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2001 single by Madonna

"What It Feels Like for a Girl" is a song recorded by American singer Madonna for her eighth studio album Music (2000). It was released as the third and final single from the album on April 16, 2001, by Maverick Records. Madonna and Guy Sigsworth wrote and produced the song with David Torn as co writer, and Mark "Spike" Stent as a co producer. "What It Feels Like For a Girl" is a mid tempo electronic and synth pop song. Lyrically, it conveys society's double standard toward women, addressing hurtful myths about female inferiority. To emphasize the message, the song opens with a spoken word sample by actress Charlotte Gainsbourg from the 1993 British film The Cement Garden. A Spanish version of the track, "Lo Que Siente la Mujer", was translated by Alberto Ferreras and included in the Latin American edition of Music. The song received acclaim from most music critics, who declared it as a highlight from the album, while also remarking it as one of the most mature musical ventures of Madonna's career. Commercially, "What It Feels Like for a Girl" reached the top ten of the record charts in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Romania, Spain, Scotland and the United Kingdom. In the United States, it peaked at number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the Dance Club Songs chart. An accompanying music video for the song was directed by Madonna's then husband Guy Ritchie and premiered on March 22, 2001. It features the singer as a reckless woman on a crime spree. The video was criticized for its depiction of violence and abuse, which caused MTV to ban it before 9:00 pm. The single was also released on DVD and became the highest weekly sales for a DVD release in the United States. Madonna performed the track on the promotional concerts for Music in November 2000 and on her 2001 Drowned World Tour, where a remixed version was used as a video interlude and also performed in Spanish. The song was covered by the actors of television series Glee, during the episode "The Power of Madonna", and was included in the accompanying EP.

Upon release, the song received general acclaim from music critics. Rikky Rooksby wrote in his book, The Complete Guide to the Music of Madonna (2004), that "What It Feels Like for a Girl" was the best track on Music. Slants Sal Cinquemani felt that "Madonna has revealed more of herself than ever [in Music]. No longer shrouded with pedantic spirituality, she has become even more human [ ] revealing her soul on 'What It Feels Like For A Girl'". However, on his review of GHV2 (2001), Cinquemani felt the track was "largely lost amid the conventional sonics of Musics final single" and called it that compilation's least dynamic offering, giving a C− rating. Eric Henderson, from the same magazine, wrote that "occasionally, and only occasionally, Madonna's reach exceeds her grasp. 'What It Feels Like for a Girl' is one of those cases. Its intentions feel more fully fleshed out in the controversial music video than they do in the song itself". Nathan Smith from Houston Press opined it was "one of the realest and most mature vocal performances of her career as she gently explores the double standard faced by ambitious women". From Gay Star News, Joe Morgan called it a "clear reminder that Madonna can write some incredible lyrics". Writing for Entertainment Weekly, journalist David Browne relegated the track as "an older, wiser 'Into the Groove'", highlighting its "softly padding beat and genuinely empathetic lyrics". Q magazines Danny Eccleston picked it as a standout track, claiming it had "the vaguest melodic echo of Basement Jaxx's terrific 'On & On'". Cynthia Funchs of PopMatters picked the song as her favorite on the album, calling it "outstanding" with "sweet, enchanted beats". Eamon Sweeney of Hot Press, found it similar, in tone and texture, to Natalie Imbruglia's 1998 single "Smoke". Jon Pareles of The New York Times called it "Madonna's quasi feminist statement". Rolling Stones Barry Walters called it "as musically gentle as it is lyrically barbed". Garry Mulholland of The Guardian, praised its "melancholy atmosphere and ambiguous air". Also from The Guardian, Maddy Costa thought that the track was "exquisite", adding "on 'What It Feels Like for a Girl' you feel is the Madonna of old, talking about being a pop bitch and making you tingle even with its hackneyed lyrics". Writing for Billboard, Larry Flick hailed it "a hook laden midtempo jam [ ] that should give the Britney/Christina generation of teenage female listeners a little food for thought", highlighting its "motherly, nurturing perspective". Also from Billboard, Chuck Taylor named it "one of the more substantive – and mature – musical ventures of [Madonna's] career", while panning its remix version for "reduc[ing] the song to a mindless trickle of beats without any hints of the verses". Alex Pappademas from Spin, pointed out that the song "flaunts the sexiest synth shimmer this side of [Aguilera's] 'Genie in a Bottle'". The Village Voices Phil Dellio found the song to be "the perfect answer record to [the novel] The Virgin Suicides (where boys indeed stand on the side of the street looking uncomprehendingly towards girls)". On a more critical note, Medium's Richard LaBeau opined that "with better production it could have been a true classic". Online magazine Queerty felt the Spanish version, "Lo Que Siente la Mujer", was "an effort, we assume, to prove she can speak Spanish, damn it! Or at least memorize enough words to sound like she speaks Spanish".

