Madonna

This psychodrama unfolds in the second half of the 1980s.

She – Madonna – is already the most famous and controversial popstar of the decade, the unstoppable material girl racking up platinum records while doggedly hopping from trend to trend, as if the world were one giant dancefloor set up purely for her own personal use.

He – Sean Penn – is a hugely talented actor and a man of undeniable charisma, with an intense face and two piercing blue eyes that cut right through the screen. Critics treat him kindly and audiences adore him; his colleagues, in truth, are a little wary of his temper, but respect him all the same for his brilliant performances and his sudden bursts of joy.

The meeting between him and her, in February 1985, is like a cargo ship of fireworks going off: he's wild and romantic, she's feisty and headstrong, and together they strike sparks. On top of that, they're young, good-looking, and so rich they don't even know what the hell to spend it on. Just a few months after that first encounter, Madonna and Sean Penn marry on her birthday, August 16, 1985.

But soon enough, that youthful passion made of sudden storms and hearty laughter gives way to the specter of full-blown irrationality. Sean has a volatile, unstable temperament, a personality as brilliant and intellectually stimulating as it is incapable of keeping even himself in check – he's insecure, paranoid and jealous, his mood swings every fifteen minutes, he drinks too much, gets thrown out of bars, pisses in the street while shouting at passersby, and doesn't turn down the odd brawl either, just to let off the demons he carries inside. And when the mood strikes him, he either turns into a recluse or grabs his wife and throws her onto the bed, sending her to seventh heaven.

For Madonna, it's a shock. This rollercoaster of intense, deep emotions keeps her on the edge of a passionate love and brings out all her innate femininity, but it also proves impossible to rationally keep under control – and if there's one thing Madonna truly cannot stand, it's losing control. After all, up until that point she'd been the only beast in the cage, a lioness feared by men and mocked by women, endlessly hounded by the media, who criticized her every move as blasphemous, and above all for her constant refusal to show any shame about herself or her naked body. For someone like her, waging war on the entire world is exhausting but, in theory at least, simple: everyone's an enemy, and to fight them she's grown skin tougher than leather, always braced to defend herself the moment she steps outside. But around Sean, Madonna suddenly finds herself having to play the resident adult even at home, the calm, responsible figure who has to tread carefully trying to get a schizophrenic husband to bed. Quite the joke, really.

In public, Sean often shows embarrassing behavior that pours out of him with no regard for anyone in the room – he mistreats his wife in front of friends and then, back home, might beg her forgiveness on his knees. The famous allegations of physical violence – in particular the anecdote claiming Madonna was once tied to a chair during a jealous rage – are today firmly denied by both of them. But the fact that the couple's friends and close relatives feared such dynamics whenever the two were alone together makes clear enough the picture of a relationship burning down like the fuse on a barrel of dynamite. And that's without even factoring in that, in '87, Penn was sentenced to a month in jail for beating up a cameraman, proof that the violent streak was indeed very much there.

So the story writes itself; soon he can't see straight anymore, frustrated as he is by a woman too firm in her positions to indulge his uncontrollable volatility. Madonna, for her part, finds herself having to draw on sheer self-respect to save herself and her career. After all, for Sean Penn – the man of the house – the road ahead remains smooth regardless: society sees him as the tortured artist, a difficult but deeply sensitive soul who just needs love and plenty of understanding. But for Madonna – the wife – the only reputation waiting for her is that of the cold-hearted, unscrupulous bitch, the social climber with no artistic worth of her own without a stronger man by her side – a leitmotif that would follow her for the rest of her career, as she herself recounted with tears in her eyes in the acceptance speech she gave when Billboard named her Woman Of The Year in 2016. And yet, however reluctantly, it would fall to her to "grow a pair" and bitterly file the divorce papers to protect them both.

The pain is raw, and to contain it Madonna channels it into music for what is perhaps the standout moment of an album – "Like A Prayer" – that piles up standout moments relentlessly, one after another. Together with her trusted collaborator Patrick Leonard, the music and lyrics of "Till Death Do Us Part" stage a tense tale of domestic violence full of resentment and flashes of rage, yet filtered through a song with the instant melodic hook typical of Ciccone's style – it would sit comfortably alongside "Papa Don't Preach" from the previous album, the other "catchy little Madonna tune" that told the story of a teenager's decision to carry a pregnancy to term against all odds.

But here she goes a step further, because this time the wounds are autobiographical; sure, exactly where the factual details end (the broken door/the flying clay pot) and the poetic license of pop songwriting begins is something the author will never reveal, but the song hits its mark with full force, showing the world an unprecedented version of a woman who is, in that moment, weakened, hurt, and still dangerously too in love for her own good.

The track kicks off at full speed with a lean, nervous funk-pop groove built on a prominent bass line and a drum machine pushed right to the front. The riff's harmonic line keeps wavering between major and minor, as if mirroring Penn's sudden mood swings, and the effect is an unbearably unstable blend of bitterness, anger and melancholy. Madonna comes in on the front foot, launching straight into the chorus – the urgency rising in her throat is such that she can no longer afford to wait around:

Our luck is running out of time

You’re not in love with me anymore

I wish that it would change, but it won’t

'Cause you don’t love me no more.

These are words that already stage the inevitable ending we all know is coming, but they'll be repeated six more times over the course of the song, almost like a mantra – more than wanting to tell her husband or the listener, Madonna seems to need to keep repeating it to herself, as if trying to find the courage to finally put it behind her. But the emotional path that runs alongside the separation is long and winding, and as the song moves through its five minutes, the details of the fights and the feelings of self-sacrifice driving the songwriter become as vivid as scenes from a film. When the vocal delivery shifts into something closer to spoken word, the effect becomes even more realistic, but the rhythm never lets up:

They never laugh, not like before

She takes the keys, he breaks the door

She cannot stay here anymore

He’s not in love with her anymore.

These are words that paint a picture in raw colors and really need no further explanation. Hurt and frightened, Madonna even slips into the role of the resident psychologist, trying to rationalize the situation while at the same time distancing herself from the pain she's living through firsthand:

You’re not in love with someone else

You don’t even love yourself

Still I wish you’d ask me not to go

but the previous sentence already brings her right back to the painful tug-of-war of someone who has understood in their head that it's all over, but whose heart still isn't ready to let go — not by chance, Madonna already had her divorce papers ready back in '87, but she wouldn't actually file them until '89, meaning after the song had already been written, lending this particular track a mood that's at once sinister and therapeutic.

You have to wait almost until the very end for the decisive blow, when Madonna finally intones the song's title in a scornful voice, followed by the dramatic sound of shattering glass, before the instrumental coda closes out the track with the same frantic rhythm that opened it.

More than a song, "Till Death Do Us Part" is a passive-aggressive shard that's as emotional as it is still numb and frustrating — one of the sharpest, most vicious pop songs ever recorded about the end of a relationship. And if you've been through it yourself, you'll surely recognize the universal themes of anger and pain that come with remembering a love that once was good. So much for anyone who says Madonna is only good at copying.

Our luck is running out of time

Till death do us part.

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20/03/2026