Hi, everyone. Halfthony Bakedtano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of Madonna's Ray of Light.

This is the seventh full-length studio album from pioneering pop sensation, Madonna. An interesting record for her and for pop music as well for multiple reasons. I mean, let's start with the fact that at this point in 1998, we're already over a decade into a career that was massive from the start, as Madonna was obviously one of the biggest pop icons to come out of the '80s, so she had already far surpassed the shelf life of your average pop diva. But yet somehow, with this album, crafted yet another genre and era-defining record.

And there was still plenty of gas left in the tank from here, too, with the beloved Confessions on a Dance Floor dropping just a few projects later in 2005, which is another video at another time, probably.

The key to Madonna's longevity, obviously, though, has very much been her ability to evolve and challenge her audience and maintain a forward-thinking attitude when it comes to new sounds and trends in music. I mean, we are talking about someone who had the foresight to work with the late, great, SOPHIE back in 2015 on the, "Bitch I'm Madonna" single, and also was not shy about embracing recent trends in EDM, trap, and Latin pop on her past couple of records, too.

So of course, as new strains of electronic music cropped up and began to take up more of pop's share on the dance floor in the early '90s, Madonna was quick to adapt and began diving headfirst into house and down tempo, even trip hop, on records like Erotica and Bedtime Stories, the former of which I would highly recommend if you're looking for an approach to these sounds that is a bit bolder and overtly sexual and steamy, with some pretty beefy production and a lot of drums that have a strong '80s vibe to them.

Ray of Light, however, is a much more futuristic and transcendental venture and more of a cultural smash as well, and I can see why. Not just because I lived through the time period in which this album was so popular, but also this record sees Madonna fully embracing this new wave of dreamier, more blissful electronica in a way that, for its time, was pretty dominant. The house influences are certainly still there on this record, but Madonna is trending in definitely more of a techno direction here too, tinged with these ambient new age and trance-y aesthetics. Meanwhile, the trip hop flavors on this record have really slowed down into a meditative down tempo vibe for numerous songs in this tracklist.

And this is all a result of her trying to restlessly map out a new direction for her sound on this one and feeling like the results of working with past collaborators weren't really getting her to where she wanted to be. A handful of songs she wrote with the likes of Rick Nowels as well as Patrick Leonard made it into the final version of this album's tracklist.

But it's really Madonna's connection with UK producer William Orbit that fans and critics alike have long credited as being the difference maker with this album's style and sound. Orbit's talent and background and experience as a producer made him the perfect conduit to harness all of these varied and fast evolving styles of electronic music that were bubbling up at the time. All of which clearly spoke to these very strong feelings of existentialism and spirituality that Madonna was feeling due to the point she was at in life. You have to consider she was a new mother at this point. She was also starting to study Hinduism and Buddhism, too. So it makes sense that early picks for the potential title of this album were Mantra and Veronica Electronica.

Upon its release, though, Ray of Light ended up selling 3 million copies in five days and many millions more down the road. Madonna herself has said this is one of her best albums, and the record clearly still holds a lot of water today with a lot of young artists. I mean, for example, Ray of Light's creative DNA is all over this new revival among pop singers and DJs bringing back these late '90s, Y2K, dreamy dance pop aesthetics. I mean, just look at the likes of Addison Rae.

But what Madonna and William Orbit deliver on this record is the real deal. This is the blueprint. This is the reference point. You can hear that in its sound quality and the fact that the experience of this record is so immersive because the tracks here, and the album in general, just really go the distance with a runtime that lasts over an hour and is very gratifying through and through with all of its linear progressions, repetitive beats, dense walls of instrumentation that are made to just make you feel like you were completely immersed in the music itself, and even Madonna's own vocals at points sound lost in the mixes of these songs intentionally because there is a purpose behind putting her at equal footing with the keys, and beats, and guitars, and then adding on top of that a very thick layer of reverb, making songs like "Swim", for example, truly live up to their title sonically, because the record really is going for a transcendental experience, one of the most transcendental experiences in pop, and I would say it achieves it.

The album even kicks off with a track that feels like the start of a spirit journey, "Drowned World / Substitute for Love", whose intro is packed with these droning keys and tones that are quite curious and hopeful. The lyrics read like a prayer or an epiphany, with Madonna growing disillusioned with the thrills that once fueled her life and her fame. She is now seeking out something that is more fulfilling and real. She ends the song off with the phrase, "This is my religion," and it certainly feels like it.

