Ray of Light

Madonna began the album in June 1997 with Babyface and dropped the songs they wrote. She and Rick Nowels wrote nine songs in ten days, and three of them, The Power of Good-Bye, To Have and Not to Hold and Little Star, made the album. Then she turned to William Orbit, after Maverick's Guy Oseary asked him to send her songs. He sent a tape of thirteen tracks. They worked at the Hit Factory in New York and at Larrabee Studio in North Hollywood for four and a half months, her longest session to that point, delayed by computer malfunctions. Orbit played nearly all of the instruments himself and co-produced every song but one. After errors were found in her pronunciation of the Sanskrit on Shanti/Ashtangi, the BBC arranged telephone lessons with a scholar, and she re-recorded the vocals. She sang Mer Girl in a single take.

The songs deal with fame, motherhood and spirituality, with influences from Hinduism, Buddhism, Kabbalah and yoga. She considered calling it Mantra or Veronica Electronica. Frozen led the singles, followed by the title track, Ray of Light. The album entered the Billboard 200 at number two with 371,000 copies, the biggest first week for a woman in the SoundScan era at the time, and topped the charts in 17 countries. It has sold more than 16 million copies.

At the 41st Grammy Awards it won four of its six nominations, among them Best Pop Album, and gave Madonna the first music Grammy of her career. The Guardian's obituary of Orbit says it earned him two Grammys as well. Erlewine of AllMusic called it her most adventurous record, and Pitchfork's Alex Frank wrote that Orbit gave it a unified tonal consistency. Rolling Stone moved it up to number 222 on its 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums.