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“Secret Garden” Interpretation


drivebitch
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31 minutes ago, rescueme said:

I have a love hate relationship with that song, it's beautiful but some of the lyrics are so dumb. Rhyming for the sake of rhyming. Where my place is. Where my face is. lol

Oooh really? In my opinion, like other songs on that album, is more a "mood" than a traditional pop song, of course. "Place" and "face" is a classic rhyme in pop, though. :smile:

I don't know, I see it like that, a mood, a perfect closing for that album, not too serious, not too light, with irony ("I was being IRONIC" hihi) and quite sexy. Plus it's almost close to jazz music in some parts (!!??) so it's also different to her.

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59 minutes ago, Prayer said:

Oooh really? In my opinion, like other songs on that album, is more a "mood" than a traditional pop song, of course. "Place" and "face" is a classic rhyme in pop, though. :smile:

I don't know, I see it like that, a mood, a perfect closing for that album, not too serious, not too light, with irony ("I was being IRONIC" hihi) and quite sexy. Plus it's almost close to jazz music in some parts (!!??) so it's also different to her.

It's an amazing song, I just find some of the lyrics naff. The first in a long tradition of epic album closing songs.

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2 hours ago, rescueme said:

I have a love hate relationship with that song, it's beautiful but some of the lyrics are so dumb. Rhyming for the sake of rhyming. Where my place is. Where my face is. lol

I think like so many of the writing in this album it has a poetic approach rather than lyrics.

The repetition and cadence on the sentences are close to spoken word. Repeating sentences that sound the same and have small changes to give you and understating of the meaning.

The whole song goes about where's this place. And we know is not a real place. I think Place and face there mean: Place as being, like a physical or location in time, while face means what others see from you, your face to the public. A rhetoric Madonna goes into often in her lyrics.

Like poetry and spoken word it could sound cheesy or phony out of context but I personally love it within the album vibe.

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41 minutes ago, EgoRod said:

I think like so many of the writing in this album it has a poetic approach rather than lyrics.

The repetition and cadence on the sentences are close to spoken word. Repeating sentences that sound the same and have small changes to give you and understating of the meaning.

The whole song goes about where's this place. And we know is not a real place. I think Place and face there mean: Place as being, like a physical or location in time, while face means what others see from you, your face to the public. A rhetoric Madonna goes into often in her lyrics.

Like poetry and spoken word it could sound cheesy or phony out of context but I personally love it within the album vibe.

And not to mention, a beautiful closing to an iconic album. So soothing.

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29 minutes ago, Jet said:

Slightly off topic…but while we’re on erotica…has anyone ever noticed the “aahhh” singing during the music break on bad girl? I noticed it for the first time ever yesterday. Is it to do with the new lossless thing on Apple Music?

It's her saying "yeah." 

https://mega.nz/file/AuI1SKgD#NIa43j6PLlbk6lk6yMcvZt7hF9yjQjTSeieXx6ldINQ

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45 minutes ago, Jet said:

Slightly off topic…but while we’re on erotica…has anyone ever noticed the “aahhh” singing during the music break on bad girl? I noticed it for the first time ever yesterday. Is it to do with the new lossless thing on Apple Music?

After I don't wanna be blue? She has few groans heavy breathing  in the song

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One of my all time favorite tracks. Musically is so classy and refined, her vocal delivery is sexy but also vulnerable, an incredible closer to the album.

I'd love her to go further in this jazzy/experimental line...she could be the perfect female crooner...what a life she's had! 

For a while I have been thinking that  next to the biopic, i would love a companion, a sort of  musical narration, madonna the crooner, telling us her story through voice and music. A background of experimental soundscapes, jazzy, trippy, dancey...a sum of all the stuff she has musically played with in her career but viewed through a different lense.

And that voice, singing, whispering, breathing her life story to us. Just a little wish :)

Edited by jesus (see edit history)
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13 hours ago, drivebitch said:

How do you interpret this song? 
 

It’s a metaphor for her vagina, right?

Like many songs on this album, yes and no.

Definitely my favourite song on Erotica even after all this time.

The lyrics are really a poem, a spoken word piece whispered. Like an echo of the opening track, it's built on a bass loop, a hip hop shuffle and a melodic chorus. Erotica is driven by its thumping beat pattern and simplistic keyboard, Secret Garden is flowing between the thunderous and telluric cello bass and the touch of the live pianist. And her voice is the center of it all.

Despite the floral metaphors going throughout the song, it's quite ambiguous and doesn't have a real focus: it could be about scorn, having a child or not, mortality, a lover, heartbreak, becoming someone else or someone new, finding one's place, purification. I sometimes think it's about her bisexuality, at that time. Maybe, it's so much about herself that she wishes she didn't have such a shitty heart. Bitterness and hope, naked and confident, past or future?

Interestingly, religion isn't part of the plan, it's all about nature and the elements.

She brings up a lot of personal thoughts, and probably the people involved aren't even aware of it.

In French, "jardin secret" is an expression referring to someone's unspoken and intimate life and actions, the kind of things that you do mostly on your own without telling anyone else because it's not their damn business, the thoughts that you hardly share with your partner for a lot of reasons, and most importantly stuff that makes you feel good about yourself. Fontainebleau at the end of the song indicates that her secret garden is not only her bush but also that special place in one's life experience that you can only learn about when you're dating someone French. So maybe someone got the pun.

Like in a dream or tripping on drugs, she seems unable to move or take control of anything. She asks herself a lot of questions, it's all about what's going to happen to her. She's not vulnerable, she's yearning in fortitude. She isn't sure about what she can do next, but she feels ready for something to come. In that sense, it's the link between Rescue Me (another spoken word song about inner struggles) and Secret (basically her most soulful song, about understanding someone else's need for a "jardin secret" after she found her own), between her career in the early 90s, the way she shifted after the 80s, and what she would achieve later with Ray of Light, and the spiritual turn her lyrics took later on. 

In Erotica, she was mostly talking about what she could do with and to her lover, she was giving. In SG, she's welcoming anything.

It's like she closed the Justify My  Love / Erotica / Sex book era at the end of the album.

Besides the obvious title, Secret Garden is about Madonna wanting more in a serene and quiet way, 

 

A wonderful outro.

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2 minutes ago, Drownedboy said:

It is a song that puts me to sleep LOL Maybe heard it three times in last 23 years. But maybe I should give it another chance. I never really liked the Erotica album..

It's an album of two halves for me, lots I love and lots I don't. I still love the same songs and skip the same songs all these years later.

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I always thought the song was inspired by Nancy Friday's My Secret Garden which collects quite a multitude of women's sexual fantasies. The SEX book, too, seems oddly related to it. In fact, nearly ever fantasy discussed in this book checks all the boxes of what is included in SEX. Has M ever talked about this book or any other work by Nancy Friday?

Edited by acolyte (see edit history)
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