Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Find out how to listen to other BBC stations

Episode details

Radio Ulster,16 Aug 2026,57 mins

Madonna - Ray of Light

Long Player with Steven Rainey

Available for 29 days

By the mid 90s, the world was in danger of experiencing Madonna-fatigue. She was easily one of the biggest and most influential artists in music, but she'd experienced something of a backlash in the wake of her 1992 album Erotica. A sexually charged and provocative record, there was a growing feeling that she'd taken things too far, pushed it too hard. But in 1998, she returned with one of the strongest albums in her career, a spiritual reinvention that saw the former provocateur recast as a yoga-practising earth mother. Aided by the production and songwriting work of English musician William Orbit, Ray of Light became one of her most successful albums, a perfect concoction of pre-millennial preoccupations and sentiments.

Programme Website
More episodes