In 1992, Madonna released her fifth studio album Erotica, the coffee table book Sex, and starred in the erotic thriller Body of Evidence.

A pop album with elements of hip hop and R&B, Bedtime Stories explores lyrical themes of love and romance, but with a toned-down, less sexual approach.

In the song "Human Nature", Madonna explicitly addresses the backlash and controversy surrounding her previous projects, whereas title track "Bedtime Story" saw her working with Icelandic singer Björk.

In 1992, Madonna released her fifth studio album Erotica, the coffee table book Sex, and starred in the erotic thriller Body of Evidence.

This made the episode the most censored in American network television talk-show history while at the same time garnering host David Letterman some of the highest ratings he ever received;[4] nonetheless, critics commented Madonna had reached her "lowest low".

[22] In the "soulful sass" of "I'd Rather Be Your Lover", Madonna "lusts after the unattainable through processes of negotiation", and runs down the relations she would rather not be: a sister, mother, friend and brother, echoing Erotica track "Where Life Begins", as noted by Matthew Rettenmund, author of Encyclopedia Madonnica.

[9] Academic Georges Claude Guilbert, author of Madonna As Postmodern Myth, saw the title as a pun, and felt that the singer was referring to "(possible erotic) stories told at bedtime (in bed).

[40] The cover depicts her dressed in a "frothy" white negligee, with makeup "designed to flatter", as noted by the staff of Marie Claire; her hair is tousled, and she has a nose ring on.

[44] The staff of Terra compared the cover of American singer Christina Aguilera's fifth studio album, Back to Basics (2006), to Bedtime Stories.

[32] Prior to its release, in mid September, an audio file containing a message of Madonna talking about the album, along with a 30-second snippet of "Secret", was made available exclusively online.

[49] Madonna's Pajama Party was an event done to promote the music video for "Bedtime Story" that took place at New York City's Webster Hall on March 18, and was broadcast on MTV.

[50] The singer read David Kirk's Miss Spider's Tea Party to a crowd of 2,000, while DJ Junior Vasquez played "cutting-edge" tribal and trance remixes of the song.

[25] In early January 1995, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that Madonna would visit Italy as part of a concert tour, set to take place either in the spring or fall of that year.

[54] Two months later, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune announced that the singer and her management had decided to cancel all touring plans after she was offered the role of Eva Perón on Alan Parker's film adaptation of Evita.

[57][58] Two days later, she performed "Bedtime Story" at the 15th edition of the Brit Awards; she wore a long white dress, waist-length flowing hair extensions, and was joined by a "trio of satin-clad male dancers".

[77][66] The single's accompanying music video was directed by Mark Romanek and is a tribute to female surrealist painters like Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo.

[33] Entertainment Weekly's Jim Farber observed the artist was "telling the truth about her life" more so than on any other previous album, "with more personal mingles of sex and romance".

[94][71] Conversely, for Louis Virtel from The Backlot, "production [on Bedtime Stories] [is] a mess; the sheer amount of producers in the edit bay made for a hodgepodge of an album".

[90] The "combination of sleek R&B and slinky club music works way better than it probably should", according to Stereogum's Tom Breihan, who also noted that the singer "sounds comfortable, and never radiates the sweaty eagerness to please that you sometimes see from pop stars making self-consciously commercial moves".

[72] Detractors called the record a "blurry non-event", "one amorphous blob", dispensable, flat, lifeless, and uninspired,[86][97][11][98] and comparisons to other singers and previous LPs were made.

El Hunt, writing for the Evening Standard, said that other female artists of the time –Janet Jackson, Toni Braxton, and Brandy– were "mining similar sounds in arguably more interesting ways".

[11] Allen Metz and Carol Benson, authors of The Madonna Companion: Two Decades of Commentary, added that, "rather than signify[ing] some bold new direction, Bedtime Stories takes hardly any risks at all.

[111][112] In Brazil, sales of the album exceeded 380,000 units by February 1996, which earned it a platinum certification by the Associação Brasileira dos Produtores de Discos (ABPD).

[47] Stan Hawkins from the University of Leeds saw the record as a "significant point of arrival in [Madonna's] maturity by planting her firmly within new realms of production, performance, and songwriting".

[26] According to Idolator's Bianca Gracie, "Bedtime Stories displayed the evolution of a soulful singer [...] [it] proved that Madonna never lost her edge; she just decided to soften it so that her image could regroup".

[32] For Peter Piatkowski, the "peak of respectability" Madonna reached in the mid-to-late 1990s with Evita and Ray of Light (1998), began with the "more conciliatory image and sound" she adopted for Bedtime Stories.

[130] On this vein, the staff of Billboard said that Bedtime Stories found Madonna "in transition, swiveling away from explicit sexuality and relying on R&B and balladry before she dove headfirst into dance music four years later", a sentiment that was echoed by Troy L.

[2] Bianca Gracie also perceived traces of the record on Madonna's eleventh studio album Hard Candy (2008), and in the work of contemporary female singers like Rihanna, Banks, Jhené Aiko, and Tinashe.

[32] According to Scottish musician Sophie, who collaborated with the singer on 2015's "Bitch I'm Madonna", "[Bedtime Stories] is so much more fully formed and sexy than a lot of the trip-hop stuff that was coming out around that time.

[72][134][135] More than 25 years after its release, in April 2020, the singer's fanbase launched #JusticeForBedtimeStories, a social media campaign that caused it to reach the first spot of the iTunes albums chart.