Classic Hits

Twenty five years ago Wednesday — February 22, 1998 — Madonna managed to captivate both fans and music critics with her new Ray of Light album.

The first album Madonna released after welcoming her first child, daughter Lourdes, Ray of Light‘s themes included motherhood and mysticism, inspired both by the Queen of Pop’s yoga practice and her study of Kabbalah, Hinduism and Buddhism.

As her first collaboration with producer William Orbit, the album’s sound was much more experimental than Madonna’s previous work, incorporating electronica, techno-pop, ambient music, Middle Eastern music and more. In retrospect, it’s been credited for bringing electronic music — and especially EDM or Electronic Dance Music — into the mainstream.

Ray of Light spun off five singles, including “Frozen,” the title track and “The Power of Good-Bye.” Upon its release, it debuted at number two with what was at the time the biggest first-week sales by a female artist. Nominated for six Grammys, it won four and also brought Madonna a slew of other awards, including six MTV VMAs.

Critics were unanimous at hailing Ray of Light as Madonna’s best work, and she has at least at one point agreed: In 2012, she named it as the “evolution in [her] career that’s been [her] favorite/most fulfilling.” It’s landed on numerous “Greatest Albums of All Times” lists, and even Adele said that she used Ray of Light as a template for her best-selling third album, 25. 

At the time, Adele told Rolling Stone that she felt creatively adrift after having her first child until she heard Ray of Light. She says she listened to it over and over and was particularly inspired by “Frozen.” As she told Rolling Stone, “I took that song as ‘I’ve gotten my confidence to come and do ‘me’ again.’ ”

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U2 is busy prepping a new album and a Las Vegas residency, but on Tuesday, Bono took time out from their busy schedule to present director Steven Spielberg with a lifetime achievement award at the Berlin Film Festival.

According to Deadline, Bono gave Spielberg the festival’s Honorary Golden Bear and then launched into a detailed explanation of why he loves the director’s work so much.

He started by praising Spielberg’s 1974 film, The Sugarland Express, which stars Goldie Hawn as a mother who, desperate to reunite with her son, takes a policeman hostage.

“I watch the mother’s face and it’s projected 30 feet tall. The mother is played by the great Goldie Hawn, but all I see is my own mother, as I saw her as a child, gigantic, imperfect,” Bono recalled of watching the film. “I cry though my heart is full of joy because I know that my own mother will always come looking for me. That is pure cinema. No, that is pure Spielberg.”

The singer also professed his love for Spielberg’s film A.I., about a child robot who’s programmed to love the woman to whom he’s given.

“In A.I., the boy is a machine who develops a soul, so he can love his mother back to life. In the machine that is Hollywood. Steven Spielberg is the soul in the machine,” he noted.

Bono then said of Spielberg, “He’s kind of out of this world. He’s not really a celebrity, is he? Thank God for that. We know he’s one of the biggest of the big shots in Hollywood, but we get the sense he doesn’t quite belong there and we’re kind of relieved.”

Bono was at the film festival for the premiere of Kiss the Future, about U2’s 1997 concert in Sarajevo.

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As previously reported, Peter Gabriel is the executive editor of a new book called Reverberation: Do Everything Better with Music, for which he’s also penned a foreward. Now we have a release date for the project: March 14.

The book’s concept is that if you incorporate the right music into your life, you can sleep better, become more creative, be more productive and even have better sex. In fact, it promises to share “specific songs and techniques” to make this happen.

“Reverberation unlocks a world where we can all actively leverage the power of music to improve and enhance every aspect of your life,” according to the book’s website.

Reverberation is based on interviews with neuroscientists who are making “exciting breakthroughs” at the “intersection of music, science, technology and medicine.” Also included are interviews with musicians like David Byrne, Mick Fleetwood, Branford Marsalis and Sheila E.

You can check out some excerpts from the book at Reverberation.co, while you listen to Gabriel’s song “Lead a Normal Life” from his 1980 self-titled album aka Melt.

