Timecapsule: 15 years of ''Bedtime Stories''

''Bedtime Stories'' is the sixth studio album by Madonna, released 15 years ago, on October 25, 1994.

When Madonna declared, "Only the one who inflicts the pain can take it away," on 1992's "Erotica", she wasn't kidding. Following the funk of the ''Erotica'' album and her notorious ''Sex'' book, Madonna provided the creamy balm of ''Bedtime Stories'', a fluffy-pillowed concept album that unfolds like a musical fairy tale. The album's first single, "Secret", is perhaps the most naked performance of her career. Acoustic guitars, expertly sweetened vocals and producer Dallas Austin's signature R&B beats soulfully transport the listener into Madonna's troubled yet soothing world.

While always a feminist more by example than by word or deed, Madonna seems genuinely shocked at the hypocritical prudishness of her former fans, leading one to expect a set of biting screeds. But instead of reveling in raised consciousness, ''Bedtime Stories'' demonstrates a desire to get unconscious. Madonna still wants to go to bed, but this time it's to pull the covers over her head. Still, in so doing, Madonna has come up with some awfully compelling sounds. In her retreat from sex to romance, she has enlisted four top R&B producers: Atlanta whiz kid Dallas Austin, Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, Dave "Jam" Hall and Britisher Nellee Hooper (Soul II Soul), who add lush soul and creamy balladry. With this awesome collection of talent, the record verily shimmers. Bass-heavy grooves push it along when more conventional sentiments threaten to bog it down. Both aspects put it on chart-smart terrain.

A number of songs – "Survival", "Secret", "I'd Rather Be Your Lover" (to which Me'Shell NdegéOcello brings a bumping bass line and a jazzy rap) – are infectiously funky. For years, Madonna spoke in metaphors, fantasies and blatant shock tactics, but the performer indignantly struck back at her critics on "Human Nature". She didn't just hold up a mirror, she became the mirror: "Oops, I didn't know I couldn't talk about sex/I musta been crazy...I didn't know I couldn't talk about you".

But you don't need her to tell you that she's "drawn to sadness" or that "loneliness has never been a stranger," as she sings on the sorrowful "Love Tried to Welcome Me''. The downbeat restraint in her vocals says it, from the tremulously tender "Inside of Me" to the sob in "Happiness lies in your own hand/It took me much too long to understand" from "Secret".

Whether it's the poetic ballad "Love Tried To Welcome Me," which was inspired by a stripper Madonna met in a club, or the enchanting "Sanctuary", in which she quotes Walt Whitman's "Vocalism," Madonna seemed more interested in literature and human psychology than sexual biology. The album's mix of sorrow and romance (she compares rejection to an aphrodisiac on "Forbidden Love" and equates death and desire on "Sanctuary") exposes a woman who might have been in need of some serious therapy. Despite the album's multiple producers and genre jerkiness, it's this theme of yearning that holds it all together. Working with superstar producers is a rarity for the singer, so Babyface, who penned and produced "Take a Bow'', was in scarce company.

The ballad is at once syrupy and bittersweet, calling on the words of one William Shakespeare to help recount the tale's dramatic conclusion: "All the world is a stage/And everyone has their part...But how was I to know you'd break my heart?" "Take A Bow" became Madonna's longest-running chart-topper, but it's the Björk-penned "Bedtime Story", perhaps the single with the most unfulfilled hit potential in Madonna's 20-year career, that could have been the next "Vogue." "Let's get unconscious, honey," she sings hypnotically over pulsating beats and electronic gurgles courtesy of Nellee Hooper and Marius DeVries. The song was the germ that would later inspire Madonna to seek out and conquer electronica with the likes of William Orbit and Mirwais.

In 1995, ''Bedtime Stories'' album was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Pop Vocal Album category. To date, the album has sold over 6 million copies.

The singles taken from the album are: ''Secret'' (September 1994), ''Take a Bow (December 1994), ''Bedtime Story'' (February 1995) and ''Human Nature'' (June 1995).

Source: Wikipedia, Rolling Stone, Slunt Magazine