Madonna

Ray Of Light

Innovative, spiritually uplifting and powerful!

Review Score:

(10/10)
If there is a sound that makes me remember 1998, it would be this album, Madonna's "Ray Of Light". After a four year break after the lukewarm response to her previous album "Bedtime Stories" Madonna returned to the msuic scene with what I would consider her greatest and most spiritually mature work that she has ever done to date. It's really a pity that this is Madonna's last great album to date. "Music" is enjoyable but nothing that sticks in your head and "American Life" was an epic dissapointment. I can still remember the spooked feelings that I got when the whispering ambiences of "Substitute For Love" came out of my speakers during that dark, damp evening of March of 1998 when I bought this album. Even now, six full years removed from when first hearing it, SFL still gives me the most euphoric chills I've ever experienced in music. Everything afterwards is a long perpetual epic adventure through innovative techno, New Age, and rock dance music but this is no generic dance record by any stretch of the imagination. Not a chance. "Ray of Light" is light years beyond other dance music of it's time.

"Frozen" was a well-deserved classic that still brings chills to me when listening to it. It has a very dramatic and very melencholy mood to it and the video that accompanied it was absolutely stunning. Some may look at me strange but I kind of think of this song as the antithesis of "Open Your Heart". Where as OYH is a fun and sunny 1980s dance classic, "Frozen" is a very dark and rainy evening song with a very haunting orchestral style. Looking back on it now, amidst the disappointing music she's put out over the past year, "Frozen" is now one of my favorite charting singles of all time of her's. My favorite track on this entire album though is track 5, "Skin". Whoa! This song back in early 1998, scared the daylights out of me. It starts with a very murky electronic intro, dissolves into ghostly whispers and finally becomes a pulsating, intense, and eerie dance song that really spooked me, in a great way, at it's incredibly eerie atmosphere.

As of writing this review, this album remains unrivalled by anything Madonna has put out ever since, and in fact, I would even go as to say that there has yet to come an album that brings the thrills that "Ray of Light" did in early 1998. If you had to pick three Madonna albums, this is one of them. The others would be "EROTICA" and "Like A Prayer". Go for the rest if you like but these three albums in my opinion showcased the major pinnacles Madonna reached over the past 20 years and perhaps sometime in the near future she may wow us again just like she did with this album back during 1998-1999. I generally find it hard to really give a good opinion on it but I feel so sorry for those who missed this really period from early 1998-through the middle of 1999.

I could listen to this album in the year 2018, 20 years after being released, and it wouldn't sound a day out of place. If you like this one, then I would recommend "Mezzanine" by Massive Attack. With these two, you will experience an adventure like nothing before. Amidst the decline of music that would start around this time, these two albums in my opinion really saved 1998 from being a dud of a year.

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