"Bye Bye Baby" is a song recorded by American singer and songwriter Madonna, for her fifth studio album Erotica (1992). It was released on November 15, 1993, as the sixth and final single from the album only outside the US. "Bye Bye Baby" was written by Madonna, Shep Pettibone, and Anthony Shimkin and was produced by Madonna and Pettibone. The song is inspired by Madonna's emotions of that time and her S&M thoughts. Musically, it is a hip hop song, sampling a hook from LL Cool J's track "Jingling Baby", released in 1990. Madonna's vocals were filtered to make them appear as sound coming out from an answering machine. "Bye Bye Baby" features instrumentation from keyboard and lyrically finds Madonna asking questions to a lover she is about to abandon.
"Bye Bye Baby" received mixed reviews from music critics, who complimented the composition and lyrics, but were disappointed with Madonna's vocal delivery. The song received limited release worldwide, peaking at number seven in Italy, and also charting in Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland. Madonna performed "Bye Bye Baby" on the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards and on her Girlie Show World Tour the same year. For both performances, she was dressed as a Victorian gentleman in tailcoat and top hat. She and her backup singers danced with three scantily clad women in a brothel-style setting, while singing the song. Critics and authors noted the gender bending and role play in the performance, and found it to be a response to misogyny.
Background and remixes
After the completion of filming A League of Their Own, Madonna began working on her fifth studio album Erotica with Shep Pettibone. The singer was feeling miserable after a string of failed relationships, and she vented out the frustration and depression in her music. According to Lucy O'Brien, author of Madonna: Like an Icon, there were no "sugar-coated" songs on the album, most of which dealt with Madonna's emotions. She appropriated a dominatrix persona called Dita, and the songwriting for the album, as well as the imagery in the coffee table book Sex, reflected her S&M thoughts. "Bye Bye Baby" was one such song written, dealing with strong emotions.
The release of "Bye Bye Baby" in Australia on November 15, 1993 coincided with Madonna's Australian leg of her Girlie Show World Tour. The single release of the song was accompanied by remixes produced by Ricky Crespo. Some of them have additional beats and horn sounds thrown into the original mix. In his review of the single, Jose F. Promis from AllMusic expressed that the album version was the best, and the "Madonna's Night On the Club" remix featured "swirling organs and guitar effects" set against an early-1990s house beat, making it the most interesting of the bunch.
Recording and composition
"Bye Bye Baby" was written by Madonna, Shep Pettibone and Anthony Shimkin and was produced by Madonna and Pettibone. The song was recorded at Sound Works Studios in Astoria, New York, and samples a hook from LL Cool J's single, "Jingling Baby" (1990). Pettibone also did the sequencing, the keyboard arrangement and the programming for the track with Shimkin. Dennis Mitchell and Robin Hancock were the recording engineers for the track while George Karras was the mixing engineer. Ted Jensen did the mastering for the song with Mark Goodman as assistant engineer. Background vocals were provided by Niki Haris and Donna De Lory. For "Bye Bye Baby", Madonna and Pettibone wanted a 1940s theme, which would make the vocals sound as if they were coming out of an antique radio. In order to achieve that, they used a Pultec HLF filter. Shimkin recalled that the vocals for "Bye Bye Baby" were from the first take. He added that the filtered vocal effect were applied during recording and played with while Madonna was in front of the microphone singing.
"Bye Bye Baby" is a hip hop and dance song which begins with the declaration, "This is not a love song". A low bass is heard against a high-pitched 1960s keyboard sound. Madonna's vocals were attenuated to sound much thinner with more treble. Guitar sounds are spread throughout occasionally with shouting voices being heard in the background. The song ends with the sound of an explosion. Madonna's filtered voice sounds like an answering machine; the final line, "You fucked it up", is bleeped out like the machine's end-of-message tone. According to the sheet music published by Alfred Publishing Inc., the song is set in the time signature of common time with a fast tempo of 109 beats per minute. It is composed in the key of G minor, with Madonna's voice in a high register, spanning between F3 to A4. The song has a basic sequence of G–B–G–D–G–Dm as its chord progression.