Music is the eighth studio album by American singer and songwriter Madonna. It was released on September 18, 2000, by Maverick and Warner Bros. Records. Following the success of her previous album Ray of Light (1998), Madonna found herself in a music scene increasingly influenced by a younger generation of singers such as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. This led her to seek a distinctive sound that would set her apart in the evolving musical landscape. Her collaborations with Mirwais Ahmadzaï and William Orbit resulted in a more experimental direction for the album. Music incorporates many different genres into its overall dance-pop and electronica vibe, taking influences from funk, house, techno, rock, country, folk and R&B. With the album embracing a western motif, Madonna reimagined her image in the role of a cowgirl.
Music received acclaim from music critics, with many comparing its production to Ray of Light. The album earned a total of five Grammy Award nominations, winning one for Best Recording Package at the 43rd ceremony. The record was a commercial success, selling four million copies in its first ten days of release and topping the album charts in twenty-three countries. In the United States, it topped the Billboard 200 with over 420,000 copies sold first week—her highest to date. It additionally received multi-platinum certifications across the Americas, Europe, and the Asia–Pacific region. As of 2008, Music has sold more than 11 million copies worldwide.
To promote Music, Madonna embarked on a small promotional tour, consisting of televised performances at occasions such as the 2000 MTV Europe Music Awards and the 43rd Grammy Awards, and with two free concerts at Roseland Ballroom and Brixton Academy limited to contest winners. It was also supported by the Drowned World Tour in the following year, her first concert tour after eight years; the tour visited North America and Europe, grossing over US$75 million and making it the highest-grossing tour by a solo act of the year and fourth overall.
Three official singles were released from the album. The title track was the lead single, topping the charts in 25 countries worldwide and becoming Madonna's 12th and, to date, final number-one hit on the US Billboard Hot 100. It was followed by the top-five single "Don't Tell Me" and "What It Feels Like for a Girl", which reached the top 10 in several countries worldwide. "Impressive Instant" was released as a promotional single in the United States, topping the Dance Club Songs chart. "Amazing" was also briefly released as a promotional single in selected countries before being withdrawn shortly afterward. Retrospectively, Music has been recognized by music journalists for anticipating a number of musical trends, such as electro-house, vocal manipulation, lyrical gibberish, chopped-up acoustics, and the adoption of cowboy kitsch.
Background and development In 1998, Madonna released her seventh studio album Ray of Light to critical and commercial success, winning four Grammy Awards at the 41st edition of the ceremony, including Best Pop Album. Madonna intended to embark on a new concert tour to promote it in 1999, after filming The Next Best Thing; however, the film's production suffered a delay and due to limited time, plans for a tour were eventually canceled. The Next Best Thing was released in March 2000, receiving unfavorable reviews from critics. As part of the film's soundtrack, she recorded a cover version of Don McLean's "American Pie" (1971) at the request of her co-star Rupert Everett, which garnered mixed reactions from critics and the public. However, it became a commercial success worldwide, topping the charts in several countries throughout Europe. The song also became her ninth number-one single in the United Kingdom, extending her record of most chart-topping singles by a female artist in the region. Despite not being released commercially in the United States, it was also a radio success, reaching number 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The success of "American Pie" increased the public's anticipation for Madonna's next album at the time.
Shortly after releasing "American Pie", Madonna announced she was pregnant with her son Rocco, from her relationship with director Guy Ritchie. Wanting to distract herself from the media frenzy surrounding this news, Madonna concentrated on the development of her eighth studio album, entitled Music. Buoyed by the commercial success of her previous album, she was keen on returning to the studio to record new music. Madonna was well disposed toward producer William Orbit, with whom she collaborated with on Ray of Light, but by 2000, his production and sound had become ubiquitous. Moreover, the music industry became increasingly influenced by a new generation of artists such as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. At the same time, contemporaries of Madonna's own generation, including Prince and Janet Jackson, were seeing a decline in their record sales, prompting Madonna to seek a distinctive sound in the music market. She was then introduced to French DJ and producer Mirwais Ahmadzaï. Madonna instantly liked his pitch-shifting, pulverizing rhythms and his use of acid bass in his songs. Ahmadzaï, known for his inclination toward musical innovation, felt inspired to collaborate with Madonna in a way that would achieve her greatest potential.
