Madonna & Mirwais: An Impressive Instant. Chapter One — “Music”
“Hey Mr. DJ, put a record on… Hi, it’s Madonna. You’ve probably been hearing about my new record, Music, for a while. Well, I just wanted to make sure you knew that the single is gonna drop very soon. I worked on it with a French guy named Mirwais, and he is the shit. The album will be released worldwide on September 19, and I hope you like my music.”
“Madonna is a person who really inspires people. At the demo stage, there’s no artistic limit which is fine with me as I don’t like to impose limits on myself either.” — Mirwais.
The 1998 release of the Ray Of Light album would be met with critical acclaim and commercial success, having been nominated for six Grammys (including Album Of The Year) and attaining platinum certification in the United States, England and several other countries. Madonna would later refer to the project as her most fulfilling evolution, which is abundantly clear listening to the prodigious release within the context of her accomplished body of work. The birth of Madonna’s first child Lourdes in 1996, coupled with her exploration into Kabbalah would inspire the central lyrical themes of motherhood and spirituality expressed on Ray Of Light.
Long-time collaborator Patrick Leonard would once again work with Madonna on several tracks, with significant latter input from English producer/musician William Orbit. This created an ambient, low-fi sonic landscape, fusing various musical styles — ranging from trip-hop, electronica, rock and eastern influences.
As the decade drew to a close, Madonna would continue to engage in numerous music and film projects, recording the electro-funk track, Beautiful Stranger, also produced by William Orbit for the Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me soundtrack.
In December of 1999, it was revealed by British house music DJ Sasha (who had contributed remixes to the Ray of Light single) that he and William Orbit had begun production on Madonna’s next album, exclaiming a “progressive house feel to it”. These sessions began in September 1999 and gave birth to a cover of Don McLean’s American Pie and an original track Time Stood Still, released on the soundtrack for the film “The Next Best Thing” that following year to which Madonna also starred.
Madonna’s outlook would shift during this time, compared to the more brooding mindset that would shape the lyrical content of Ray Of Light, “There’s a period when you’re quiet, and there’s a period when you explode. In the time leading up to “Ray Of Light,’ I was in a quiet space — making lots of discoveries and going through lots of changes. It was an introspective, questioning time. Then, almost without warning, I felt like I needed to explode. I didn’t feel the need to be so introspective. I felt like dancing.”
Furthermore, her constant inclination to challenge and reinvent musically, coupled with a natural propensity to explore dance music would again lead to a new direction for the next studio album. She would elaborate on this mindset further, “I always want to move forward. I don’t want to repeat myself, ever, and in the process of when I began working with William [Orbit], I remember that I started off saying, “Let’s not do the same thing we already did.” The “Ray Of Light” album was a very dense and layered foray into electronic music, and I wanted the new record to be stripped-down — something minimal, yet harder and edgier. I wanted to strip off the effects on my vocals and make everything have a much rawer sound. While I wanted those changes, I still wanted to [retain the] electronic pop aspects of “Ray Of Light.” This is where the path of Madonna and Mirwais would intersect.
Mirwais Ahmadzaï began his music career as guitarist in the French electronic new-wave group Taxi Girl, established in 1978. The group would release a number of studio and live albums before disbanding in 1986. Mirwais would continue to pursue a solo career, contributing productions and arrangements for various French artists throughout the remainder of the 80s and continue to do so even after releasing his first album in 1990.
In 1999, Mirwais would release the single, Disco Science. The track fuses an array of musical styles characterised by electronic synths and beats with effervescent guitar riffs. This sound would reflect Ahmadzaï’s versatility as both a passionate guitarist and lover of electronic music production, “Electronic music and computer production is second nature to me, even though I’m a guitarist. I started to use synths in 1979 with the Sequential Circuits Pro-One. The first sequencer I had in my life was the one on the Pro-One. Then I had the [Roland] MC-202, Jupiter 8, the Sequential 440, Atari. I had everything.”
