Madonna Remembers William Orbit: How "Ray of Light" Began
British producer William Orbit, best known for shaping Madonna's 1998 album Ray of Light, died earlier this month. Madonna posted a tribute to him on social media. The two first worked together in a New York studio in 1997, and five days in, she asked him to produce the whole record — a collaboration that became Ray of Light, which went on to sell more than 16 million copies worldwide. Far Out Magazine has revisited how the pair met and what Orbit himself said about the sessions.
From remixing "Erotica" to the New York sessions
Orbit emerged in the mid-1980s with the electronic act Torch Song, signed to IRS Records alongside labelmates REM and The Go-Go's. By the late '80s he'd moved into solo work, releasing several ambient and downtempo records, later collaborating with Beth Orton and remixing for Prince, Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode.
In 1992, Orbit remixed several tracks from Madonna's Erotica, though the two hadn't met in person at that point. Five years later, Madonna reached out directly and invited him to New York to work on a few new songs. Orbit later told the LA Times how those five days ended: as he was heading to catch a flight, Madonna asked if he'd finish the rest of the album with her. He said yes — without realizing at the time it would change his life.
"She rekindled my career"
Ray of Light is widely regarded as a career-redefining album for Madonna, but Orbit reportedly pushed back on that framing while he was alive. He said her career didn't need reviving — rather, in his words, "She rekindled my career."
Beyond production, Orbit was deeply involved on the songwriting side. He brought in loose musical sketches, which Madonna used as starting points to write lyrics and shape the album's concepts — a working method she hadn't used before. In her tribute, she described the studio atmosphere as almost church-like: she'd sit quietly waiting for him to offer an idea on keyboard or guitar, then take it from there. She also said she found herself singing in ways she never had before, no longer worrying whether the words made conventional sense.
In her post, Madonna wrote that both Orbit and her daughter Lola, born around the same period, were her "Ray of Light" — a phrase she connected to the new chapter she was entering in her life at the time.