themusicaddict: (Finished August 7th, 2018) The 20th Anniversary of Madonna's "Ray of Light"

Tuesday, August 7, 2018

(Finished August 7th, 2018) The 20th Anniversary of Madonna's "Ray of Light"

Hello,

Madonna's "Ray of Light" was released 20 years ago this year. "Ray of Light" was Madonna's follow up CD to the amazing "Evita". Both "Evita" and "Ray of Light" dropped to mixed reviews, but I loved "Evita" from the get go. However it took me awhile longer to like "Ray of Light". At first I wasn't a big fan of "Ray of Light". I fell in love with and grew up with her 80's music, I was hoping for more great pop music like "Like A Virgin", "Material Girl", "Causing A Commotion" or any of her other classic upbeat songs. That are songs similar to her fantastic ballads like "Live To Tell" or "Crazy For You".

However songs on "Ray of Light" had an ambient/ technoish feel to them. No longer that percolating pop dance feel. These songs were more mid-tempo, more exotic sounding, deeper lyrics. She created this CD with British producer and composer William Orbit.

Orbit had previously remixed "Erotica":

and

"Justify My Love":

One of my favorite Madonna songs is "The Power of Goodbye".

What did reviewers think of this CD when it was first released? Below are review excerpts of Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly and Pitchfork.

From Rolling Stone:

"She gets knocked up, but she gets down again: Meet the latest brand-new Madonna, the Chemical Mother. Ray of Light is her maternity album as well as her avant-dance album, riding the electronica wave with her new collaborator, U.K. beat master William Orbit. She’s not exactly subtle about it, either. In just the first song, “Drowned World/Substitute for Love,” Madonna throws in trip-hop drum loops, jungle snares, string samples and pointless computer bleeps (lots of those). She shows off all these trinkets from her expensive collection of electronica gimmicks as if she’s unpacking her shopping bags after a day at the outlet malls and she doesn’t even care if they clash. “Drowned World” comes on loud, tacky and ridiculous, but it lets Madonna do what she does best: show off."

From Entertainment Weekly:

Strictly speaking, Ray of Light isn’t 100 percent pure techno. After all, it features traditionally structured pop melodies, and the music reflects Orbit’s less-than-edgy background in ambient-based mood music. Only once, on the sirenlike techno-glitter-ball of the title track, does the album kick into beats-per-minute frenzy. Instead, what Madonna and Orbit have done — and brilliantly at that — is to use electronica components as sonic window dressing. Hard-step beats and synth washes make the romantic-physical yearnings (and hooks) of ”Skin” and ”Nothing Really Matters” even tauter; the juxtaposition of fuzzy beats and soundtrack-score strings lends ”’Drowned World’ aka ‘My Substitute for Love”’ and ”Frozen” a wuthering-beats melodrama that’s often breathtaking. Throbbing yet meditative, Ray of Light is an adult’s version of dance music, with the dark timbres of Madonna’s nearing-40 voice its resolute center.

From Pitchfork:

Of course, we know how it ultimately ended. Just one album later, the disco-tinged Music, Madonna would admit to feeling trapped by the quieter life. “I feel like an animal that's, like, ready to be sprung from a cage,” she’d tell The Face at the time of the release of Music, which, with its winking attitude, helped her keep up with the vampy Britney, by then fully ascendant and coming for her crown. “I’ve been living a pretty low-key domestic existence and I miss things.” So much for all that. For a brief shining moment with Ray of Light, Madonna became Her Holiness, the sage of synth pop. And the world heeded the call.

1) "Drowned World/Substitute For Love":