After the release of Disco Science, Ahmadzaï was in the midst of putting the finishing touches on his album, Production when Stéphane Sednaoui (director of the music video for Disco Science and several of Madonna’s music videos) would submit the track to Maverick Records, gaining interest from Madonna’s manager Guy Oseary, who would then request more material. Mirwais would comply, submitting four more tracks, including some intended for his own forthcoming album. Madonna would later elaborate, “Guy Oseary, my partner at Maverick [Records], was given a demo by a French artist called Mirwais. [He] slipped it to me and said, ‘What do you think [of him] as an artist to sign at Maverick?’ […] I just said ‘Oh my God, this is what I want.’ I just flipped over it and said, ‘Please find out if he wants to work with me.’”
After conversing with Madonna over the phone, Mirwais would fly from his home studio in Paris to London’s Studio Sarm West to discuss a potential collaboration in October of 1999. It was clear that Madonna was enthused and invigorated by what she had heard and was inspired to once again be at the forefront of dance music. The intense and experimental beats emanating from Mirwais’ demos would serve as the template to fulfil this objective. In tandem, their ambition was to stray away from the generic and conventional pop sound flooding the market at the time by other acts. As she would state at the time, “The world is in the doldrums musically. It’s scary. No one’s doing anything interesting or daring, with the exception of the occasional artist who is unique and who manages to sneak into consciousness. It’s all so generic and homogenized. If this record happens, it might mean that people are ready for something different.”
Ahmadzaï would share a similar sentiment in relation to the state of dance music, “My problem with electronic music today, especially in Europe, is that each new musical wave starts with an open-minded, free approach about what music should be. Generally, you have this at the beginning, maybe for one year after. Then when the new scene starts to make money, everything becomes rigid. The electronic scene to me, when house music started, was very interesting. A lot of musicians had very open minds about it. “But today, it’s a dictatorship of bpm. You have four-on-the-floor fascism. The DJ tells you that if you want to make people dance, you should use a bpm of 120, and use a big kick drum sound. But ten years ago, there were a lot of different approaches, and it was a mixture of a lot of different music. He would also note how this would suppress intimidating thoughts of meeting with the most iconic female artist on the planet for the first time, “I was relaxed about it,” he says matter-of-factly. “In my position as an unknown, you can imagine that it would be the chance of a lifetime. But I was relaxed, because I knew she was asking me to do what I do, she was interested in me for my own work, and not for my ability as a performer or for what I’d done for someone else’s songs. I knew that we would do very good music together. We were in tune, on the same wavelength.”
Out of the numerous demos submitted by Mirwais, there was one that especially resonated with Madonna, inspiring her to write lyrics to accompany the instrumental and present during their first meeting. This ultimately became the kinetic dance classic, Impressive Instant. Mirwais elaborates, “The first song we worked on together was ‘Impressive Instant,’” he says. “It was the most complete of the demo tracks I sent her. It was an instrumental, and it wasn’t supposed to be included on my own album. But she said that she had an idea for lyrics. When we got to London, I asked her to sing it for me.”
Madonna would similarly discuss her creative process in more detail, “Generally, it’s music that kicks me into thinking a certain way or feeling a certain thing, and I rely heavily on the people that I collaborate with to inspire me lyrically. Believe it or not, I’m at my most creative when I’m standing at a microphone and the pressure’s on.”
Impressive Instant perfectly encapsulates the edgier, futuristic sound Madonna was pursuing, bustling with an array of distorted synths, thumping beats and an irresistible bass line — all-intersecting into an ordered chaos to create a relentless and vibrant composition. Her lyrics perfectly compliment the vigorous, danceable nature of the instrumental as she declares, “I’m in a trance/ And the world is spinning/ Spinning baby out of control/I’m in a trance I let the music take me/ Take me where my heart wants to go.”
Madonna employs the use of metaphors to detail the gravitational pull between individuals with vibrant visual imagery, “Cosmic systems intertwine, Astral bodies drip like wine, All of nature ebbs and flows. Comets shoot across the sky, Can’t explain the reasons why/ This is how creation goes.” This feeling of urgent and unescapable attraction spurs a contemplation of the universe as Madonna likens the subject of her interest to that of a unique satellite in a galaxy both vibrant and generic, “I don’t want nobody else/ All the others look the same the same/ Galaxies are sliding into view/I don’t even know your name.”
