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The song’s writer was inspired by his relationship to his own children. He said, “I just wanted to make this girl in the song a sympathetic character. As a father myself, I’d want to be accessible to my children’s problems”

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To Madonna, this was the key to the song. She told Rolling Stone that the song was about “standing up to male authorities”.

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Madonna’s controversial hit hated by many, including feminists, and loved by others, was inspired by gossiping teenagers overheard by songwriter Brian Elliot. Depending on how one views this song, it could be said to tell a story of a girl passing from the control of her father to the control of her boyfriend, her pregnancy having curtailed her life chances.

More recently, feminists have argued that a strong woman should be the person she wants to be. This may involve having a baby, whatever the circumstances, motherhood being a source of power that should be celebrated. Therefore the girl in this song is asserting herself, rejecting her father’s control of her, choosing the boy she wants despite her father’s disapproval and deciding her own future.

Listeners can decide their own interpretation.

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“In trouble” is here, as elsewhere, a euphemism for pregnancy. After the song became a hit, Madonna worried that her young fans would want to follow in the footsteps of the song’s protagonist and get pregnant themselves:

‘Papa Don’t Preach’ is a message song that everyone is going to take the wrong way. Immediately they’re going to say I am advising every young girl to go out and get pregnant. When I first heard the song, I thought it was silly. But then I thought, wait a minute, this song is really about a girl who is making a decision in her life. She has a very close relationship with her father and wants to maintain that closeness. To me it’s a celebration of life. It says, ‘I love you, father, and I love this man and this child that is growing inside me.’ Of course, who knows how it will end? But at least it starts off positive.

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The lyric here reflects the music. The track is Latin-flavored, which was the idea of producer Pat Leonard, who also wrote the music

Madonna and Leonard frequently wrote in a Latin style. She has said:

Latin rhythms often dominate our uptempo compositions. It’s like we’re possessed. [Patrick and I] both think that we were Latin in another life

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This song, originally written for Michael Jackson about the mythical island of San Pedro, was re-worked by Madonna into her first of many Latin-inspired hits.

The track reflects the multicultural mix of New York that Madonna experienced when she was starting out. She told SongTalk:

When I lived in New York for so many years I was constantly listening to salsa and merengue. I mean, that stuff was constantly blaring out of everybody’s radio on the street."

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The NoGE has schools all over the country, the most famous of which is the Allah School in Mecca (Harlem)

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Check out Rap Genius' interview with Rose here

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These ideas come from his 1979 book Subculture: The Meaning of Style, which you can read online here

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