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" Oh Father" is a song recorded by American singer Madonna for her fourth studio album Like a Prayer (1989). It was released as the fourth single from the album on October 24, 1989, by Sire Records. The song was not released as a single in most European territories until December 27, 1995, when it appeared on the 1995 ballads compilation Something to Remember. Written and produced by Madonna and Patrick Leonard, "Oh Father" concerns the presence of male authoritative figures in Madonna's life, most prominently her father, Tony Ciccone. Madonna's relationship with her father had soured after her mother's death in 1963 and his remarriage three years later. While developing the Like a Prayer album, Madonna was in an emotional state of mind due to her personal problems, which is reflected in "Oh Father".
"Oh Father" is a baroque pop ballad. It was recorded at a studio in the Garment District of New York City. Leonard put together different types of chord progression and created the basic outline of a melody, which Madonna shaped and then wrote a lyric to fit the melody. She used a contrast of timbre while singing the song, which also featured instrumentation from string section, piano, violin and drums. "Oh Father" received positive reviews from critics and authors, but commercially was less successful than Madonna's previous singles. In most of the countries where it was released, the song failed to attain top-ten positions, except in Finland, where it peaked at number six. It ended Madonna's string of 16 consecutive top-five singles in the United States.
The music video of the song was Madonna's attempt to embrace and accept her mother's death. Directed by David Fincher and shot in black-and-white, it shows a little girl playing in the snow as her mother dies. A grown-up Madonna follows the child and sings the song as the child runs away from her abusive father. Described by reviewers as "autobiographical", the video was listed by Rolling Stone as one of "The 100 Top Music Videos". Scholars noted how Madonna's persona was split into the child and adult in the video, and one writer described a scene, involving the dead mother shown at her wake with her lips sewn shut, as one of the most disturbing scenes in the history of mainstream music videos; the scene was inspired by Madonna's memory of her mother from her funeral. "Oh Father" was performed only on the Blond Ambition World Tour in 1990, where Madonna portrayed a woman trying to find her religion and her battle for it.
Madonna eventually learned to take care of herself and her siblings, and she turned to her paternal grandmother in the hope of finding some solace and some form of her mother in her. The Ciccone siblings resented housekeepers and invariably rebelled against anyone brought into their home ostensibly to take the place of their beloved mother. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Madonna commented that she saw herself in her youth as a "lonely girl who was searching for something. I wasn't rebellious in a certain way. I cared about being good at something. I didn't shave my underarms and I didn't wear make-up like normal girls do. But I studied and I got good grades.... I wanted to be somebody." Terrified that her father, Tony Ciccone, could be taken from her as well, Madonna was often unable to sleep unless she was near him. Two years after her mother's death, her father married the family's housekeeper, Joan Gustafson. It was at this point that Madonna began to express unresolved feelings of anger towards her father that lasted for decades, and developed a rebellious attitude. She explained in interviews that "Like all young girls, I was in love with my father and I didn't want to lose him. I lost my mother, but then I was my mother... and my father was mine... When he married my stepmother, it was, 'OK, I don't need anybody.' I hated my father for a long, long time."
Written with record producer Patrick Leonard, in "Oh Father" the singer wanted to revisit the pain and confusion that had characterized her relationship with her father. Generally accepted by critics and academics as a love letter to Tony Ciccone or as an indictment, Madonna never explained her inspiration behind "Oh Father", except saying that the song was about her father and a tribute to Simon & Garfunkel, her favorite band at that time. She wanted to leave it open for interpretation.
Although the singer has never mentioned physical abuse in her family, she had mentioned that her father was a disciplinarian and her stepmother was hard on her. Author Lucy O'Brien wrote in her book Madonna: Like an Icon that the song stemmed more from the emotional neglect that Madonna faced, with her father locked up in grief after Mrs. Ciccone died. When he married again, his new wife was wrapped up with her own children, so the older kids were often left to their own devices. O'Brien believed that for this reason, Madonna's girlhood would have been without much joy, and that "Oh Father" was a potent example of the singer using her imagination to escape from her troubled childhood, while blaming it on her father. Tony later said, "Maybe I'm not the greatest father in the world, but life wasn't easy for us, and Nonni Madonna's knows all of this."
According to him, Madonna was moved while singing the song, since the theme suggested incest and the controversial topic of closet beatings. However, her insecurities about her childhood showed up in anxieties during her vocal performance. Meyers said that if Madonna bended a note or sang flat in a certain spot, she would go on doing that consistently as she did not like to vary her voice or change the timbre. Madonna recalled that Leonard thought of the melody for the song. After the mixing was over, Meyers complimented Madonna by saying that it was her "strongest" vocal performance.
For the baroque pop ballad, Madonna uses a contrast of timbre, her higher smoother voice with her lower one. The song begins with the sound of violins for about 20 seconds. After this, drums, string section and piano ushers on top of the violins, as Madonna sings the chorus line "You can't hurt me now, I got away from you, I never thought I would." The violins and the drum beats drop after the chorus, but come back again during the next bridge. As Madonna sings the verse "Oh father I have sinned", the violins change their pitch to a higher one. After the second chorus, there is an instrumental break where she sings about the realization that her father did not want to hurt her but she still ran away. The song ends with the guitar and violins fading out with Madonna's voice. In an interview with Paul Zollo, Madonna commented that the "Father" can refer to Tony, God or all the "authorities in her life". In a 2014 interview with Billboard celebrating the 25th anniversary of Like a Prayer, Leonard explained the recording process of the song:
"My favorite thing that we ever recorded, ever—or wrote—is 'Oh Father'... because we knew when we did it, that there was something about this that was in a way kind of the most *real* thing. For that song, the 'record' button was only pressed three times. That's it. So it's real. It's something that I really wanted to do and she was kind enough to say 'let's try this,' and it was not easy."
Lennox Samuels from The Dallas Morning News felt that the "great sense of being hurt that is present in 'Oh Father' is far more relatable than any other Madonna song." Kevin Phinney from the Austin American-Statesman called it the strongest and the most shocking song on Like a Prayer. Alan Jones from Music Week said, "It's a complex piece, not her easiest to love, with constantly shifting tempo, pseudo-classical interludes and a strong vocal." Jordan Paramor from Smash Hits gave it four out of five, adding, "It's a rather melancholy, sorrowful affair concerning someone trying to escape the clutches of her strict father. ... Pleasing enough, despite being a little heavy at times." Stephen Holden from The New York Times wrote that the orchestration of the song was "grandiloquent", while describing Madonna's delivery of the lines as an "angry triumph". Stewart Mason from AllMusic shared Holden's opinion, and described "Oh Father" as "Madonna's finest ballad performance ever". He added that the "upward modulation of the chorus, accompanied by some overdubbed self-harmonies that feature a very controlled and effective use of Madonna's highest register, is sheer brilliance, giving the song a steely resolve that removes any taint of self-pity from the verses." Music journalist J. D. Considine, while reviewing Like a Prayer for Rolling Stone, believed that despite the song's "lush" string arrangement, some of the lyrics contain a disquieting degree of pain. Hadley Freeman from The Guardian commented that the confessional nature of the lyrics of "Oh Father" was what appealed to her the most in the song. Negative reception for the song was given by Mark Browning, author of David Fincher: Films That Scar, who called it one of Madonna's weakest efforts, due to the verses sounding more like musical theater than a pop song. Entertainment Weeklys Chuck Arnold wrote that "Madonna has done other songs that deal with her family issues, but rarely better than this"; he listed "Oh Father" as the singer's 40th best single. Jude Rogers from The Guardian placed the track at number 28 of her ranking of Madonna's singles, in honor of her 60th birthday, writing: "Lush strings and bassy pianos on this classy 1989 primal scream. Hugely emo, parent-baiting lyrics, but gorgeous in its execution". In August 2018, Billboard picked it as the singer's 64th greatest single, writing that "'Oh not only set the tone for Madonna's more contemplative, downtempo decade to come, it also provided an early model for the piano-led power balladry of '90s singer-songwriters like Tori Amos and Jewel".
"Oh Father" was not released as a single in most European territories until December 24, 1995, when it appeared on Madonna's 1995 compilation album Something to Remember. The 1995 single was released with different track listing and artwork which included a photography still from the 1989 music video. The song debuted and peaked at number 16 on the UK Singles Chart on January 6, 1996. It became the third single of her career to miss the top-ten position in the United Kingdom, after "Lucky Star" (1984) and "Take a Bow" (1994). According to The Official Charts Company, "Oh Father" has sold 58,730 copies in the UK as of August 2008. The song also appeared on the Irish Singles Chart for one week at number 25 on January 4, 1996. The song was more commercially successful in Finland, where it reached number six. On the European Hot 100 Singles, the song debuted at number 73 on January 13, 1996. The next week, it reached its peak position at number 62 and became her lowest-charting single on the chart up to that point.