But not every track on this record feels like a subtle chakra adjustment. There are plenty of bangers to be had, too. Most notably, the title track, one of the greatest pop anthems of the '90s. And while there is a lot of overlap creatively with many of the surrounding songs, with the thumping kicks and throbbing synths, the gradual progressions, it's all turned up to 11 and reaches these chaotic, orgasmic highs with Madonna howling vocally and William really cranking the knobs, tossing all kinds of madness into the mix: what sounds like sirens occasionally, psyched guitars, wailing leads.

The whole track is like a pop five-alarm fire. Also, kudos for being the only radio song I know of that starts off with the word "zephyr." Do you know how open a white person's third eye needs to be in order for them to put "zephyr" at the start of a song?

Keeping the energy high from here, we have "Candy Perfume Girl", which has almost a '60s psych rock feel to it, really due to the guitar passages and many of Madonna's lyrics here. The whole track sounds like a Jefferson Airplane song if you could slow it down to a woozy pace and then submerge it in Jello.

Meanwhile, the vibes and energy sour a little bit on "Skin", which sounds like a complete existential crisis set to a techno-acid trip. The introspection and self-inquisition Madonna does on this track lyrically, you just don't often get in top 40 pop. It feels less like a song and more like a very intense therapy session that ends in ego death, and it all just happens to be musical.

It's from here where it becomes clearer that there's almost a progression to the philosophical musings in the lyrics on this project, because next we get "Nothing Really Matters", which is not stated in a nihilistic way, mind you. More in a letting go of the past and giving yourself permission to have emotional and mental freedom way. Also, of course, finding a love where Madonna talks about feeling like she gets back everything she gives to it. I also love how on this track and many others throughout this record, Orbit throws in all of these jazzy piano runs that feel almost like you're tuning into another radio signal accidentally, and it just so happens to work within the framework of the music that is playing on what you're trying to be dialed into.

Going deeper into the album on "Sky Fits Heaven", we get these epic galloping techno beats. Very bass-y, very heavy. It's another abstract exploration of a track where lyrically, Madonna goes over all of these different symbiotic relationships between the sky and heaven, between mother and child, between fate and karma, between love and virtue, which is fitting, considering it is shoulder-to-shoulder in the tracklist with a cut where Madonna is just doing an opening yoga prayer with a pretty experimental instrumental that's giving East Asian Indian fusion. It's a very cool, interesting centerpiece for the record, and again, a super unlikely and bold, admirable addition for an artist of Madonna's size to put in a make-or-break kind of album.

The final third of this record continues to dish out powerful moments, too, with songs that continue to embrace how holistic and interconnected all the writing is, like with the song "Frozen", talking about how important it is to be open in your heart in order to accept love. Then, "The Power of Good-Bye", starting with having to leave someone over that closeness, over that frozenness. It's like Madonna intended nearly every song on this album to be some grandiose lesson, statement, law, or just rule of the universe. She's just giving all of these sermons on these different experiences and topics and life lessons.

But to speak a bit more about how interesting and unique this album is, instrumentally, "To Have and Not to Hold" is the most murky, dark, and otherworldly piece of Bossa Nova I think I've ever heard in my life. I feel like this is what you would get if Zeus himself produced a Bossa Nova song.

Then from here, we have what is clearly an ode to her own daughter on "Little Star", which is not only heart-meltingly cute, it's also clear the presence of Madonna's daughter had a lot of impact on the writing process of this record when you read many of the lyrics through that framing. But musically and in terms of the quality of the vocals here, this track really feels like a techno lullaby with some prominent, upright bass. Just, so sweet and a mind bogglingly interesting and specific way of going about implementing this song and this vibe.

Then the closing track is almost a monologue moment, a crazy art pop meditation where Madonna goes over all of this generational pain, and hurt, and trauma, and baggage, that still tortures her to this day as she's making this album, and now that she's a mother, is reflecting on her own mother-daughter relationship and how that obviously still haunts her. It's a very strange, raw, vulnerable, but commendable way to finish off a record that, for the most part, is so blissful, so positive, so metaphysical and abstract at many key moments too, which I think easily makes this one of the most special and high-minded albums in mainstream pop; for what Madonna says and writes, expresses, and explores on this album, and also for how William Orbit supports this journey every step of the way with these interdimensional beats that have visceral qualities that speak to the dance floor, and also cerebral qualities that speak to just the inner recesses of your mind and help you dig out all of that dark stuff that you haven't been addressing. You're detoxing all of the darkness. You're turning into a ray of light.

But yeah, really great, powerful, special album, and that is why it is, to me and many others, a classic. Those are my thoughts.

Anthony Fantano, Madonna, Forever.