'Her vulnerability still resonates deeply': Why Madonna's Ray of Light is 2025's hottest album8 days agoShareSaveNick LevineShareSaveGetty Images(Credit: Getty Images)

From FKA Twigs to Addison Rae, many of today's hottest pop stars are taking inspiration from Madonna's swirling 1998 masterpiece. What is it that has made the album such a touchstone?

Madonna's varied discography is a mother lode of musical inspiration. With her early albums such as 1984's Like a Virgin, 1986's True Blue and 1989's Like a Prayer, she helped to invent the concept of the instantly recognisable, clearly delineated pop "era". But, during the past year or so, a slightly more recent Madonna album has become a touchstone for a new generation of musicians – 1998's Ray of Light, a cutting-edge collection of swirling electronica, which she largely crafted with British producer William Orbit.

"It's the perfect blend of pop sensibility and electronic innovation: it manages to deliver both, which is rare," Welsh electronic musician and producer Kelly Lee Owens tells the BBC. Owens, who cites Ray of Light as a major influence on her 2024 album Dreamstate, believes Madonna's masterpiece feels like "something that was fated to be made" in that "it was created at exactly the right time and place and has now become timeless".

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British singer-songwriter Mae Muller also drew from Ray of Light while working on her new EP My Island, which was released earlier this month. Muller says the album's euphoric title track helped to put her in "a magic place of nostalgic melancholy" that made her "want to dance", which is her "favourite place" musically.

The album's spin on 90s electronica – beautifully fluid and flecked with techno and trip-hop – is disarmingly contemporary once more

This year alone, music critics have detected Ray of Light's sonic legacy in acclaimed albums by British avant-pop alchemist FKA Twigs (Eusexua), Portuguese-born Danish R&B musician Erika de Casier (Lifetime) and US TikTok creator-turned-pop singer Addison Rae (Addison). The album's aqueous-sounding spin on 1990s electronica – beautifully fluid and flecked with techno and trip-hop – is disarmingly contemporary once more. In March, former Little Mix singer Jade Thirlwall (now known as JADE) released a suitably dramatic cover of Frozen, Ray of Light's chart-topping lead single. She said she was drawn to Madonna's haunting ballad because "it feels like a mix of genres" and "isn't your typical pop song". In a way, this cuts to the crux of Ray of Light's enduring appeal: because the album was such a cultural disruptor when it came out, it retains a rare cachet more than 27 years later.

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Now, Madonna herself is revisiting the Ray of Light era with an accompanying (if somewhat belated) remix album called Veronica Electronica. Just released, it collects seven club-centric reworkings of songs from the original LP alongside one previously unreleased demo: the resilient break-up song Gone Gone Gone. When Madonna announced Veronica Electronica's release in June, a post on her website explained that it was "originally envisioned by Madonna as a remix album in 1998", but the project was "ultimately sidelined by the original album's runaway success and parade of hit singles that dominated the spotlight for more than a year".

No self-respecting pop star undersells their achievements, but this isn't hyperbole. When Ray of Light was released in February 1998, it debuted at number one in 17 countries and at number two in the US. In the UK, it spawned no fewer than five top 10 singles: Frozen, the pulsating title track, the reflective ballad Drowned World/Substitute for Love, a touching double A-side of The Power of Good-Bye and Little Star, and the existential club anthem Nothing Really Matters. Ray of Light would go on to sell 16 million copies globally: an especially impressive total given that Madonna released the album when she was 39, a challenging age for female performers who refuse to narrow their ambitions.

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By this point, she was no stranger to railing against a toxic blend of sexism and ageism. In a 1992 interview on the BBC chat show Jonathan Ross Presents, she lamented the fact that "once you reach a certain age, you’re not allowed to be adventurous" and called out critics who she claimed were already saying: "That's so pathetic, I hope she's not still doing that in 10 years." 

A year after its release, Ray of Light collected three Grammy awards, including one for best pop album. Perhaps surprisingly, Madonna's only previous Grammy win had been in the best music video, long form category back in 1992, for Blond Ambition World Tour Live. At the time, the overwhelmingly positive critical response to Ray of Light helped to dispel lingering suggestions that Madonna's career was a triumph of style over substance. Music critic Robert Christgau wryly alluded to this line of thinking in his review of the singer's 1990 compilation album The Immaculate Collection when he imagined naysayers complaining that she was "all image" and "couldn't have done it without MTV".