Upon hearing the added vocals, Mirwais said “I was a surprised, of course, because it was new. But she improved my track! I was amazed. When you know your track well and it’s finished, you’re always afraid of what someone else can do to it. But I knew at the first listen that it was going to be cool.” “In ten days we did most of the vocal tracks to a Sony 48-track — backing vocals, acoustic guitar, everything I needed to get to work.” Madonna would recall the recording as a cathartic exercise, opting to have fun with the sessions and embrace the uninhibited nature of track, “We were working on that song, and I thought, “Oh, f*ck it, let’s just have fun,’ ” she says with a laugh. “Life would be such a drag if it was deep and probing all the time.”
Despite their collaborative success, there was a language barrier that would prove somewhat difficult at first, as Madonna notes, “The first couple of days we were recording, I wanted to rip my hair out. […] It didn’t seem like there was any way for us to communicate. His manager had to come in and translate everything at first.” Mirwais similarly recalls, “We realized soon that what she wanted was difficult for me to give her in the studio, with her there. I had to come back to Paris to work. And after one or two days, she agreed.” As the pair continued to work together, this would become less of an issue with Mirwais adapting to the circumstances.
Once back in Paris, Ahmadzaï would begin altering Madonna’s vocals to compliment the distorted and visceral composition. He’d begin by using Auto-Tune to alter the pitch, while attempting to retain an organic quality in her performance, “In the past everybody used the vocoder, “But Auto Tune keeps the characteristic of the voice. With the vocoder, it’s the machine that makes the sound. Auto-Tune keeps the characteristics of the voice or instrument. It’s the vocoder of the 2000s. You could propose using it to a lot of artists, and they’d be a little afraid. But Madonna — no. She liked it immediately. To make it work, though, she had to sing a little out of tune and without vibrato.”
In addition to this modification, Mirwais would use Logic Pro (a Digital Audio Workstation) to create a splicing effect on the vocals, “It’s very, very complicated, slice by slice. You have to experiment a lot to make it work. I put Auto-Tune on individual syllables. Sometimes I use 40 tracks of audio just on one vocal track. Each has a different level and treatment, and then I do a composite. I couldn’t do this with a normal analog studio setup… The starting and stopping thing, it’s an idea I’ve had for awhile,” he continues. “Normally, it takes about six months to a year for people I’m working with to understand my ideas. With Madonna, the first time she heard it, she loved it. She had a chemical reaction to it. She listened to it and she said, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’ It’s because of this that I love to work with her. You don’t have to spend six months explaining things.” Ahmadzaï would spend a considerable amount of time mixing the track in Paris, ensuring it retained the sound of the demo produced in London.
The chemistry forming between the pair as they continued working together was clear, invigorated by experimentation and a creative process nurtured by no restrictions and unlimited inspiration. Mirwais elaborate on the dynamic further, “We produced together. It’s all a common energy. She never imposed limits on me. My natural side leans toward more experimental music. And with Madonna, she’s not only commercial. She’s also experimental. She has a natural feeling for new music and for good commercial music. She listens to a lot of underground music. She has a natural feeling for it. The mixture of her energy and her character are good for that, good for this record.”
Madonna’s keen eye for identifying musical trends and amalgamating these styles with her own artistic pursuits would also inspire much of the electronic sound on Music, “Over the past year or so, I was into all this stuff coming out of France — you know, Daft Punk, Rinocerose and Air. I like finding genres that are underground and try to make them more popular. I’m not by any means saying that my music is pure. I’m always going to be a hodgepodge of lots of different influences, and I think music today, especially pop music, is just that.” Madonna reportedly intended for Impressive Instant to be the fourth single released from Music, however this did not eventuate.
The promising results of this partnership would spur Madonna to take a different direction with the project then originally intended, scrapping several tracks and providing Mirwais a more integral role in shaping the sound for what would become the album Music, “After I wrote about 9 songs, I decided that there was too much of a sameness or similarity of sound as the last record. So I kind of threw out everything and started all over again. And at that point I met Mirwais and we started working together and that’s really when I found the sound that I wanted the record to be.” Orbit similarly recollected on the early recording sessions for the project, “It’s quite a little edgier than Ray Of Light. 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.” Other songs recorded early during the Music sessions, Liquid Love and Arioso remain unreleased.
