Madonna — Ray of Light (1998) | Album Review

For a figure as controversial as Madonna, it is surprising that her most adventurous album is also her most restrained and mature.

The 90s was rocky for Madonna. It started with an iconic single in “Vogue” and her first greatest hits album, The Immaculate Collection, which is still her best-selling album. However, the first half of the 90s also marks the most backlash against the artist. Her 1990 concert tour, the Blond Ambition World Tour was met with strong reaction from religious groups for its eroticism and sexuality. It definitely didn’t help that the music video “Justify My Love”, the first single from The Immaculate Collection, was deemed too sexually explicit for MTV and was banned from the network. To make matters worse, Madonna went on to release her first book, titled Sex, and her fifth studio album Erotica in 1992. An underrated album, Erotica’s subject matter of sex and romance kept the attention away from its quality. The 1994 follow-up Bedtime Stories, meanwhile, is indecisive: on places it tones down the sexuality to appease the public with a more mainstream sound that doesn’t stick as well as her previous efforts, while on other places, the singer features S&M and surrealistic imageries.

So how did Ray of Light come into existence? Sonically, it explores the electronica genre, which was still relatively new at the time and Madonna was the first big name to incorporate ambient, house, trip hop elements into popular music. This direction was hinted at on the Bedtime Stories single “Bedtime Story” co-written by, you guessed it, the Icelandic electronic pioneer Björk. The rest of the reasons behind the departure from her previous works in Ray of Light come from the numerous changes in the singer’s life. Vocally, the album features a fuller tone and greater breadth, a result from vocal training for her role in Evita (1996). The lyrical themes, meanwhile, reflect on her motherhood, Kabbalah, her study of Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as her daily practice of Hatha Yoga.

However, for the ever-changing singer, this reinvention should be no surprise. Why is it the outstanding album in her catalogue?

First of all, it is her most coherent album. The ambience of each track line up to form the full cycle of a day. “Drowned World/Substitute for Love” is the wee hours of the morning, setting up the tone for the whole album with the singer telling where her mind was at and where she wanted to go with the album. The guitar riffs on “Swim” resemble moment before the sunrise, while the lyrics are the darkest in the album. You know what people say; “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” The title track “Ray of Light” is when the sunlight hits your face in the morning and the hustle and bustle of the city as people rush to work. The day continues with the next three tracks, which are electronic dance tracks with various elements from grunge, orchestral music, and techno. As daylight dies and night falls, the lyrics turn spiritual on the techno tracks “Sky Fits Heaven” and “Shanti/Ashtangi”, the latter of which is a Hindu Sanskrit prayer. Electronica ballads follow from this point, dealing with various interpersonal relationships. The album ends past midnight with a surreal meditative ambient track on mortality and the death of the singer’s mother, “Mer Girl”.

Secondly, the tracks on the album are consistent in quality. The producers of Taylor Swift’s reputation talked about their pairing strings and electronic beats together like it was something new and bold. The truth is, almost 20 years earlier, Madonna had already done it, and she did it way better. Take the lead single “Frozen” for example. The ballad features prominent string arrangements, while synthesizers and electronic beats form the skeleton of the track. And they complement each other well. The ambient electronic beats create a mythical persona which was visualized in the music video of the song, while the lush strings convey the chill and lack of emotion in the man with whom the lyrics deal. In contrast, there’s the warmth and energy that radiates from the title track, embodied by the guitar riffs, wobbling synths, and restless drum beats. There is also a sense of wonderment, like when you detach yourself from the swirling life around you and realize how vast the universe is. Her vocals also reach new heights here, soaring high and getting distorted, like a tiny dot among billions of people in this marvelous universe.

There are also great moments on the album where the production retreats for the lyrics to take the limelight. The shimmering opener “Drowned World/Substitute for Love” pulses like the singer is emerging from the ocean as she abandons the superficial dalliances and seeks for authentic love. Never one to shy away from taboos, she discusses violence, rape, along other sins on “Swim”: “Children killing children while the students rape their teachers.” However, we need to persevere through all these sins to start anew, she argues:

“Let the water wash over you
Wash it all over you
Swim to the ocean floor
So that we can begin again
Wash away all our sins
Crash to the other shore”

It’s almost a cliché when we refer to a work of an artist as their “most personal to-date”, but it’s undeniably true in the case of Ray of Light. Even love songs like “The Power of Good-Bye” leave behind chaotic romantic entanglements found in her public life and previous works for a higher place. “You were my lesson I had to learn,” she sings. Then she also sings about her newborn daughter and the death of her mother with an ethereal sound. The singer enters a trance, a dream-like sequence on the closing track “Mer Girl”:

“I ran to the forest, I ran to the trees
I ran and I ran, I was looking for me
I ran to the lakes, and up to the hill
I ran and I ran, I am looking there still

And I smelled her burning flesh
Her rotting bones
Her decay

I ran and I ran
I’m still running away”

Is she singing about her long gone mother, or a part of her that has died? As she sheds her provocative images, she goes looking for the new her: someone more reflective and more mature.

Rating: A

Essential tracks: “Drowned World/Substitute for Love”, “Ray of Light”, “Frozen”, “Sky Fits Heaven”, “Mer Girl”