Ray of Light

The job sits after a long retreat from the previous campaign. Bedtime Stories, in late 1994, softened the sound after the reaction to Erotica. Something to Remember, a ballads compilation, sold ten million copies. In 1996 she played Eva Perón in Evita, took vocal training for the part, and had a daughter, Lourdes Leon. The next album’s first sessions, with Babyface and with Patrick Leonard, did not produce the record she wanted. Wikipedia calls the Orbit sessions the longest of her career, mostly because the machines kept breaking. She was 39 when Ray of Light came out. The pop industry around her was busy with teenagers.

William Orbit had a label before he had this job. In 1990 he and Dick O’Dell started Guerilla, a British imprint for progressive house: Bassomatic, React2Rhythm, Billie Ray Martin, and Orbit’s own Water from a Vine Leaf, the single that introduced Beth Orton’s voice. Before the label he had Torch Song, working out of a squat at Centro Iberico, and the Strange Cargo albums of instrumentals. He had been remixing Madonna for years. He was an electronic producer with a shop and a studio habit, not a pop name picked off a list.

Guy Oseary called him in the spring of 1997. Orbit told CNN he did not think the call was serious, and that he had not realised Madonna was the person vetting his remixes. She told Q she already loved Strange Cargo, and that she wanted something futuristic that also sounded old, with Indian and Moroccan colour in the harmony. Songs written with Babyface had been set aside. Sessions with Rick Nowels and with Patrick Leonard had not given her the electronic record. Orbit did. Dazed, marking twenty years, reported that he co-produced all but one track, and that his equipment kept breaking during the sessions. She told Spin, in the line Dazed quotes, that he came from an experimental place and was not a classically trained musician, which was why the risk was worth taking.

Maverick and Warner Bros. released Ray of Light on 22 February 1998. They had recorded from June to November 1997 at Larrabee North in North Hollywood and at the Hit Factory in New York, with Patrick Leonard and Marius de Vries also in the credits. Frozen was out as a single on 23 January. The title track followed in the spring. Shanti/Ashtangi sets a Sanskrit verse in the same production world. Rolling Stone reported Orbit’s pleasure that Madonna had insisted on the purity of his arrangements, and that those arrangements had worked with her songs. Frozen is strings and a large quiet. The title track is a run of breaks with a guitar figure before the kick. Drowned World/Substitute for Love opens quietly. A remix bolted on at the end of a ballad campaign would have been the ordinary major-label use of a dance producer. Here the electronic bed is the song.

The album went to number one in Britain and, by Wikipedia’s count, in 17 countries, and to number two on the Billboard 200. That debut week was, at the time, the biggest first week for a woman. The album has sold more than 16 million copies. Frozen went to number one in nine countries. It won four Grammys, including Best Pop Album, from six nominations. The Drowned World Tour, her first in eight years, was the highest-grossing solo tour of 2001. Those numbers describe a hit. They do not describe the hand on the texture. Play Water from a Vine Leaf, from Strange Cargo, and then play Frozen. The liquid percussion, the melancholy, the refusal to brighten the machine: that is Orbit’s, and it was already his before Maverick booked the studio. Madonna’s decision was to leave it there. Guerilla had closed by the middle of the decade, short of the American distribution money that had kept it going. The producer of that failed-forward house label is the reason a 1998 pop album still sounds like it was made by someone who had stayed up with sequencers rather than with a session sheet.

Sources

• Ray of Light: Maverick and Warner Bros., 22 February 1998, Larrabee North and the Hit Factory, Orbit, Leonard and de Vries, Frozen, the charts, the Grammys.
• Discogs: Guerilla, founded in 1990 by William Orbit and Dick O’Dell, progressive house, the I.R.S. and Tribal America deal, closed after the funding went.
• CNN, 9 February 2000: Orbit on Strange Cargo, Beth Orton, Guy Oseary’s call in spring 1997, and the Ray of Light sessions.
• Dazed: the Babyface songs set aside, Orbit co-producing all but one track, the breaking equipment, Madonna to Spin and to Q.
• Rolling Stone: Orbit on Madonna insisting on the purity of his arrangements.
• Cold War Night Life: Torch Song at Centro Iberico, Guerilla with Dick O’Dell, Water from a Vine Leaf, the call from Madonna.