While listing "The 100 Greatest Madonna Songs", Louis Virtel from The Backlot ranked "What It Feels Like for a Girl" at number 45, saying that "its tenderness and power resonated like no Madonna ballad since 'Take a Bow'". In 2013, Scott Kearnan of Boston. com included it at number 26 on his list of "30 Ultimate Madonna Singles"; he wrote that "Madonna's covered plenty of ground about how women are treated in the world, but she's rarely this unfiltered". The same year, Edward Cheung from PopMatters ranked it as the sixth best production by Guy Sigsworth, writing that "an excellently placed spoken word sample (delivered by Charlotte Gainsbourg) and a keening synth line immediately set the tone for Madge's track as fashionably lonely". Matthew Jacob's from The Huffington Post ranked the track at number 51 on his list "The Definitive Ranking of Madonna Singles", pointing out its "meaningful lyrical accomplishment". While ranking Madonna's singles in honor of her 60th birthday, in August 2018, Jude Rogers from The Guardian placed the track at number 37 and wrote that "it sounds like a Saint Etienne song accidentally covered by a superstar". Entertainment Weeklys Chuck Arnold called it "one of Madonna's artistic peaks" and her "most underappreciated" release; he listed it as her 14th best single. In 2019, Samuel R. Murrian from Parade ranked it at number 16 on his list of the singer's 100 greatest songs: "Lyrically barbed but sonically soft, one of Madonna's most radical tracks explores the brutality of being a woman in a man's world. [ ] Though it was recorded nearly two decades before the #MeToo movement, this track feels like an anthem for it. Madonna was, and is, ahead of her time".

"What It Feels Like for a Girl" debuted at number 73 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart of May 5, 2001, and moved to number 46 the following week, becoming in the biggest leap of that week. The release of the DVD single, CD maxi and 12 inch vinyl prompted the song to debut at number 15 on the Hot 100 Singles Sales chart with 6,600 copies, majority being from the DVD single becoming the highest one week sales for a DVD single sales. One month later, Madonna revealed to Ingrid Sischy that the video would be for "What It Feels Like for a Girl", which she found "ironic because [Ritchie]'s such a macho man, and his movies are so testosterone driven, but I asked him a long time ago what song on the album he responded to the most, and that's the one". Filming took place in Los Angeles, including on the Olympic Boulevard. According to Madonna she portrayed a "nihilistic pissed off chick" in the clip, doing things that girls are generally recommended against. The video did not feature the original version of the song but the Above & Beyond remix since the singer "wanted a matching visual to it and an edgy dance mix". The clip starts with the singer in a motel room getting ready to go out, her hair is straight, chin length and parted down the middle. Due to the excessive violence where Madonna's character went on multiple killing sprees, "What It Feels Like for a Girl" became Madonna's fourth music video to be banned by TV channels (and her third banned by MTV), following "Like a Prayer" (1989) due to blasphemy, "Justify My Love" (1990) and "Erotica" (1992) for nudity and bisexuality. Three days later, the clip was shown several times on Oxygen as part of its "Daily Remix" music series. A spokeswoman for Oxygen said that the decision to air the video multiple times was because "our demographic is of 18–49 year old women [ ] older than MTV's". Canadian music channel MuchMusic followed and aired the video several times throughout the day and night. Norm Schoenfield, US VP of programming for MuchMusic, released a statement saying "[the video] is no more or less violent than what kids see on TV everyday. We weren't offended by it, and treating it just like any other Madonna video. Just because MTV isn't playing it, doesn't mean we can't". Schoenfield also criticized the decision of releasing an advisory warning alongside the video because "it's the artist's responsibility to do that". Nonetheless, other Canadian networks aired it only after 9 pm accompanied by a warning. On April 24, 2001, the video was released as a DVD single with the disc having linear PCM sound quality. Regarding the violent content, Madonna said that her intention was to "make people ask questions and open dialogues". Instead of banning the music video, Madonna's publicist Liz Rosenberg called for an open conversation for why Madonna's character went out of control. Rosenberg explained to New York Daily News that the clip told the story of a woman who had probably been abused, and called it a "kind of an anti violence film. I can't imagine anyone would want to duplicate it". The apparent suicide at the end had references from Greek mythology, according to Ritchie.

