Pop Song 218 'Live to tell' Madonna 1985

Pop Song 218 'Live to tell' Madonna 1985

Lyrically, "Live to Tell" portrays the complexity of deceit and mistrust;
According to authors Freya Jarman-Ivens and Santiago Fouz-Hernández, in Madonna's Drowned Worlds (2004), it is about "childhood scars", and counts with an "extreme" emotional pitch. On another note, Boston.com's Scott Kearnan added that it's about "bearing the burden of some enigmatic secret and coping with a painful past", while Nick Levine from Digital Spy argued that it was about child abuse
In an interview about the song, Madonna herself revealed the lyrics talk about "my relationship with my parents and the lying that went on. The song is about being strong, and questioning whether you can be that strong but ultimately surviving

Writing for PopMatters, Peter Piatkowski said it was a "simultaneously cold and emotional" song, filled with "maturity and ambition", as well as a "very deliberate effort to present Madonna as a mature and serious artist"; he also singled out her "lovely" vocals.[30] On her review of True Blue for Yahoo!, Stacy Mannion classified "Live to Tell" as a "powerful [...] strange, but beautiful" ballad with a "bluesy feel".[31] Erika Wexler from Spin, described it as "dark and moody, dense with dramatic mystery", and highlighted the way in which the singer "very theatrically conveys a dreamy fatalism.

Madonna, who decided to use it for At Close Range a 1986 American neo-noir crime drama film directed by James Foley, based on the real life rural Pennsylvania crime family led by Bruce Johnston Sr. which operated during the 1960s and 1970s. It stars Sean Penn and Christopher Walken, with Mary Stuart Masterson, Sean's brother Chris Penn, David Strathairn, Crispin Glover, Kiefer Sutherland, and Eileen Ryan in supporting roles.