The title track Music would also be conceived during the early sessions after Madonna attended a Sting concert in November, 1999 and took note of the audience interaction, “I went to see him in New York at the Beacon Theater. He has a pretty mixed audience — I always look at audiences when I go to concerts. I’m obsessed with checking out the audience and seeing how they react. And people were pretty well-behaved and enthusiastically polite for stuff that he was doing off of his new album.” She continues, “But then, when he did the old Police songs — and it was just him and a guitar, and the lights came down — somehow the energy in the room changed. It ignited the room, and it brought everybody closer to the stage. And suddenly, people lost their inhibition and their politeness, and everyone was singing the songs and practically holding hands — you know what I mean? I mean, it really moved me. And I thought, “That’s what music does to people.” It really does bring people together, and it erases so much. And so that’s how I came to the hook of that song.”
The track is an anthem celebrating the power of music as a universal language, a medium that unites humanity despite its different cultures, socio economic status and ethnicities. “Music makes the people come together/ Music makes the bourgeoisie and the rebel.” She equates music to a form of escapism from struggles and the mundane of everyday life, “Don’t think of yesterday/ And I don’t look at the clock/ I like to boogie-woogie, uh, uh/It’s like riding on the wind/ And it never goes away/ Touches everything I’m in/ Got to have it everyday.” Madonna would write the lyrics (including an extra verse which would be ultimately be removed) and create the melody while Mirwais would incorporate elements of a song he was working on for Production (titled Never Young Again) into the composition. These elements would include similar percussion and the use of the spoken word phrase “Never Young Again”, which appears throughout Music.
Music begins with Madonna making a playful request, “Hey Mister DJ/ Put a record on/ I wanna dance with my baby” as the track slowly builds into an irresistible groove of electronic funk with the signature Mirwais sound of spliced and altered vocals, kinetic percussion and an array of synths. In June of 2000, an early version of the track would leak on file sharing site Napster. Madonna was furious, “I practically had a nervous breakdown when the track got out there. I wasn’t even finished with the record when it happened.” Despite this unforeseen event, the song would still reach number 1 on the Billboard charts after it’s official release in August. Mirwais would recall his excitement at the song’s success, “When Music went to #1 in the USA, I was very happy for myself of course, for a lot of reasons. But also it was a small victory for underground music. It’s proof that you can make profit with creativity. A lot of people have said that if you want to be a big star in music, you have to make compromises. You have to format your music to make it in the commercial world. But I think you can be creative and experimental. This is proof that you can do it.”
While Madonna’s vocals would be modified extensively on Impressive Instant and Music, another collaboration with Mirwais would result in an especially raw vocal performance, with the sublime ballad, I Deserve It.
Back in 1995, Madonna would receive vocal training for the film Evita which she’d describe as a turning point in learning the potential of her range. Her vocal performance prior could be best described as little things done well, equalling perfection. But with the vocal training required, it was time to take one of those little things to the next level, allowing her range of vocal expression to reach new heights as evident on tracks like You Must Love Me and much of Ray Of Light.
The recording of I Deserve It would set a new precedent, as Mirwais would opt not to add reverb or delay to Madonna’s vocals, instead retaining the unfiltered and vulnerable quality of the initial performance. There would be hesitation to this approach at first as Ahmadzaï notes, “That was a new thing for Madonna. She usually likes to track with a lot of reverb and delay. But that way, I can’t check the tuning of the voice. I always listen to the vocal track without effects. The first time she listened to herself without effects, she was scared of it, and she asked me to put the reverb back on. But then one time I was checking the track without effects and she listened, too — and she loved it. For me, it’s the most important thing that we did to her voice on the album: to leave it naked.”
Madonna would similarly recall, “It was Mirwais’ idea to take off all the effects on my vocals, so that my vocals would be dry and really present and really in-your-face. But at first I was disturbed by it, because I hadn’t done that in a long time. But then I started to see the purity of it, the juxtaposition of the rawness of my voice with the really overprocessed synthesizer sounds. And I started seeing that it was a nice marriage.” Her decision to retain her vocals in this manner would reflect the deep trust she shared with Mirwais, setting aside insecurities and allowing her voice to be captured in its unfiltered and emotive form. After this session, Madonna would request that her vocals be processed as little as possible and kept “bone dry” unless treated with distortion for particular effect.
