Madonna’s greatest album to date is finally old enough to drink, as ‘Ray of Light’ bellies up to the bar and turns 21. Released on March 3, 1998, it remains an artistic and commercial highlight of Madonna’s storied career, earning her some long-deserved Grammy Awards, critical acclaim, and a resurgence of mainstream popularity. More important than all of that, it’s just a great fucking album. Her best, in my not-so-humble opinion, and the one against which all later work would be judged, like it or not.
The tracklisting:
- Drowned World: Substitute for Love
- Swim
- Ray of Light
- Candy Perfume Girl
- Skin
- Nothing Really Matters
- Sky Fits Heaven
- Shanti/Ashtangi
- Frozen
- The Power of Goodbye
- To Have and Not To Hold
- Little Star
- Mer Girl
The ‘Ray of Light’ album will always hold a special place in my heart for a number of reasons. It came in the spring of my life, when I was just becoming an adult, whatever the hell that even means. It came in the almost-spring of a year which found me flailing, floundering, and flagellating myself in any number of ways, and in which, looking back, I was having the time of my life. It came in a moment of stillness and relative quiet, at the tail end of a century and a millennium, in a time of innocence we never quite recognized as such until it was gone.
