This Used to Be My Playground

Madonna scored big with another motion picture theme song, this one for the movie A League Of Their Own. The film, which Madonna starred in along with Tom Hanks, Geena Davis and Rosie O'Donnell, was based on the true story of an all-women baseball team that was popular during World War II. Because of licensing issues, the song wasn't included on the film's soundtrack.

The song is a slow ballad about a woman who can't and let go of her past, with the implication that her present circumstances aren't so good. The lyrics fit well with the film's premise, as the now-elderly women reunite and recall their glory days as baseball stars.

Madonna wrote this with Shep Pettibone, a New York producer who she collaborated with on her Erotica album, including "Vogue" and the ballad "Rain." Pettibone was thrilled to get to work with all live musicians for the first time on this song. He told Billboard: "We took the track and put a live drummer to it and live strings and live piano. We didn't have any strings written for the song [originally]. Jeremy Lubbock was chosen to do the arrangement on the strings and I think that had a lot to do with the final outcome of the song." But working with the orchestra did not turn out how Pettibone expected. He told Icon in 1992: "Everything went fine until the point when the orchestra played their parts; we didn't like what we heard. Madonna and I had to change the whole arrangement, right there in the studio, with a full orchestra sitting there getting paid for taking up space - around $15,000 for three hours, $3000 for every half hour over that. And of course, Lubbock was talking to two people who didn't know a C from a B natural. The pressure was on. I can only sing the notes I hear at the moment, so that's what I did. Madonna and I stood there over my little Mac, singing the notes, and Lubbock would go, 'Oh, that's a G; Oh, that's a B' and that's how it got done. We completed the session in 2 hours and 58 minutes – two minutes away from another three grand." Jeremy Lubbock, among many other credits, worked with Madonna on I'm Breathless, the soundtrack album for Dick Tracy (1990), another film starring the singer.