Papa Don't Preach

Bon Jovi released Slippery When Wet featuring You Give Love a Bad Name, Living on a Prayer, Wanted Dead or Alive, and turning the band into global arena rock superstars.

Madonna released True Boo- True Blue featuring Papa Don't Preach, Open Your Heart, and the title track.

Janet Jackson released Control, dramatically reinventing her career and establishing her as a superstar separate from the Jackson family.

Uh, one of the greatest albums of all time, Paul Simon released Graceland, blending American songwriting with South African musical influences.

different songs yeah this song is this song is really good

yeah um my number three is papa don't preach

oh

um and not even for like the message of it um which is still very unclear whether like that my baby that she's going to keep is an actual baby or her boyfriend.

Sonic nods to songs such as Womack and Womack's Footsteps and Pat Benatar's Love is a Battlefield are deployed for emotional resonance.

When Hayes takes issue with his violent homophobic father-on euphoric equation, he builds a melody from the bones of Madonna's Papa Don't Preach.

Hereditary struggles with mental health are addressed with grim clarity on the murkily melodic Poison Blood.

Then more histrionically, over a cluttered retro arcade bleeps and squelches of birth, he sings, there's a creature inside me, all sticky and black, squirms like an octopus with the teeth of a rat.

...

if you're a Madonna nut out there, he played the boyfriend/father of her unborn child in the video for Papa Don't Preach.

Oh, okay.

Mm-hmm.

When True Blue dropped in the summer of 1986, it was already a monster record.

It had huge, massive hits, Live to Tell, Papa Don't Preach, Open Your Heart, and True Blue.

By the time that La Isla Bonita was chosen as the fifth and ultimately would be the final single in February of 1987, most albums around that era would have been run out of steam already.

On to the next album.

in just a few minutes.

Did you know there's actually a clarinet in the background of Papa Don't Preach by Madonna? Yes, very deliberate and well-researched choice there, Will.

Absolutely not by accident whatsoever.

Maeve Fury is still with us from Mount Melick and she remains in France, so hence the quality of the line was a little bit of a challenge.

1985, Shout by Tears for Fears.

1986, Papa Don't Preach by Madonna.

1987, Alone by Heart.

1988, Roll With It by Steve Winwood.

Mixed into this.

Yeah, we get to Papa Don't Preach.

We go back to Blonde Ambition.

And this was probably, of all of the images of the tour, this was the one that set the world on fire.