Because it is the twentieth anniversary of an album consistently ranked as being among one of the greatest of all-time–and possibly the very best in Madonna’s entire oeuvre–it is prudent not to address Ray of Light from a broad perspective, so much as one that offers an appreciation of the two songs the commence and conclude it. Both slow tempo tracks that offer the height of Madonna’s etherealism in this era (of course, music magazines had to make a play on this by calling her “Ethereal Girl”), “Drowned World/Substitute for Love” and “Mer Girl,” explore extremely diverse lyrical content that ties together an overall motif.
In the opener, an homage to J.G. Ballard’s novel, The Drowned World, Madonna’s examination of a personal rather than collective apocalypse pertains to her longstanding lack of privacy and torment by the paparazzi (an entity especially feared in 1998 as Princess Diana had only recently been chased down by a slew of them in a Paris tunnel that would result in a fatal crash). With a video concept that speaks to the loss of meaning in those trivialities that she once found to be her end all, be all–at least during her rise to the top–everything about “Drowned World/Substitute for Love” is an exploration in finding value in the things that fame can strip away from a formerly “ordinary” citizen. Directed by Walter Stern (who had caught the eye of the music world after directing The Prodigy’s “Firestarter” and The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony”), the Britishness of the video is heightened by cameos from Steve Strange and Anita Pallenberg in all their manga-eyed glory.
A National Geographic type special on the TV featuring two animals fighting over a piece of meat sets the tone for what Madonna is about to endure as she steps out of her door and into the lion’s den that is every person she encounters wanting a slice of the pie that is her celebrity. As though wondering why she would ever trade fame for love (yes, the very lyrics that begin the autobiographical tale), Madonna is horrified to learn over and over again with each new encounter with a human being that she could (and should) just as easily be back at home with her daughter, someone who actually cares about her and loves her from a pure place, as opposed to one of worship.
But if “Drowned World/Substitute for Love” is about the shift in her perspective as a result of Lourdes–then still novel to the world and Madonna–then “Mer Girl” is about a reconciliation with the past in order to accept an improved direction for the future. Hyper-personal and wrenching to hear–and therefore probably the most skipped over song on Ray of Light (apart from “Little Star”)–“Mer Girl” is the most honest Madonna has ever gotten about the manner in which her mother’s death continues to haunt her. And though she had broached the subject in “Promise to Try” before, “Mer Girl” delves even deeper into the nightmarish hellscape created by the loss of Madonna Sr. (that’s right, icons get there name from somewhere) to cancer when Little Nonni, as she was then called, was just five. As Madonna explained the process behind writing it at her Tears of a Clown show in 2016, “I went to visit my father in Michigan… It was a hot summer day, and I decided to go for a run, and it started to rain. I didn’t know where I was going, I just ran in front of farms, and vineyards, and I just ran, and ran, and ran. The sky opened up, I was soaking wet, and I found myself in the cemetery where my mother was buried. Somehow, recklessly, I found my mother’s grave. It was grown over, it looked like it hadn’t been visited in a while. Anyway, I spent some time there, and then I ran back home, and I wrote this song.”
The gloomy and sinister imagery throughout the track is, indeed, far more lugubrious than anything Morrissey has ever come up with. And in 2001, when Madonna boldly chose to include the song as an interlude in her The Drowned World Tour, the corresponding video backdrop was extremely grim, with nothing but a persistent close-up of Madonna’s bruised and bloodied visage as she sways back and forth until finally smiling in the face of her torment and agony. Sentiments that align seamlessly with Madonna’s lament, “I ran from my house that cannot contain me/From the man that I cannot keep” which segues into the crux of its macabreness with “And I smelled her burning flesh, her rotting bones, her decay/I ran and I ran, I’m still running away.” Still running away from memories and phantasms that have never left the psyche. Losing a parent at such an early age does that, sows the seeds of feeling abandoned. In this way, Madonna’s craving for the maternal–to be it and exude it–is omnipresent, reaching its crescendo on this final bookend.
And though Rocco might not agree, Ray of Light is proof that Madonna’s priorities have long ago altered to those pertaining to being the mother hers was never allowed to be because of a life cut so short. That this passion for motherhood could also coincide with brilliant artistry was merely the music industry’s good luck. Because 1998 wasn’t selling much else in the way of innovation other than “girl power,” Lauryn Hill and, lest we forget, the “…Baby One More Time” single. A flawless record from start to finish, “Drowned World/Substitute for Love” and “Mer Girl” are the intro and outro summation points, each evoking the central theme of the record: rebirth through birth. And though I myself will never have a child, all I have to do is listen to Ray of Light to somewhat feel the change that might occur within me and my jaded fucking brain if I did.
