"Justify My Love" is a song by American singer Madonna from her first greatest hits album, The Immaculate Collection (1990). The song was written by Lenny Kravitz and Ingrid Chavez, with additional lyrics by Madonna; Kravitz also handled the production alongside André Betts. It was released as the lead single from The Immaculate Collection on November 6, 1990, by Sire and Warner Bros. Records. Initially, Chavez was not credited on the song; this led to a lawsuit against Kravitz that resulted in an out-of-court settlement. Influenced by hip hop, dance, trip hop, trance and experimental pop, it features spoken word vocals by Madonna touching on sexual fantasies and implying the position of a woman as the one sexually in control.
The song's commercial release was accompanied by different remixes; "The Beast Within" remix was condemned as anti-semitic by some Jewish organizations. "Justify My Love" received generally positive reviews by music critics, who appreciated Madonna and Kravitz's collaboration as well as its sensual nature, and was retrospectively noted as one of Madonna's best singles. The song was a commercial success, becoming Madonna's ninth number-one single on the US Billboard Hot 100, and also peaked at number one in Canada; it also reached the top 10 in several countries including Australia, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
The accompanying music video, shot in Paris and directed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino, is a tribute to the film Bay of Angels (1963). It features Madonna's then-boyfriend Tony Ward and portrays the singer as a woman walking in a hotel hallway, looking distressed and tired from work, until being seduced into having sex with a mysterious man and woman. The video contained imagery of sadomasochism, voyeurism and bisexuality, and was subsequently banned from MTV and other networks internationally due to its sexually explicit nature. In response, the video was released as a video single on VHS and became the first-ever short-form video to be certified multiplatinum in the US by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
"Justify My Love" and "The Beast Within" remix have been included on four of Madonna's concert tours, the last being 2023–2024's Celebration Tour. It was covered and sampled a number of times by artists such as Vita, Ashanti, and Jay-Z. The music video was parodied on an episode of Saturday Night Live and was also seen by critics as feminist, as well as considered one of the sexiest videos of all time by some publications. "Justify My Love" was included on Madonna's greatest hits albums Celebration (2009) and Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones (2022).
Background and release By the end of 1990, Madonna was ready to release her first greatest hits collection, titled The Immaculate Collection, after becoming the biggest female singles artist in history, with the most number-one and top-ten hit songs by a woman in both the United States and the United Kingdom. According to J. Randy Taraborrelli, author of Madonna: An Intimate Biography, the release was "much more than a mere collection of Madonna's biggest-selling and most popular songs". The singer regarded it as a "proud landmark" of her career, which had progressed upwards since she broke out in the music scene in 1983. Following the completion of 1990's Blond Ambition World Tour, Madonna began rushing the project, aiming to release it in time for the year's Christmas season. On October 13, 1990, Billboard magazine confirmed that Madonna had been working on new material for the album with Shep Pettibone and Lenny Kravitz. The collection had 15 of Madonna's previously released singles, and two new songs, "Justify My Love" and "Rescue Me", were included in order to generate the public's interest.
"Justify My Love" was released as the lead single from The Immaculate Collection on November 6, 1990. It was issued in Australia on November 19, in the UK on December 1, and in Japan on December 10. The artwork for the single, photographed by Patrick Demarchelier and directed by Jeri Heiden, features a picture of Madonna aggressively leaning forward, wearing a sleeveless waistcoast with her hair scrunched up under a black cap, an aggressive expression on her face, and a cigarette hanging out of her lips. Carol Clerk, author of Madonnastyle, opined that "it was a particularly masculine pose; Madonna, at times, could look as butch as the next man". The picture had previously appeared on the cover of an Interview magazine issue which featured an interview with Madonna, and later was removed from the French version of the single. Afterwards, the song was included on Madonna's third greatest hits album Celebration (2009), and as a remixed form on Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones (2022).
Development
"Justify My Love" was written by singer and songwriter Ingrid Chavez as a love letter dedicated to Kravitz, who was having an affair with her at the time. He invited her over to a studio where he was producing tracks with André Betts, and then recorded the letter in one take. Kravitz took a master copy of the song to Virgin Records, as their relationship ended some time later. Months later, he told Chavez that Madonna would release "Justify My Love" and asked her to sign a document saying that she would receive 12.5% publishing royalties, but no credit. She eventually signed the paper and was then invited to meet Madonna in the studio while they mixed the track, and was impressed by how she copied her vocals exactly from the demo version; Chavez thought that "maybe she just felt like she didn't want another woman to take credit for the creative style of the vocal".