I had to deal with the loss of my mother and then had to deal with the guilt of her being gone and then I had to deal with the loss of my father when he married my stepmother. So I was just one angry abandoned girl. I'm still angry. The part of me that goes around saying "Fuck you! Fuck you!" is the part that's covering up the part that's saying "I'm hurt!" I guess all of this came through in the video.
The clip begins with a young girl playing in the backyard as snow falls on the ground. The scene shifts to that of a bedside, where a young woman who has died, lies. Her husband covers her with a white sheet as a priest prays. Madonna, wearing a long, black coat, sings the song underneath a snow-covered, dead tree, as the young girl plays with her dead mother's jewelry. The husband comes and shouts at the girl, tearing away the woman's pearl necklace which drop at the little girl's feet. The adult Madonna is shown lying beside another man singing the song as the little girl visits her mother's grave. The man gets up and slaps Madonna in the face, as the little girl cries in front of the grave. She is taken away from the graveyard by her father, as interspersed scenes show the girl being kissed by her mother, her trying to reach the knob of a door, and Madonna powdering the bruise mark on her face.
As the singer walks through a forest, the father is shown resorting to drinking in grief. A funeral scene follows, showing the girl walking up to her mother's wake. When she sees her mother's lips sealed with thread, she runs away from the wake. Madonna walks through a house, where shadows show the girl being scolded and shouted at by the father. Ultimately she walks to the graveyard and stands beside an old man, implying that she herself is the little girl portrayed. The video ends with the little girl dancing in front of her mother's grave as snow falls around her.
Bruce David Forbes, author of Religion and Popular Culture in America, felt that the video drew on Madonna's childhood experiences and dramatized her efforts to renegotiate these relationships, in her daily interactions with her lover and father, and in relation to Catholicism, which the singer referred to in the line "Oh father I have sinned". Dunn noticed that like the Pepsi commercial shot for her earlier single "Like a Prayer", Madonna's persona is split into a child and adult, who repeatedly fuse and separate. Leslie C. Dunn commented that as the narrative developed, the child is shown singing, but the adult Madonna's voice is heard, and when the adult Madonna appears in a hallway, her shadow is that of a child. Madonna responded to these observations by saying: "I think the biggest reason I was able to express myself and not be intimidated was not having a mother."
Dunn then moved onto the scene during the funeral, when the child trembled from seeing her mother's lips sewn shut. Described by her as one of the most troubling shots in mainstream music videos, the scene was inspired by Madonna's memory of her mother lying in her wake. In the 1990 MTV special hosted by Kurt Loder titled Breakfast with Madonna, Loder described the video as "amazing", then asked Madonna if her father had seen it. Madonna responded, "To tell you the truth, I don't know if he's seen it. I'm sort of afraid to ask." After MTV world-premiered the video on November 11, 1989, they wanted to pull it off broadcast until the scene with the lips shut was removed. Madonna disagreed and told them that she would cancel future deals with the channel, prompting MTV to air the video again. The music video has been honored by Rolling Stone as one of "The 100 Top Music Videos", placed at number 66. In 1991, the video received a nomination at the 33rd Grammy Awards, in the category of Best Short Form Music Video. Madonna's vision of reconciliation in the music videos of both "Oh Father" and her 1986 single "Papa Don't Preach" was later included in the third level of Madonna Studies, a controversial development of a field in media studies during the 1990s. The music video for "Oh Father" is commercially available on Madonna's The Immaculate Collection (1990) DVD/VHS compilation.
British alternative band My Vitriol released a rock version of the song on their 2001 album, Finelines. A cover version by Giant Drag done in folk rock style was included on the 2007 Madonna tribute compilation Through the Wilderness. Sia covered the song on her 2010 album, We Are Born. K. Ross Hoffman from AllMusic praised this version, saying that Sia's voice sounded throaty and it "recalled any number of tortured '90s alt-rock songstresses". Caryn Ganz of Rolling Stone said that Sia's cover "finds the sweetness in the, brightening it into an airy, blippy closer."
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Credits and personnel adapted from Like a Prayer album liner notes.
| + 1989–1990 weekly chart performance for "Oh Father" ! scope="col" | Chart (1989–1990) ! scope="col" | Peak position |
| + 1996 weekly chart performance for "Oh Father" ! scope="col" | Chart (1996) ! scope="col" | Peak position |
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