David Bianculli from the New York Daily News felt that "Madonna has always kept her videos and images at least as fresh as her music. 'What It Feels Like for a Girl', though, is a bad attempt to chase attention by promising controversy". Similarly, Billboards Carla Hay concluded that the video did not live up to its hype. Entertainment Weeklys Nicholas Fonseca gave the video a rating of C and opined that "Thelma and Louise it ain't. In fact, little girls can probably find more empowerment copying Britney Spears' provocative chair dance from her 'Stronger' video". But he criticized MTV's decision to ban the clip when they aired much more violent videos on the channel. Eden Miller from PopMatters echoed this sentiment, adding that MTV aired videos such as Eminem's "Stan", in which the main character drives his car off a bridge with his pregnant girlfriend tied up in the trunk, or Robbie Williams' "Rock DJ", in which the singer strips his skin off in graphic detail. Critics argued the gender double standards where violent music videos by male singers are largely tolerated by TV networks. Miller relegated the banning of Madonna's music video was because "the idea of a woman taking her aggression out on men is something even an edgy TV network like MTV was unable to accept. That's what is so disturbing. And that really is what it feels like for a girl". Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, Neva Chonin accused the video for being a marketing ploy and believed that the singer knew it would result in controversy and drive sales amidst the publicity. Nonetheless, she praised it for being a follow up to Madonna's aesthetics and changing of her looks from her early career. Chonin realized that by making the violent video, Madonna proved the song's concept further by making a girl behave violently in place of a boy. Louis Virtel from The Backlot ranked it as the singer's 12th greatest video, calling it "the ultimate (read: solely tolerable) Madonna/Guy Ritchie collaboration [ ] She's both chilling and totally confident. It's her most frightening performance in a music video, and when she plows that car into a group of strangers, her stoic response makes for her greatest video moment of the 2000s". Andrew Morton opined that the video was "entirely consistent with the themes [Madonna] has been exploring for the last twenty years, namely the relationship between the sexes, the ambiguity of gender, and the unresolved conflict, for women in a patriarchal society of being fully female and sexual while exercising control over their lives". According to Santiago Fouz Hernández and Freya Jarman Ivens, authors of Madonna's Drowned Worlds, the video represented the female fantasy of behaving like a "bad boy" and doing things associated with men. They pointed out the scene in which Madonna winks at three men at a traffic light just before crashing their car, as they felt that on this particular shot she was "turning the tables of violence back on the men for whom such behavior is considered normal and putting them on the receiving end of violence, a position usually reserved for women".

"What It Feels Like for a Girl" was performed on the promotional concerts for Music in November 2000 at New York City's Roseland Ballroom and at London's Brixton Academy. On New York, Madonna dedicated the song to singer Britney Spears, while wearing a tank top with Spears' name printed on it. Around 3,000 fans attended the concert in London, which was streamed over the internet. More than nine million people watched the concert according to Nicky Price, a representative for Microsoft's MSN, the webcast's producer. For the Drowned World Tour of 2001, a remix of the track was used as a video interlude. Dancers wearing anime and manga inspired costumes swung from wires in a Japanese inspired sequence as the backdrops featured scenes of a naked girl being pursued, trapped and sexually abused. The clips were taken from Satoshi Kon's 1997 film Perfect Blue interspersed with footage of the hentai anime Urotsukidōji. Writing for MTV News, Rob Mancini opined that the interlude video "upped the [show's] grim factor further". On that same tour, Madonna performed the Spanish version of the song, "Lo Que Siente La Mujer", atop a rotating black leather podium, dressed in black trousers and a backless black blouse. The performance on August 26, 2001, at The Palace of Auburn Hills, outside of Madonna's hometown of Detroit was recorded and released in the live video album, Drowned World Tour 2001. In 2010, "What It Feels Like for a Girl" was featured in an episode of American television series Glee, called "The Power of Madonna". In the episode it was performed by actors Cory Monteith, Kevin McHale, Chris Colfer, Mark Salling, Harry Shum Jr. and Matthew Morrison. The song was released as digital download to the iTunes Store, and was also included on the soundtrack EP, Glee: The Music, The Power of Madonna. It charted at number 125 on the UK Singles Chart. In his review of the soundtrack, Fraser McAlpine from BBC News felt that "the decision to get all the boys to sing 'What It Feels Like for a Girl' is inspired, and represents a genuinely powerful musical moment that doesn't need the television show's plot to make it fly".

Credits adapted from liner notes of 12 inch single.