Mer Girl is maybe the most personal song from the Ray Of Light album. The title has again a reference to water: the French word 'Mer' means 'Sea', but no one knows the reason Madonna had to chose this title, as the words Mer Girl don't appear in the song's lyrics. Maybe she liked how Mer Girl sounded when pronounced. Is it the last song from the album, number 13, but it was one of the first to record in the recording sessions for Ray Of Light.
Madonna has said that this song is dedicated to her mother, and she sings about how she accepted her mother's death, and all that her death meant. It is not the first time she dedicates a song to her mother, as she did the same with Promise To Try. In an interview Madonna gave Vanity Fair magazine, Madonna commented: 'I started writing it when I was in my father's house. I was running and it started to rain, and I went to a nearby cemetery, which was near the place I raised with my mother. It is not the cemetery in which she is buried, but another one she used to go quite often. It didn't stop raining, and the sky was the blackest I've ever seen. I was willing to run, but I waited, and when I returned home, everyone was away. I felt glad to find all that silence, and I began to write this song, Mer Girl. At that moment I only wrote six lines. Some days later, I heard the music William Orbit had made, and back at Los Angeles, I laid on my bed, listening to it, and finished writing the song'.
As William Orbit says, Madonna recorded the song in the first take, and it was one of the best moment of the recording process for him.
Mer Girl has a sample from a Gabor Szabo song called Space, and it was the B side of the single The Power Of Good-bye, in USA.

Mer Girl was included in the Drowned World Tour, which Madonna kicked in 2001. The song was divided into two sections, and she sang Sky Fits Heaven between them.