Madonna’s Ray of Light at 25: Every Song Ranked

It’s difficult to imagine an album like Ray of Light being made today. Twenty-five years ago, leading up to the dawn of a new century that felt filled with possibility, Madonna staged a wildly successful second act, just as her cultural cachet was threatening to wane, by embracing the then-burgeoning sounds of European electronic music.

Upon Ray of Light’s release, genre purists scoffed at the idea that what Madonna had made could be called “electronica.” The suggestion that the album was merely pop music dressed up with digital flourishes—courtesy of primary producer William Orbit—wasn’t completely off the mark, nor was it a damning critique. After all, delivering underground culture unto the masses had become the artist’s m.o.

Madonna had dabbled in electronica before, most notably on the Björk-penned “Bedtime Story,” from 1994’s Bedtime Stories, and a trip-hop-infused cover of Marvin Gaye’s “I Want You” with Massive Attack the following year. But on her seventh studio album, the Queen of Pop flung herself like a whirling dervish into a genre whose commercial prospects, especially in the U.S., were uncertain at best.

With nothing left to prove or lose, Madonna took her shot, and it resulted in four Grammy awards and near-universal acclaim from techno heads, indie kids, and even stubborn rock critics. More importantly, it propelled her career forward into the 21st century while most of her contemporaries struggled to maintain their relevance. To celebrate the album’s 25th anniversary, we’ve ranked all 14 songs, including the bonus track “Has to Be.” Sal Cinquemani

14. “Shanti/Ashtangi”

A yoga techno prayer that, 25 years after its release, raises all sort of red flags in terms of cultural appropriation, “Shanti/Ashtangi” nonetheless effectively serves as a spiritual way station—a sonic bardo, if you will—between Ray of Light’s ecstatic, comparably upbeat first half and its darker, more melancholic final tracks. Cinquemani

13. “Little Star”

In paying tribute to her first child on “Little Star,” Madonna also engages with the loss of her own mother—a parental parallel that doesn’t come into full focus until the album’s closing track. Here, she sings, “God gave a present to me/Made of flesh and bones,” imagery that’s later echoed on “Mer Girl,” which references her mother’s “burning flesh” and “rotting bones.” This encounter with death permeates an otherwise superficially sweet lullaby that represents Madonna’s desire to shield her daughter from the inevitable experience of loss. Eric Mason

12. “Candy Perfume Girl”

Despite its reputation for being an electronic album, Ray of Light is chockablock with guitars, guitar samples, and synthesizers masquerading as guitars. “Candy Perfume Girl” has got all three in spades, not to mention a drum loop lifted from EPMD, all in service of a gritty, industrial rock-infused slice of trip-hop. Lyrically, it’s the closest thing the album gets to eroticism—that is, when Madonna isn’t evoking cannibalism, death by poison, and the apocalypse. Cinquemani

11. “To Have and Not to Hold”

An extension of the album’s multi-genre and multi-cultural sensibility, “To Have and Not to Hold” deftly meshes a Sanskrit mantra with a bossa nova beat. While this serene ballad hews closer to the lyrical conventions of a breakup song, the way it weaves personal loss with spiritual awakening tees up the album’s closing pair of deeply personal downtempo tracks. Mason

10. “Swim”

One of at least four songs on Ray of Light that evoke water, “Swim” cleverly employs guitar pedal effects, waves of synths, and other aquatic burbles to conjure the feeling of being submerged as Madonna describes a world on the brink. Water is, of course, a symbol of purification and salvation, and the singer’s then-newly polished voice capably reaches for the heavens as she sinks down to the depths. Cinquemani

9. “Drowned World/Substitute for Love”

Layered with vocal samples and buoyant drum ‘n’ bass, Ray of Light’s opening salvo, “Drowned World/Substitute for Love,” pointedly but poignantly sums up Madonna’s personal tribulations with fame and, perhaps coincidentally, the pitfalls of getting what you want: “I got exactly what I asked for/Running, rushing back for more…And now I find, I’ve changed my mind.” Cinquemani

8. “Nothing Really Matters”

Lyrically the simplest of Ray of Light’s earnest spiritual lessons, “Nothing Really Matters” chugs along with revelatory abandon—adorned with producers William Orbit and Marius De Vries’s skittering electronic noise and wobbly hiccups but also a bouncy bassline, infectious beat, and the most exhilarating piano break in a Madonna song since the extended remix of “Into the Groove.” Cinquemani

7. “Mer Girl”

“Mer Girl,” the album’s final track, is a surreal meditation on mortality and the death of Madonna’s mother that was reportedly written stream-of-consciously while the singer was visiting her family in Michigan for the holidays. “The earth took me in her arms/Leaves covered my face/Ants marched across my back,” she sings, summoning and unfurling decades of grief and existential dread by juxtaposing the memory her mother’s burial with images of her own. Cinquemani

6. “Has to Be”

Ray of Light may have marked the queen’s return to her throne, but it was her reunion with longtime songwriting partner Patrick Leonard, as well as William Orbit’s more subdued ambient soundscapes, that elevated the project above a mere electronica cash-in. Putting the law of attraction to the test, “Has to Be,” a bonus track on the Japanese edition of the album as well as the B-side to “Ray of Light,” is an anguished appeal to the gods above from the loneliest, most famous woman on Earth. Cinquemani

5. “Skin”

“Skin” is rife with tension and contradiction, pushing and pulling between the physical and the metaphysical, visceral urgency and spiritual wistfulness, and the perspectives of two partners longing to draw closer to each other. Amid a thrumming trance beat, alien synth sounds, and pitch-delayed guitars, Madonna asks, “Do I know you from somewhere?,” capturing a love that feels at once divinely predestined and painfully incomplete. Mason

4. “The Power of Good-bye”

Structured like your average adult-contemporary ballad—the song was co-written by Rick Nowels, most famous for his work with Belinda Carlisle, Stevie Nicks, and, more recently, Lana Del Rey—and featuring a richly layered arrangement of acoustic guitars, sweeping strings, and lush atmospherics, “The Power of Good-Bye” is quintessential “electronica-lite.” But its unapologetic melodrama and Madonna’s knack for pop pathos makes it all go down as smoothly today as it did back in 1998. Cinquemani

3. “Sky Fits Heaven”

“Sky Fits Heaven” is famous for being lyrically inspired by British poet Max Blagg’s 1992 poem “What Fits?” (later used in a Gap Jeans commercial), but the song is a marvel not for Madonna’s new-age pontifications, but for its heavenly hook and William Orbit’s impeccable use of both analog and digital technologies, marked by expressive electric guitars and explosive drum fills constructed from tiny fragments of sound. Cinquemani

2. “Ray of Light”

Madonna discovered techno just as she turned 40 and took up Kabbalah, and listening to “Ray of Light,” it’s easy to imagine her finding in rave culture not just a new image, but a way of expressing her spiritual awakening. The beat is restless and Madonna sings breathlessly, yet she exudes contentment: “I feel like I just got home!” Indeed, her emotional warmth is what establishes the song as a standout even in a catalog as replete with classics as hers. Matthew Cole

1. “Frozen”

If “Frozen” is impossible to separate from the gothic chic of Chris Cunningham’s music video, that’s because the song itself is a series of conspicuously alluring affectations. Atop a snaky, string-laden electronic landscape that’s transfixing in no small part because of how brazenly it grasps at the exotic, Madonna serves Grimes-at-the-Met-Gala realness. Her vocals are at once naked and withholding, a tango of warring impulses that are obligingly whipped up by the electro-symphonic flourishes of William Orbit’s production. Ed Gonzalez