【译】叉婊Pitchfork评 Madonna 1998年专辑《Ray Of Light》（光芒万丈）
Channeling acid electronica, Kabbalah, and motherhood, Madonna’s 1998 reinvention stripped away the controversy of her past and became one of her most unexpectedly successful albums.
受迷幻电子乐、卡巴拉教、母亲身份的影响，Madonna在1998年脱胎换骨拂去往昔的争议，创造出她最出乎意料的成功作品之一。
Today is Madonna Day in the Pitchfork Reviews section; in honor of her birthday, we reviewed four of her key records.
今天Pitchfork只评Madonna的专辑，为庆祝她的生日，我们回顾了四张她的经典专辑（《Madonna》《Like A Prayer》《Bedtime Stories》《Ray of Light》）。
There was no reason Ray of Light should’ve been such a hit. After the collapse of grunge in the mid-90s, the music industry had begun to lean into the perky pubescence of Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC. 1998 was the year that “TRL” launched on MTV, and soon after, Britney Spears would release her teasing teen debut, ...Baby One More Time, catalyzing a string of young women—like fellow teens Christina Aguilera and Mandy Moore—to overrun the charts with coy love songs. But in the eye of this gathering storm of adolescence, Madonna, then 39 years old, released Ray of Light—and it became the best selling studio album of her career since Nielsen began tracking retail, a record it still holds. How did a monastic and austere album about emotional and spiritual maturity by a woman and new mother strike such a chord?
专辑《Ray of Light》照理不会大获成功。90年代中期，车库摇滚衰退后，音乐产业开始向Backstreet Boys与*NSYNC那样的青春活力的方向发展。1998年MTV名下的节目“TRL”诞生（Totally Requested Live），不久之后Britney Spears发行挑逗人心的青少年偶像出道专辑《...Baby One More Time》，并推动出一系列年轻女性雨后春笋般的崛起，如Christina Aguilera和Mandy Moore，她们含蓄羞涩的情歌铺天盖地。然而在青少年偶像风暴般蓬勃的时代下，当时39岁的Madonna发行了专辑《Ray of Light》——之后成为她职业生涯中自Nielsen开始零售贩卖后最畅销的一张专辑。为何一张讲述一个女人同时也是母亲 情感和精神上的成熟，主打尼姑风，禁欲风的专辑，能引起那么许多人的共鸣？
Madonna was still in full control of the serpentine pop instincts that had helped her masterfully navigate more than 15 years in the business. Her last studio album had been 1994’s Bedtime Stories, an alluring and accessible collection of mostly R&B, produced, in part, by Dallas Austin and Babyface. Bedtime Stories had been its own soft reinvention after the fetishistic and controversial era of Erotica, and it was a big deal: the Babyface-produced “Take a Bow” spent seven weeks atop the Billboard charts, her longest-ever run at No. 1. Presumably hoping to recreate that magic, Madonna turned to Babyface again at the outset of the Ray of Light sessions. But past success never presumes future performance for Madonna, and she abandoned Babyface after, as he put it diplomatically to Q, she “changed her idea about the album’s direction.”
Madonna灵敏的流行嗅觉帮助她在行业超长待机15年后依旧能驰骋乐坛。她的上一张专辑《Bedtime Stories》于1994年发行，一张迷人且亲民的专辑，部分歌曲由Dallas Austin及Babyfa制作人制作，专辑大体是R&B曲风。在充满恋物癖和饱受争议的Erotica时期后，专辑《Bedtime Stories》完成了一次柔软的重生，对她来说是举足轻重的一步：由Babyface制作的《Take A Bow》成为称霸7周Billboard的冠军单曲，她夺冠周数最多的单曲。大概率是想再创佳绩，刚开始录制专辑《Ray of Light》时的Madonna再次与Babyface合作。然而过往的辉煌对Madonna来说却不能给未来打包票，她之后便抛弃了与Babyface的合作，诚如Q杂志刊登的她的官方说法：“”她转变了专辑方向。”
It was another song on Bedtime Stories that offered the biggest clue into the Ray of Light to come: the Bjӧrk-assisted title track, “Bedtime Story,” a new age song on which she sings of relaxing “in the arms of unconsciousness,” and her deepest yet exploration of avant-garde electronica. After ditching Babyface, Madonna sought out William Orbit, an English producer best known for a smattering of understated ambient albums. Madonna liked Orbit, as she said in an unfortunately clumsy way, for “fusing a kind of futuristic sound but also using lots of Indian and Moroccan influences and things like that.” He would end up co-producing every song on Ray of Light but one.
