THE SECOND COMING

CHANNELLING SPIRITUALITY AND STATE-OF-THE-ART ELECTRONICA, MADONNA LAID HERSELF BARE EMOTIONALLY, ESCHEWED THE HEADLINE-GRABBING ANTICS OF HER PAST AND PULLED OFF THE MOTHER OF ALL COMEBACKS WITH 1998 ALBUM RAY OF LIGHT, A MYSTICAL MASTERPIECE CRAFTED WITH THE EQUALLY VISIONARY WILLIAM ORBIT

MARK LINDORES

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When Madonna announced the imminent release of her seventh studio album at the beginning of 1998, the news was met with a curious mixture of heated anticipation and creeping trepidation. Given the series of changes, both personal and professional, she had undergone since Bedtime Stories in 1994, what would the pop superstar come up with next? After all, in recent times it seemed as though the output of the strident sexual crusader – whose every song and video was as prominent in the headlines as it was in the charts – had been displaced with mawkish MOR balladry, not to mention that Lloyd Webber musical. The fact that Madonna was afirst-time mother and speedily approaching her 40th birthday did little to ease the concerns of even the most ardent of her acolytes. None of them, it seemed, could even come close to imagining the techno tour-de-force she was about to deliver.

Since the birth of her daughter in October 1996 and her obligatory promo duties for her award-winning role in Evita, Madonna had kept a low profile for the majority of 1997. Alongside producer William Orbit and programmer Marius de Vries, the singer had been holed up in California’s Larrabee Studios, where she worked around the clock ensconced in a world of techno wizardry.

Work had begun in January. In a serious quandary as to what her next creative statement might be, Madonna went into the studio with a number of writers and producers including Kenneth ‘Babyface’

Edmonds, Rick Nowels and Patrick Leonard to determine the feel of the record. While Warner Brothers favoured Madonna continuing with the R&B sound that had been predominant on her Bedtime Stories album (which had given her one of her biggest-ever US hits with Take A Bow), the singer herself was leaning towards the sound of other cuts from that record –Sanctuary, the Björk-penned Bedtime Story and her 1995 Massive Attack collaboration I Want You, which featured on the Marvin Gaye tribute album Inner City Blues: The Music of Marvin Gaye.

“I decided that I just wanted to make a record that I wanted to listen to,” Madonna told MTV. “I’ve always been interested in electronica, techno, trip-hop, that kind of music. The thing that bothered me about a lot of that music was it seemed devoid of emotion. There wasn’t a lot that felt personal. So I wanted to take my feelings and marry them to something that is traditionally not considered very emotional. The only way to get that sound is to work with the people that made them.”