Cutting-edge electronica

But, perhaps most remarkably of all, Ray of Light helped to usher underground dance sounds into the musical mainstream. Mostly co-produced by Madonna and Orbit, with contributions from the singer's longtime collaborator Patrick Leonard and another forward-thinking British record producer, Marius de Vries, it minted a distinctive, sonically stunning mix of electronica, trip-hop, techno, ambient and new-age music. Writer and editor Alex Frank, who reviewed Ray of Light for online magazine Pitchfork in 2017, says this blend would have sounded especially fresh to US listeners who bought the album when it first came out.

Ray of Light's primary components are all things that have been coming back into vogue – Shaad D'Souza

"The cutting-edge electronica of the UK and Europe had trickled over to America in fits and starts in the 1990s, but at least chart-wise, it was nowhere near at the same level [as in Europe]," Frank tells the BBC. Crucially, this exhilarating new musical direction helped to differentiate Madonna from her contemporaries. Frank says the US mainstream at the time was dominated by "big ballads from Celine Dion and Mariah Carey, R&B and hip-hop songs, plus some pop-country from artists like Shania Twain".

Though Ray of Light is more than 27 years old, writer Shaad D'Souza believes it's "probably the Madonna album that sounds the best in 2025". He concedes that the production does "sound a little bit dated" in places – an inevitability in the ever-changing world of pop music – but also notes that "its primary components are all things that have been coming back into vogue". The album’s sporadic Britpop-style guitar riffs feel sweetly nostalgic in the year that Oasis are mounting a massively anticipated reunion tour.

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D'Souza believes the Ray of Light renaissance has been several years in the making, spearheaded by some "slightly more underground albums" – among them, Australian trip-hop duo ASO's eponymous 2023 debut, and the same year's National Wonder Beauty Concept, a collaboration between Ecuadorian producer DJ Python and US experimental musician Ana Roxanne. But he tells the BBC that Ray of Light has become a red-hot reference point in 2025 because "we're at a fulcrum point where pop music is being taken seriously by everyone".

Ricardo Gomes

This presents ambitious artists with a potential dilemma – or at least a fresh challenge: "What differentiates the really serious and craft-driven stuff from the less important stuff?" Drawing from a period in Madonna's career when she was "trying to change the musical landscape for the better" by adopting an "auteur-like approach to pop music" is one way of showing you're serious about your craft.

Revelatory songwriting

Still, Ray of Light's intoxicating sonic cocktail wouldn't pack such a punch if the album didn't contain some of Madonna's most ruminative and revelatory songwriting. She celebrates the birth of her daughter Lourdes on the lovely Little Star, but also confronts the death of her mother on the astonishingly stark album closer Mer Girl. "And I smelled her burning flesh, her rotting bones, her decay," Madonna sings in hushed tones. "I ran and I ran, I'm still running away." Owens says the overall effect is "so emotionally raw and sonically intimate" that what Madonna is singing about, a devastating visit to her mother's grave, "feels almost tangible somehow".

Its spiritual streak is another reason why it chimes with so many contemporary artists

Elsewhere, Madonna explores the essential emptiness of fame on Drowned World/Substitute for Love, social unrest on Swim, and her yearning for human connection on standout album tracks Skin and Sky Fits Heaven. Frank believes Ray of Light's spiritual streak is another reason why it chimes with so many contemporary artists. "A sense of the spiritual and introspective is all over pop music now," he says. "When you listen to Charli XCX's [2024 album] Brat or Ariana Grande's most recent album [last year's Eternal Sunshine], they're soundtracking their journey of spirituality and self-care – their search for meaning – on top of a foundation of electronica."

Ricardo Gomes

On one occasion, Madonna takes her quest for spiritual enlightenment a little too far. The album track Shanti/Ashtangi, which she sings in the ancient Indo-European language Sanskrit, sets lines from an Indian hymn, the Yoga Travali, to a rattling techno beat. It's doubtless well-intentioned, but also feels like crass cultural appropriation coming from a world-famous white woman. 

In a way, though, Ray of Light's occasional flaw only adds to its appeal. "The album feels 100% authentic to Madonna, which is what people have always wanted from music, but maybe even more so today," Muller says. Owens agrees, saying that while "the electronic landscape Orbit created is timeless", Madonna's "vulnerability still resonates deeply" too. For this reason, Ray of Light's influence seems unlikely to wane. It's an album that redefined, and continues to shape, the kind of music that pop stars can make and achieve success with.

Veronica Electronica by Madonna is out now on Warner Records

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