The song was a commercial success, becoming Madonna's ninth number-one single on the US Billboard Hot 100, and also peaked at number one in Canada; it also reached the top 10 on several countries including Australia, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

[3] Following the completion of 1990's Blond Ambition World Tour, Madonna began rushing the project, aiming to release it in time for the year's Christmas season.

[32] Taraborrelli described the composition as "rather simple – a funky, drum pattern under a droning, aural synthesizer pad, with Madonna speaking sexy verses over the music, Kravitz casually moaning a melody in the background".

[25] Santiago Fouz-Hernández and Freya Jarman-Ivens, in their book Madonna's Drowned Worlds, stated that it was "far from an ordinary pop song", featuring "a very simple tonal structure and the same bassline", with the same chords repeated over and over.

[34] Tom Breiham from Stereogum later classified "Justify My Love" as "an early example of trip-hop", and pointed out that Madonna deserves credit for "anticipating whole new trends before they even happened.

Larry Flick of Billboard magazine gave a positive review, calling it a "brilliantly conceived jam", which would be "devoured by club DJs" and "may test the devotion of top 40 radio programmers".

[24] Another review from the same magazine stated that the song was a "steamy" collaboration between Madonna and Kravitz, and it had "the juice to become the '90s equivalent of Donna Summer's 'Love To Love You Baby'", and noted that it "strays miles away from the chirpy pop of her past.

"[40] Chuck Campbell from the Knoxville News-Sentinel said it was "so seductive it makes George Michael's 'I Want Your Sex' and Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love' sound like nursery rhymes".

[19] Similarly, Rooksby wrote that "Justify My Love" was a pivotal record for the singer, pointing her musical direction into the 1990s decade, giving her old disco sound "the kiss of death".

[45] Matthew Rettenmund, author of Encyclopedia Madonnica, opined that the track "foreshadowed Madonna's long-term commitment to explicitly politi-sexual art in the wake of an already suggestive career", and that "it sounded like nothing else on the airwaves at the time".

[49] Fouz-Hernández and Jarman-Ivens wrote that Madonna's style of singing on the track seemed controlled and distant, and added that "the background moaning, which is intended to remind the listener of copulation, is a key memorable feature".

[50] Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Jim Farber described the song as "some vague, tuneless phrases chanted in Madonna's most breathless voice over a minimal house groove-serves mainly to justify the visuals";[51] while reviewing The Immaculate Collection, David Browne from the same magazine called it "instantly notorious" but noted that along with "Rescue Me", it did not "[break] new ground for her".

Raunchy videos, explicitly themed lyrics and boudoir beats became de rigueur for the lady now arguably bearing the biggest name in popular music.

Club's Eric Diaz, it remained "one of Madonna's sexiest bangers, setting the stage not only for her still-underrated Erotica era but her tireless capacity to transform and provoke".

[11][86] The clip was produced by Philippe Dupuis-Mendel under Bandits, in a co-production with Propaganda Films, with editing by Oliver Gajan and principal photography by Pascal Lebegue.

[87] The video features Madonna's then-boyfriend Tony Ward, fellow models Amanda Cazalet and Wallis Franken Montana, as well as Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza, who was a dancer on the Blond Ambition World Tour which occurred earlier that year.

[96] According to MTV's vice-president Abbey Konowitch, the network frequently had concerns about the content of the singer's videos, stating, "You take the black lingerie, sex scenes and flesh out of 'Justify My Love,' and you've got 10 seconds of ill-focused dancing.

She defended the video as a "celebration of sex" and wondered, "Why is it that people are willing to go and watch a movie about someone getting blown to bits for no reason at all, and nobody wants to see two girls kissing and two men snuggling?

Nevertheless, she stated that MTV was right to ban it, as "parents cannot possibly control television, with its titanic omnipresence" and that "it does not belong on a mainstream music channel watched around the clock by children".

[117] On the other hand, Liz Smith, writing for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, was critical of the decision, and hoped that since "MTV has gone so moral on the public, that they'll also begin to take close looks at other material submitted to them by all those macho metal and rap groups, with their own S&M overtones, their incipient violence and degradation-of-women themes".

[119] Johns Hopkins University professor of popular culture Mark Crispin Miller observed that it was "perfectly all right for MTV to broadcast sadomasochism couplings and events as long as the images don't violate a certain heterosexual norm".

"[85] Sharing a similar opinion, Lisa Henderson, writing in the book The Madonna Connection: Representational Politics, Subcultural Identities, And Cultural Theory, stated that for critics and fans, "it was an odd scenario—MTV rejecting its premier pop star, whose stylistic developments had arguably marked (and marketed) the evolution of music television itself".

[124] Lucy O'Brien, in her book She Bop II: The Definitive History of Women in Rock, Pop and Soul, wrote that "conveying the full power of sexual ambiguity", Madonna showed in the video "how gender roles could be swapped, blurred and played with to create a multitude of different identities".

"[126] For Cathy Schwichtenberg, Madonna's "languid French kiss with l'autre femme" in the video was a representation of "a deconstruction of lines and boundaries that fragment male/female gender polarities and pluralize sexual practices.

"[127] According to Tim Dean in the book Beyond Sexuality, the music video was "replete with stylized gestures of representing the whole catalogue of perverse activity: lesbianism, fetishism, voyeurism, transvestism, troilism, and the ritual accoutrements of sadomasochism".

All five of them agreed that it was "certainly envelope-pushing", but also pointed out that "it's nothing 2015 artists haven't done (or even surpassed)", with the author citing the film Fifty Shades of Grey and Nicki Minaj's music video for "Anaconda" (2014) as examples.

[138] Richard Corliss from Time magazine complimented the performance, opining that the singer saved "her best anachronistic joke for last", noting its "stately cadence" and comparing the costumes to those of My Fair Lady.

[139] "The Beast Within" remix was also used on the tour as an interlude with two male dancers performing an apocalyptic dance, miming couplings and brawls while Madonna, from off-stage, recited the lyrics.

The performance featured dancers wearing white pierrot masks, who "impressed with their fully synchronized dance moves", according to Danilo Saraiva from Quem magazine.

The spoof consisted of Wayne (Mike Myers) and Garth (Dana Carvey) encountering a seductive Madonna lying on a bed in a hotel room during a fantasy dream sequence, filmed in black and white.