadows of their arguing younger selves. Most significantly, she seems to take on the spirit of her own mother, the older Madonna, at the bedside of her younger, 20-something father. She delivers her final forgiveness with a kiss, whilst her present-day bond with her father goes unspoken - they simply share the memory and love of her mother. This was somewhat true of their real-life relationship as well - when asked by MTV’s Kurt Loder if her father had seen the video, Madonna replied, “To tell you the truth, I don’t know if he’s seen it. I’m kind of afraid to call him up and ask him.”

Oh Father is absolutely one of Madonna’s greatest works, and crucial to understanding her psyche both as an artist and a person. But despite all this, it seems to warrant little mention in present recaps of her career. Celebration seems content to portray most of her career as a party, defining her greatest songs as hits more than anything else. But why wasn’t it even on the supposedly completionist DVD? Really, the Madonna of today can do whatever she likes - unlike the Madonna who was once compelled to prove herself as a serious artist. It’s a shame that Oh Father doesn’t have a place in the canon of her body of work, because it certainly deserves it - its exclusion is selling herself short on both artistic and personal levels.