Hope I Live To Tell

Live to Tell, Madonna‘s first single from the True Blue album, was released 21 years ago this month, April 1986.
The song, presented for the first time a more mature Madonna both visually and musically and gave her her
third US No.1 single, and a No.2 in the UK. In an interview co-author Patrick Leonard, revealed that Madonna wrote the lyrics very quickly in the studio and recorded the song in one take: “The original mix was so rough you could hear the pages of her notebook being turned in the background”, he said.

The video for Live To Tell was filmed in Los Angeles by director James Foley and it incorporates
footage from the 1986 film At Close Range, also directed by Foley and starring Sean Penn and Christopher Walken (also known to M fans as the Angel of Death in Bad Girl)
Madonna is seen in a dark environment next to a chair while she’s revealing the secrets “she has learned”.
Various instrumental versions of Live To Tell are used in the film score but no official album of the soundtrack by Patrick Leonard was ever commercially released.
Foley would be directing Madonna again in the videos for Papa Don’t Preach, True Blue and the film Who’s That Girl.

Live To Tell is perfomed live in three Madonna world tours. It debutes in 1987 in the Who’s That Girl World Tour, it’s used in the controversial religious segment of the Blond Ambition Tour in 1990 and yet again it’s controversially performed by Madonna on a Cross in the acclaimed Confessions Tour in 2006 to launch a powerful message against poverty in Africa.
The song is contained in three Madonna albums: True Blue (1986) The Immaculate Collection (1990) and Something To Remember (1995).

If I ran away, Id never have the strength
To go very far
How would they hear the beating of my heart
Will it grow cold
The secret that I hide, will I grow old
How will they hear
When will they learn
How will they know”