Gabriel is also prepping for the release his long-awaited new album i/o, though he has yet to reveal its release date. So far, he’s put out two songs from it: “The Court (Dark-Side Mix)” and “Panopticom.” When it arrives, i/o will be his first album of new original music in 20 years.

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Loaded, one of the most acclaimed Velvet Underground albums — and the band’s last with Lou Reed — has been repackaged into a massive nine-LP box set featuring demos, outtakes and live recordings, including some coming to vinyl for the first time.

The box set, due March 24, includes almost all the material from the 45th anniversary edition CD Loaded: Re-Loaded, released in 2015. Called LOADED (FULLY RELOADED), it’s limited to only 1,970 numbered copies available exclusively via Rhino.com.

Weighing in at a hefty $250, the package comes in a foil-wrapped slipcase containing the nine albums, a poster of the album’s cover art and an illustrated booklet with liner notes by writer and Patti Smith Group member Lenny Kaye. There are also four 7-inch singles that reproduce the official singles released from Loaded, including the classics “Rock & Roll” and “Sweet Jane.”

Among the nine LPs are three different versions of the original album: remastered stereo and mono mixes, plus a version that includes extended versions of “Sweet Jane,” “Rock & Roll” and “New Age.” The demos and alternate mixes include some songs that eventually appeared on Reed’s 1972 self-titled solo debut album.

The live tracks come from two different shows. One of them, recorded six months before Loaded‘s November 1970 release, features the band performing as a trio, as drummer Moe Tucker was pregnant. Those tracks include early versions of “Rock & Roll” and “New Age.”

The second batch of live tracks come from a show at New York’s Max’s Kansas City on August 23, 1970, the day Reed left the band. It includes live versions of Velvets staples like “White Light/White Heat,” “Pale Blue Eyes” and “I’m Waiting for The Man” as well as “Sweet Jane.”

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Jethro Tull has released a new single from their forthcoming album RökFlöte, due out April 21.

Tull’s Ian Anderson previously explained that the songs on the album were inspired by “the characters and roles of some of the principle gods of the old Norse paganism.” On Instagram, he writes that the lyrics of the new song, called “The Navigators,” “explore the Norse god Njord, who was the god of wealth, fertility, the sea and seafaring.”

The animated video for the song takes place on the tempest-tossed, shark-filled sea, where Viking ships, and then a more modern vessel, attempt to survive a storm.

Anderson sings, “Lord of all the stormy deeps/the wealth of ages at his knee/Protects and nurtures navigators/Raiders bold who loot and plunder/Giving strength to hold at bay/the tallest wave, the savage thunder.”

“The Navigators” follows the first single released from the album, “Ginnungagap.”

RökFlöte is now available for preorder.

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In addition to reimagining 40 of their songs for their upcoming album Songs of Surrender, U2 have also reimagined the visuals to go with them.

On Tuesday, U2 posted a trailer on on its socials, captioned, “40 songs re-recorded by us, re-imagined by you. 40 artists and creators from across the globe were commissioned by the band to create a video piece for each track on Songs of Surrender.” 

The trailer is soundtracked to the Songs of Surrender version of “Stories for Boys,” which originally appeared on U2’s 1979 debut release, the U2 3 EP and was then rerecorded for their 1980 debut album Boy.

You can track the release of all the visuals on a dedicated YouTube playlist, which so far contains the videos for “Pride (In the Name of Love” and “With or Without You.” Both those videos involve dance — although, according to the trailer, others are animated, others feature stunning landscapes, and some include special effects.

Songs of Surrender arrives March 17. Meanwhile, U2’s Las Vegas residency — focused on the songs from Achtung Baby — starts this fall.

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Graham Nash has dropped a new single called “Right Now,” from his new album, simply titled Now. It’ll be out May 19 and is available to pre-order now.

