Single
Released as a single in June 1992, before appearing on the Barcelona Gold album in July, This Used to Be My Playground gave Madonna one of her most wistful and reflective early-1990s ballads. Written and produced by Madonna and Shep Pettibone, mixed by Al Schmitt, and featuring string arrangements by Jeremy Lubbock, the song was created for A League of Their Own. Its emotional power lies in nostalgia rather than spectacle, looking back at memory, friendship and loss with a softness that sits apart from the sharper, more confrontational energy Madonna would explore later that same year.
Single: This Used to Be My Playground
Project: A League of Their Own / Barcelona Gold
Single release: June 1992
Album release: July 1992, on Barcelona Gold
Written by: Madonna, Shep Pettibone
Produced by: Madonna, Shep Pettibone
Mixed by: Al Schmitt
Musicians: Shep Pettibone and Tony Shimkin, keyboards, sequencing and programming; Vinnie Colaiuta, drums
String arrangements: Jeremy Lubbock
Label: Sire / Warner Bros.
This Used to Be My Playground occupies a distinctive place in Madonna’s catalogue because it arrived at a hinge point. It looks backwards with tenderness just before Erotica would push forwards with provocation, shadow and adult self-invention. As a single, it showed that Madonna could still deliver a classic film ballad while quietly shifting into a far more experimental phase. It is elegiac, restrained and deeply nostalgic: a song about the ache of returning to a place that memory has already changed.
Madonna 