To contrast with the multi-layered composition of Impressive Instant while also complimenting the subtle nature of the vocal performance, I Deserve It has a much sparser soundscape. Beginning with simply acoustic guitar (played by Mirwais) and subtle bass, the track begins to slowly build with the addition of electronic percussion and a distinctive synth line appearing throughout the chorus. This under-stated yet compelling composition perfectly complements the tender delivery of Madonna’s vocals. Ahmadzaï would create the unique synth line that appears throughout the track, “It’s a kind of fake Rhodes sound on the Waldorf, the part is kind of a church organ vibe, but the church organ sound was too obvious; there was too much characteristic of the sound in the track. We needed something more dreamy and discrete.”
While Mirwais intended to work on the track further, Madonna was adamant to keep the sparse and relatively understated composition intact, “It was her idea to keep it that way. The mix on this track is very close to the first mix we did on the first day. She wanted me to keep it very simple. I wanted to produce it a little bit more, to take it a little further, but she told me, ‘Okay, let’s stop here.’ I like the difference between a track like ‘Impressive Instant’ with a lot of effects, and a track as simple as ‘I Deserve It.’ It makes for a very interesting album.”
Madonna would elaborate further on her process, “I just put my foot down and go, “It’s good enough now. We’re done. We’re done working on it.” He could just sit there in front of his computer screen, changing, honing, editing, cutting, pasting — whatever. And it would never end. But life is too short for that sort of nonsense. My persona in the studio is, “I’m in a hurry.” So I have a tendency to annoy everybody with that. I think at first he was a bit put off by it. I think he was more put off by the fact that I knew what I wanted so clearly, and I wasn’t interested in lots of embellishments when it came to the production. Because Ray of Light was so multilayered in that way — sort of dense with sound. And I wanted to do the opposite.”
I Deserve It reflects on the arduous journey towards finding companionship, and the epiphany that she has finally discovered true love, “Many miles, many roads I have travelled/ Fallen down on the way /Many hearts, many years have unravelled/ Leading up to today.” This affection is so intense she equivocates the relationship to being a fulfilment of destiny and purpose, utilising repetition to reinforce this connection, “This guy has prayed for me/ And I have prayed for him/ This guy was made for me/ And I was made for him”. Underlying this declaration of endearment is devotion so potent, it’s torturous. She would elaborate on the writing of the track further, “It’s a love song, but there’s something lonely about it. Sonically, the juxtaposition of the acoustic guitar and then that synth siren sound — to me, that strange combination makes it a little bit uncomfortable… It means that instead of just being a straightforward love song, it’s a love song that is angst-ridden. It’s like “I love you but you are torturing me, and I wish that I didn’t love you because my life would be easier but probably more boring.”
Madonna explores the complexities of relationship dynamics throughout the album, presenting love not as an effortless or painless exercise, but consuming and at times arduous. On Amazing she attempts in vain to relinquish romantic feelings after the volatile dissolution of a relationship, proclaiming “It’s amazing what a boy can do/I cannot stop myself/ Wish I didn’t want you like I do/ Want you and no one else.” In a 2000 interview, Madonna would acknowledge the underlying angst present throughout many of the love songs on Music, comically describing them as “I-love-you-but-fuck-you songs.”
On the atmospheric Nobody’s Perfect, she expresses regret for hurtful actions caused but with this concession reiterates that infallible relationships do not exist, “I feel so sad/ What I did wasn’t right/ I feel so bad/ And I must say to you/ Sorry, but Nobody’s perfect”. The attempt to strive for perfection is more important than achieving it, as Madonna declares, “I was just honest/ I will try my best”.
To enhance the sentiment of the lyrics, she and Mirwais would create a composition filled with airy, ethereal synths and pulsating bass, coupled with an arresting and a scattered beat emerging during the chorus. Auto tune would be used heavily throughout the song, creating a synthetic quality and reflecting the notion that perfection is neither natural, nor desirable. The addition of acoustic guitar contrasts with the cold digital synths, creating a dichotomy notable during the bridge in which the synths are replaced with a warm acoustic guitar riff and Madonna’s vocals are similarly stripped of digital processing.
During the final chorus, each instrument returns creating a kaleidoscope of organic and digital sounds. Madonna would speak on this fusion further, “The country-western influences on Music, add a certain warmth to the techno…To join the coldness or the remoteness of living in the machine age in the world of high technology with warmth and compassion and a sense of humor.” This would be a running motif underlying many of the compositions with cold synths juxtaposed with the strum of an acoustic guitar or sweeping strings, creating a unique soundscape where even Madonna’s voice is subject to manipulation in order to fuse the organic and the artificial. Interestingly, a string arrangement would be added to an early version of the track however these would be removed in the final mix.