Upon the song's release, Chavez filed a lawsuit against them, claiming the only words Kravitz wrote were "justify my love", while Madonna changed one line. It was also reported that she only received a US$500 advance after Kravitz pressured her to sign an agreement surrendering credit and three-quarters of royalties. He admitted that Chavez had written part of the lyrics, but both had agreed not to credit her for personal and professional reasons, and accused her of trying to "make like she did the whole thing" upon the single's success. She responded by stating that the reason was because he was afraid his wife would think they were having an affair. They eventually reached an out-of-court settlement whereby she received 12.5% percent of royalties and her name on the next pressings. However, her name does not appear on any compilations containing the song. Betts also sued Kravitz, claiming he was promised co-producer credit and half of any producer's royalties, but received an associate producer's credit and was not paid for his work.
Kravitz recalled that he had been working on demos, and the demo version of "Justify My Love" came up. At first, he thought it was "super-sexy and hard at the same time. I just felt it. I just knew that there was something very special about the track and the minimum quality, because it was so minimal. Just a gut thing". However, he "knew it wasn't for me", but thought it would be perfect for Madonna, and phoned her saying he had a number-one song for her. The same day, they met in New York City, where Kravitz played the demo for her. After listening to the song multiple times, Madonna agreed on recording, and both started working on it the next day. Kravitz described the recording session as "just the two of us and my engineers, and it happened in one day. It was very quick", adding it was fun and "all very authentic".
Composition "Justify My Love" was written by Kravitz and Chavez, with additional lyrics by Madonna; he also produced the song alongside André Betts. It was recorded by Henry Hirsch, David Domanich, Andy Cardenas, and Josh Cuervokas at Waterfront Studios in London, and Unique Recording Studios in New York City. Ted Jensen mastered the song at Sterling Sound Studios, while it was mixed by Shep Pettibone and Goh Hotoda at Guerilla Studios in London. The mixing was done in QSound, which at that time was a new audio filter to create a three-dimensional sound effect. This was employed on all of Madonna's past hits present on The Immaculate Collection.
"Justify My Love" is set in common time with a moderate tempo of 132 beats per minute. Composed in the key of B minor, Madonna's vocal range spans from A4 to D5. It follows the chord progression of E5–F5–E5–F5 during the opening melody. Musically, it is a hip hop, dance, trip-hop, trance, and experimental pop song, which features spoken word vocals by Madonna and Kravitz's "moans" on background vocals. It contains a drum sample of Public Enemy's "Security of the First World" (1988) used initially without consent, and the group threatened to take legal action against both singers; however, music industry members believed the drum beat was sampled from James Brown's single "Funky Drummer" (1970), but these claims were denied by the group's producer, Hank Shocklee. A spokeswoman for Madonna said she never had heard their song and "didn't write the music" for "Justify My Love", while Kravitz dismissed the claims by saying, "It's just one of those beats you find on the floor somewhere."
Lyrically, "Justify My Love" was described as a "spoken-word ode to releasing your inner freak". Madonna starts singing the lines "I wanna kiss you in Paris, I wanna hold your hand in Rome, I wanna run naked in a rainstorm, make love in a train... cross country". The chorus changes its atmosphere, as the singer's breathing vocals initially punctuate the "wanting, needing, waiting" line, which prefaces the double-tracked "for you to justify my love", with the words "my love" being repeated in the background. The second verse begins with her uttering "OK", suggesting a move in direction, reflected by the line "I wanna know you... no, not like that". On the next verse, Madonna utters the lines "Talk to me, tell me your dreams / Am I in them? Tell me your fears / Are you scared? Tell me your stories", implying the position of a woman sexually in control, which is reinforced by the line "Poor is the man whose pleasures depend upon the permission of another", with its underlying connotations of domination through the lyrics "Love me, that's right, love me / I wanna be your baby". Scholar Sheila Whiteley noted in her book Women and Popular Music: Sexuality, Identity, and Subjectivity that the song's lyrics "imply an overall focus on sexual fantasy" with "implicit S&M of pleasuring allied to permission", suggesting that certain pleasures need to be justified.
Taraborrelli described the composition as "rather simple – a funky, drum pattern under a droning, aural synthesizer pad, with Madonna speaking sexy verses over the music, Kravitz casually moaning a melody in the background". In a similar vein, Rikky Rooksby wrote on his book Madonna: The Complete Guide to Her Music that the elements on the song were "simple enough: a drum loop that repeats for the duration of the song, a bass part, and a descending four chord sequence moving from F♯ minor to B minor", whose melody "doesn't exactly go anywhere, but it creates a hypnotic atmosfere which supports the imagery of the lyric". Santiago Fouz-Hernández and Freya Jarman-Ivens, in their book Madonna's Drowned Worlds, stated that it was "far from an ordinary pop song", featuring "a very simple tonal structure and the same bassline", with the same chords repeated over and over. They also noted its "little melodic interest", with Madonna speaking more than she sang through her "distant, remote, 'elsewhere'" androgynous vocals. Tom Breiham from Stereogum later classified "Justify My Love" as "an early example of trip-hop", and pointed out that Madonna deserves credit for "anticipating whole new trends before they even happened."
"The Beast Within"