Writing and recording
Recording sessions for Music began in September 1999 at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill, London, where she had recently moved, and were almost completed by January 2000. Madonna first began collaborating with Orbit. During his sessions with Madonna, he invited DJ Sasha to work on music for possible inclusion on the album, as they were "looking for a trancey sound". Orbit commented that the material was "a little edgier" and a follow-up "without standing still" to her previous album, and elaborated, "It's almost like we started off with a lot of slow ballad songs and she's started to kind of chuck 'em out in favor of more edgy tracks. The album is getting more kind of fast, very European sounding, very English and French sounding, naturally, 'cause everybody working on it apart from her is English or French. Pretty exciting, actually". After some recording sessions with Orbit, she felt she needed a different sound for her project and scrapped most of the material recorded up to that point. The singer revealed that they had composed nine songs and thought that they were too similar to those of her previous record, prompting her to "throw out everything and start over again." Madonna expressed that she did not want her music to blend in with others, especially since Orbit gained popularity among mainstream artists following their collaboration.
As she sought a new collaborator to start over, Madonna was in search of someone "new and edgy and undiscovered" with a different sound. She was introduced to Ahmadzaï by her manager and partner at Maverick Records, Guy Oseary. He had received a tape with songs from Ahmadzaï's album Production through French photographer Stéphane Sednaoui, and was considering signing him as an artist for the record company. Upon hearing the tape, Madonna believed that his sound was exactly what she was seeking for her next record. Within three weeks, they met at Sarm West to begin work on the album. Madonna had long considered competition between her producers a way to get the best out of them, but Orbit later revealed that he was not at all offended with her change of mind, "as long as she uses good people. And I love what Mirwais has done." Three of his tracks eventually appeared on Music. For his part, Ahmadzaï was relaxed about the offer to work with Madonna, because he knew she was interested in him for his own work, and not for his ability as a performer or for his past work with another artist. The producer felt free to work freely but within her limits, as he thought it was important to respect the artist's work ethic. According to Ahmadzaï, there were no plans at the beginning of the sessions, with Madonna only asking for something more extreme and rough.
During their first days of collaboration, Madonna encountered language barriers with Ahmadzaï due to his limited English proficiency. This frustrated her to the point of wanting to "rip [her] hair out". Consequently, Ahmadzaï's manager stepped in to act as a translator. As time went by, the pair got to know each other better, and the atmosphere in the studio changed into a more relaxed mood. Madonna said she was intent on making their relationship work, because she believed that he was a "genius" and "so incredibly smart and visionary". The first song they worked on was "Impressive Instant", since it was almost complete on the demo that he had sent to Madonna. The singer also wanted to sing "Paradise (Not for Me)", another track present on the demo; however, Ahmadzaï wanted it for his own album, prompting him to make slightly different versions for both records. According to Madonna, the title track was one of the first songs they wrote and produced together and set the tone of the rest of the album. Within the first ten days, they had recorded the backing vocals and acoustic guitars on a Sony 48-track and transferred it to a Logic Audio workstation, using the converters of TC Electronic Finalizer. Feeling that their ideas for the tracks would be difficult to create in Sarm West, Ahmadzaï wanted to return to Paris and work there alone on his own computer. She wanted him to treat her voice differently, and although he did not want any effects on her vocals at first, the producer used the Antares Auto-Tune plug-in set for the pitch correction on some tracks at the singer's request. The audio processor kept the characteristic of Madonna's vocals, and she sang a little out of tune and vibrato. However, other songs such as "I Deserve It" had no effects other than acoustic instrumentation.
Madonna developed an interest in collaborating with Guy Sigsworth as she was drawn by his appreciation for understated technology in music. She reached out to him with the intention of adding an ambient feel to her record. Madonna presented him with the preliminary demo tracks developed for Music, including the songs created with Ahmadzaï. She chose one of two sketches he had sent her, which was almost finished but was still kept unpolished so that Madonna could continue writing on top of it. The backing track contained a sample from the 1993 British film The Cement Garden, with the voice of actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, which later became "What It Feels Like for a Girl". He worked on the track at Sarm West rather than his own studio since he did not want to "fuck up" working with Madonna. The song was finished quickly and within four days they were able to create the final version. From the first day onward, Madonna and Sigsworth chose to retain all the musical noises from the demo; this required the producer to creatively reconfigure her vocals around the segments, utilizing Pro Tools on a SSL 9000 J console. Madonna insisted that Sigsworth give her a rough approximate sound, rather than work on the music for two or three hours. That way, they would know whether it could be kept or rejected and save time on production. During recording, Sigsworth noticed that the verses were out of sync with the music and wanted to add extra bar to help them cohere. However, Madonna dismissed it, and he had to cut up the individual music to put it in his computer to accompany her vocals. Sigsworth thought it made the song sound more "fluid and magical" and commended Madonna for not taking the cop-out solution.
Composition Sound and themes