These sessions would also mark Madonna’s first co-writing with brother in law Joe Henry. In 1999 he’d write and record a demo titled Stop, “I thought the song was a complete throwaway. I had just moved and set up a studio in the guesthouse of my home and was looking to record anything to make sure my things were working. I needed something to record, so I wrote that song in about 25 minutes just to give myself something to do. I was a little embarrassed by it, it starts off a little spoon-in-June and takes a cryptic turn at the end.” It’s subject matter which explores love and commitment were thematically like tracks Madonna had been writing for the album.
Acknowledging the songs potential, she re-worked some of the lyrics with Mirwais and renamed it as, Don’t Tell Me. Madonna would discuss her interpretation of the lyrics, “To me it is a romantic song. Just, you know, rip my skin off, do not tell me who I should love, or how I should love. Don’t tell me to give up. To me, in a way it’s like that Frank Sinatra song, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.”
While Henry’s demo would sound more reminiscent of a tango, Madonna and Mirwais would give the composition a complete sonic overhaul, speeding up the tempo, replacing the acoustic elements with electronic drums, rearranging the strings and forming an instrumental cohesive with the sound of the other tracks they had been working on. She elaborates, “The production of it was kind of almost like a torch song in a way, like a bluesy torch song. And I just took it and ran with it and finished writing it and then Mirwais and I changed the music. But what I loved about it — I just love the defiance of it.” This defiant content of the lyrics reiterates the notion that despite how challenging the act of love can be, we should never stop striving for companionship.
Don’t Tell Me opens with its iconic hook, a chopped and stuttered guitar line that would drive the composition alongside an electronic beat, keyboards and a string arrangement performed by Michel Colombier. Mirwais would discuss creating the memorable hook, “This was a demo that I recorded in my own studio,” he says. “I recorded it to my ADAT using a Martin D-28 guitar that I borrowed from a friend. I ran a Neumann KM84 into the preamp of the 02R. I deliberately played it poorly, and then I chopped it up to make it stutter. I made it for myself, just as a demo. I had a melody over it, but when Madonna heard it, she came up with her own.”
Don’t Tell Me is an example of Madonna and Mirwais utilising their pop sensibilities to transform a slow tempo blues track into an electronic dance/pop classic. As Henry would attest, “I’ve got good friends who knew both versions of the song and it never occurred to them that it was the same words going by. It’s been a really good lesson as a songwriter because I’m very lyric-oriented, but I realized when that song happened for her — she had a big hit with it — that it really doesn’t matter what you’re saying as long as the groove is convincing.” Madonna and Henry would collaborate on a handful of songs released on later albums including Jump and Falling Free.
One of Mirwais’ instrumentals that piqued Madonna’s interest during these early sessions would evolve into the masterpiece, Paradise (Not For Me). In contrast with other tracks that featured significant development between the pair during the demo stage, this composition was fully formed when Mirwais presented, “This track was originally for my own album, Production. When she listened to my tracks, she absolutely wanted to sing this one.” It should be noted that Madonna would recall Paradise (Not For Me) as the first track the pair worked on and not Impressive Instant. Regardless, it would be one of the first songs they completed and would initially feature on Mirwais’ Production album released in April, 2000 (albeit slightly edited), five months before it would find its place on Madonna’s Music.
The pair wrote lyrics to accompany the instrumental with Madonna notably performing the second verse entirely in French. While most tracks during these sessions dealt with subject matter relating to love and relationships, they would also explore darker, more introspective themes. There is some contention [between fans] regarding the meaning of the track and when asked to divulge the inspiration for some of the songs on Music Madonna replied, “I think it’s good to be mysterious. Creativity is sometimes unconscious, subconscious, conscious — and often it’s a mixture of all three. And to try to explain it sometimes — it’s like talking about love, you know? As soon as you start talking about it, you’ve formed a new opinion about it, and it’s obsolete. And I don’t really want to dissect my creative process too much. Because what’s the point, really? I want people to have visceral and emotional reactions to things, rather than to have in their mind where all my stuff came from.”