This will be the legendary singer’s first new studio album since 2016’s This Path Tonight. Last year, he put out a live album that featured him performing his first two solo releases — Songs for Beginners and Wild Tales — in their entireties.

On Facebook, Nash says Now is “the most personal album I’ve ever recorded.” He adds, “My life is a dream. I wake up in the morning and get on with my life. I check the news around the world, check in with my friends and write about stuff that I need to write about. Here’s to another chapter.”

Nash will kick off a tour April 12 in Phoenixville, PA. Called Sixty Years of Songs and Stories, it’ll celebrate Nash’s six-decade career, starting from his first single with The Hollies.

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It’s the collaboration that every rock fan has dreamed of for 60 years: The Beatles and The Rolling Stones together on an album. Well, sort of. 

Multiple sources tell Variety that Paul McCartney has recorded bass parts for the album the Stones are working on, which is being produced by Ozzy Osbourne/Iggy Pop/Elton John producer Andrew Watt. What’s more, Ringo Starr is also set to play on the album. 

Of course, the Stones lost their drummer, Charlie Watts, in 2021, and they’ve been without a permanent bass player since Bill Wyman left the group after their 1989-1990 Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle tour.

Variety reports that the sessions with McCartney took place in LA recently. It’s not definite which songs will actually make the final cut for the album or whether or not Ringo and Paul might play on the same songs. The publication reports that the album is getting close to its mixing phase, but it’s not clear when it’ll be released.

While the Stones, McCartney and Ringo have known each other since the ’60s, the catalyst for the collaboration might have been Watt: McCartney said in 2021 and 2022 that he’d been working with the Grammy-winning producer.

The new project, when it emerges, will be the Stones’ first album of original material since 2005’s A Bigger Bang. Their last new album, 2016’s Blue & Lonesome, was an album of blues covers.

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Love to Love You, Donna Summer, a new documentary about the life and career of the late Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, will debut on HBO in May. It’s directed by Roger Ross Williams and Donna’s daughter, Brooklyn Sudano.

The film had its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival over the weekend and features a wealth of archival footage, including home movies Summer shot herself. Brooklyn and her sister Mimi Dohler also talk on camera about their mom, as do their aunts and Summer’s widower, Bruce Sudano.

According to Deadline, the movie focuses on Summer’s struggle to reconcile her deeply religious upbringing with the hedonistic, sex-positive hits she recorded — such as “Love to Love You Baby” and “I Feel Love” — as the queen of disco. “I felt God could never forgive me because I had failed Him. I was decadent, I was stupid, I was a fool. I just decided that my life had no meaning,” Summer says in the film. 

The movie also covers Summer’s late-career controversy, during which she became a born-again Christian and spoke about her faith at concerts, disappointing fans who just wanted to dance. She also alienated her gay fans with a notorious remark about God “making Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” and was reported as saying that AIDS was God’s judgment on gays.

“It’s something I don’t think she ever got over,” Sudano says of the regret Summer felt over the pain she’d caused her gay fans.

The Hollywood Reporter says in its review that the film shortchanges Summer’s iconic songs, noting that it “sorely needed a musicologist or two to reflect on the cultural significance of disco and why Summer became such a momentous force in the genre.”

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Billy Joel may be in a “New York State of Mind,” but he and his wife, Alexis, were honored over the weekend at a benefit hosted by The Everglades Foundation for the work they’ve done for the people of Florida. 

Billy and Alexis were honorary chairs for the event called Foreverglades. They were recognized for the work they’ve done through their charity, The Joel Foundation, in providing long-term recovery assistance to Florida residents in the wake of Hurricane Ian. 

As winter residents of Florida, the cause is particularly important to the couple. At the event, they also announced a new gift to expand a pre-K-to-12 literacy education program in Florida’s Lee County.

Lionel Richie provided the entertainment at the Palm Beach event, performing hits like “All Night Long,” “Brick House” and “Easy” for the star-studded crowd.

The Everglades Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to restoring and protecting America’s Everglades.

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