This song is about teenage pregnancy, with Madonna taking the voice of a confused teenager who wants advice from her father at a difficult time. In a 2009 interview with Rolling Stone, she said: "It just fit right in with my own personal zeitgeist of standing up to male authorities, whether it's the pope or the Catholic Church or my father and his conservative, patriarchal ways."
In the song, Madonna seeks the counsel of her father, who warned her about this guy she's not thinking of marrying, but she has her mind made up on one key issue: she's keeping her baby.
This had real-life implications because Madonna was immensely popular with young women, many of whom emulated her. Anti-abortion groups praised the song while abortion-rights groups condemned it. Planned Parenthood tried to convince radio stations not to play it and asked Madonna to donate some proceeds to family planning efforts. "The message is that getting pregnant is cool and having the baby is the right thing and a good thing and don't listen to your parents, the school, anybody who tells you otherwise - don't preach to me, Papa," a spokesman for the group told the New York Times. "The reality is that what Madonna is suggesting to teen-agers is a path to permanent poverty."
Madonna, uncharacteristically, sat out the abortion debate this song inflamed, refusing to take a stand on the issue. Much later, she raised her voice to support a woman's right to choose, telling the Australian TV host Andrew Denton in 2019, "Don't you think Jesus would agree that a woman has the right to choose what to do with her body?"
When the United States Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision in 2022, ending the constitutional right to abortion, Madonna posted on social media: "Legislation has decided that We no longer have rights as women over our bodies. This decision Has plunged me And every other woman in this country into deep despair. I am scared For my daughters. I'm scared for all women in America."
Madonna didn't write this song - most of it, anyway. It was written by a San Francisco-based singer-songwriter named Brian Elliot (real name: Greg Steckler), who was trying to get a record deal. He made an album for Warner Bros. Records that was released in 1978 but went nowhere. He then started producing a singer named Christina Dent and had her record a demo that included "Papa Don't Preach." He brought the demo to Micheal Ostin at Warners, who wasn't impressed with Dent but liked the song and brought it to Madonna, who was on the Warners subsidiary Sire.
According to Elliot, she loved the song and agreed to record it if she could add some lines to the first verse and take 20% of the writers' credit. This wasn't a slam-dunk decision - Elliot thought the song could work for Christina Dent as he wrote it, but he realized that 80% of a Madonna song was a huge guaranteed payout, so he let her have it.
Madonna called this "a message song that everyone is going to take the wrong way." She told the New York Times: "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."
"Papa Don't Preach" was a huge hit, going to #1 in many countries, including the US and UK. It was the second single from her third album,
True Blue, following "
Live To Tell," which was also a #1 hit in America. Another song from the album, "
Open Your Heart," also topped the chart.
Stephen Bray produced the song with Madonna. He and Patrick Leonard were her main producers and co-writers at the time. "Papa Don't Preach" and "Open Your Heart" were the only songs on the True Blue album that either Leonard or Bray didn't co-write.
"Papa Don't Preach" put Madonna into the good graces of the Catholic church, but it didn't last. In 1989 she danced in front of burning crosses in the video for her song "
Like A Prayer," which didn't go over well with many Christian groups. Madonna was raised Catholic and often used imagery from that faith in provocative ways. Her controversial songs inevitably got a lift because it got people talking about them and generated news coverage. That was the case with her early hit "
Like A Virgin" and also with "Papa Don't Preach."
In the video, Danny Aiello plays Madonna's father. He storms off when she breaks the news that she'd pregnant, but comes around at the end and hugs her in a show of support.
Aiello was mostly unknown at the time, but went on to star in Do The Right Thing and Moonstruck. In 2013, he told the radio station Fresh 102.7 that he took the gig so his daughter could meet Madonna. "She was very nice to me," Aiello said. "I suppose it was a father/daughter relationship."
The music video won Best Female Video at the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards. It was her first VMA, not counting the Video Vanguard Award she won the previous year.
The song opens with a cello-heavy string section arranged by Bill Meyers, who also worked with Justin Timberlake and Whitney Houston. The rest of the song is mostly keyboard-driven (as was a lot of pop music in the '80s), but with strings added for texture.
Around this time, Madonna was working out and had a more toned body that she showed off in the video by wearing a tight black outfit. She got even more ripped over the next few years.
Ozzy Osbourne's daughter Kelly recorded "Papa Don't Preach" with Mike Einziger and Jose Pasillas from the group Incubus for the soundtrack to
The Osbournes, an MTV show about Ozzy's home life. Kelly's mom, Sharon Osbourne, asked her to do it.
Kelly Osbourne's version, released in 2002, peaked at #74, making it the first cover of a Madonna song to hit the Hot 100. Osbourne's rendition also reached #3 in the UK singles chart and launched her brief music career. The next year, she and Ozzy duetted on the song "
Changes," which went to #1 in the UK. Kelly released an album in 2005 but later focused on TV and fashion.
The guy who plays Madonna's boyfriend in the video is Alex McArthur, who is featured in the
Desperado movies. (Thanks, Linda - Oudenaarde, Belgium)
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Suggestion credit:
Linda - Oudenaarde, Belgium
In 2013, Danny Aiello, who played Madonna's father in the video, posted an answer song from the father's perspective called "
Papa Wants The Best For You." It's not clear why Aiello recorded the song, but it is clear he's a terrible singer.
In its review of the album
True Blue,
Rolling Stone magazine referred to this song as "Madonna's
Billie Jean." Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" has a similar theme, about a pregnancy complicating a relationship.
The song's writer, Brian Elliot,
told the LA Times he didn't have an agenda when he wrote this song, but "if Madonna has influenced young girls to keep their babies, I don't think that's such a bad deal."
"I saw it as a sensitive plea for compassion and understanding about a young girl who found herself at a crossroads in life and didn't know where to turn," he added. "Any time a song can galvanize the public and create this kind of debate, it's as much as any pop song can ever hope to be."