A likely interpretation is that it’s a reflection of Madonna’s journey through life as she attains fame and success, a trek that would encompass euphoric peaks and crippling lows, “I’ve been so high/I’ve been so down/Up to the skies/Down to the ground.” Through such experiences come growth and though she no longer relates to former aspects of her image, these fragments are now engrained in space and time, “I can’t remember/ When I was young/ I can’t explain/ If it was wrong/ My life goes on/ But not the same/ Into your eyes/ My face remains.”
An underlying element of sorrow and helplessness permeates throughout the lyrics, perhaps most telling during the second verse sung in French and translated as:
All around me
I could not see
Who are the angels
Surely not me
Once more again
I am broken
Once more again
I don’t believe it
Despite this admission, she hints at an escape from this predicament exclaiming during the bridge, “There is a light/Above my head.” This visual imagery could be interpreted as a metaphor for spiritual salvation; an acknowledgment of mortality or the signal of an epiphany. Regardless, Madonna once again reiterates the static nature of how she is perceived “Into your eyes/ My face remains and rejects this, proclaiming, “I was so blind/I could not see/Your paradise/Is not for me.”
Paradise (Not For Me) foreshadows the introspective direction Madonna would take with her songwriting with the next release American Life, specifically on tracks Nobody Knows Me and Easy Ride as she reflects on her life and relationship with “The American Dream.”
The composition is reminiscent of Mirwais’ signature production style characterised by mechanical drums, creating a cold and foreboding soundscape. He employed live strings arranged by film composer Cyril Morin to add a transcendent quality to the arrangement, which is most evident during the bridge and outro. Alongside the instrumentation, Madonna assumes an aching whisper replicated by a mechanical vocal effect creating an unnerving and distorted effect while also further complimenting the subject matter of the lyrics. Madonna would describe Mirwais’ ability to convey the emotion of the lyrics, “He’s a very intellectual person and he’s a very sensitive person and yet there’s something minimalist and withholding about his sound. I like the juxtaposition of feeling with machinery and I think that is what Mirwais’ sound is… In a way as we sort of get further and further, advance technologically to try and find emotion and feeling in that world, is a great challenge.”
It should be noted that Mirwais’ impact on shaping the sound of the project would not just be relegated to tracks in which he had direct input. Madonna would return to songs recorded during earlier sessions with producers including Orbit and rework them in line with this new vision. Gone would be a relevant example as the demo differs significantly from the completed track. While Orbit’s early version would be marred with airy synths and subtle percussive elements, the completed track would incorporate prominent acoustic guitar, more overt drums and distorted sounds. Each producer would bring their own strengths to the project alongside healthy competition as Madonna would note, “I remember when I was mastering the album in London with Mirwais, I was afraid to play him the stuff I had done with William and Guy Sigsworth. I thought, “Oh, he’s not going to think it’s cool,” and I was cringing and waiting until the last moment. And I played it for him. He looked at me and said, “I’m so jealous.” And I was like, “Oh, good!” Because I want the producers to be mutually jealous of each other.”
Music was released on September 18, 2000 to commercial and critical success, debuting at number one in 23 countries and receiving critical acclaim from several publications. Once again, Madonna would strive to create an album at the cutting edge of dance music and in doing so, birth a professional relationship with Mirwais that would be integral to the direction of her work in the 21st century. The successful outcome of this partnership would lead to an even greater collaboration between the pair on her next studio album, American Life.
On the forthcoming second chapter of Madonna & Mirwais: An Impressive Instant, we’ll explore their work on the underrated masterpiece American Life and the global smash Confessions On A Dance Floor.
Special Thanks: John Cameron & Stephen Fantinel.
Citations:
Neal Weiss (2000) “Madonna Preparing More “Rays Of Light” | Rideout, Ernie (2001) Mirwais On Music — Keyboard | THE FACE — UK MAGAZINE (AUGUST 2000) | Madonna Interview : Hits Daily Double (AUGUST 2000) | Madonna Interview : Billboard (SEPTEMBER 2000) | Madonna Interview : Rolling Stone (SEPTEMBER 2000) | Madonna Interview : Interview Magazine (MARCH 2001) | Inside The Groove- Madonna’s Music |