《Bedtime Stories》另一首歌可以表现《Ray of Light》世界来临的先兆，那就是Bjork操刀的专辑同名曲《Bedtime Story》，一首引领时代的歌曲，她轻缓地唱道“in the arms of unconsciousness”，是她至今对前卫电子乐最深入的探索。弃用Babyface后，Madonna找上了以几张低调的环境音专辑而闻名的英国制作人William Orbit。Madonna喜欢William Orbit，正如她以一种不幸很笨拙的方式说道：“在混合未来风音效的同时，也会受印度、摩洛哥风格影响的东西。”最后Willam Orbit参与制作专辑每首歌，除了一首。
Orbit’s work throughout gives Ray of Light a unified tonal consistency, a kind of cohesion that masterworks are made of. He has a light touch with techno textures, both relaxed (flashes of acoustic guitar ground some of the most digitized moments) and danceable—after all, it can’t be a Madonna album if it can’t work in the club. “Drowned World/Substitute for Love” opens the album with bleary sound effects that pulse like the sound of sonar. This submerged quality of sound will become the bleary canvas for the album’s philosophical manifesto, as clear a declaration as can be imagined of the new Madonna that we will meet on the album. Here, she not just embodies her reinvention, as she had done with previous creative shifts, but goes ahead and describes it in full detail. There is no missing the point.
William Orbit的参与自始自终贯穿专辑《Ray of Light》，赋予专辑一致性，协调性，造就一件杰作，还有大师之作必不可少的凝聚力。他对Techno音乐超强的掌控能力，做出来的成品既惬意（原木吉他声闪烁在数字化音效的时候）又可作为舞池音乐，毕竟不能在俱乐部播放的专辑就不是Madonna的专辑了。歌曲《Drowned the World/Substitute of Love》在如同声呐爆炸，模糊的声效下拉开整张专辑序幕，这种沉浸在水中的质感，为整张专辑要展现的哲学宣言垫上了一块画布，专辑中清晰的哲学宣言中我们也能接触到一个新的Madonna。这里她不仅展现了她的重生，正如她在老专辑里也展现过，这次她走得更远，更具体剖析自我，每一细节都不容错过。
In the hangover from the hedonism that was her early ’90s era, Madonna gave birth to her first child, Lourdes and had begun to embrace yoga and the Jewish mystical practice of Kabbalah. Gone is the wry kinkiness and, at least according to her, the addiction to the spotlight, replaced with wisdom and patience and a powerful maternal instinct. “I traveled ’round the world, looking for a home/I found myself in crowded rooms, feeling so alone,” she sings on “Drowned World.” “Now I find I’ve changed my mind/This is my religion.” It is a moving song, arguably the album’s best. In the music video, as she says these last words, she is seen smiling and hugging a toddler who has her back to the camera, a girl we assume to be Lourdes. Maybe those pulsating beats that open the album evoke not so much a world under the sea, but a child’s heartbeat heard through amniotic fluid, or even the sound of this new version of Madonna being gestated. Whatever they mean to you, Madonna, once more likely to embrace a near-naked man in one of her clips, manifests as a publically doting mother right before our eyes.
在90年代享乐主义时期影响下，Madonna生下她第一个孩子Lourdes，开始学瑜珈，进行犹太神秘的卡巴拉仪式。婊气的讥讽都一去不复返了，至少据Madonna所说，对聚光灯的沉溺已被智慧、耐心及强大的母性本能所取代。在歌曲《Drowned the World/Substitute of Love》中她唱： “I traveled ’round the world, looking for a home/I found myself in crowded rooms, feeling so alone,”然后又说“Now I find I’ve changed my mind/This is my religion.” 。多催人泪下的一首歌，也许是专辑里最好的歌。MV中当她唱完时，我们可以看见她微笑着拥抱一个背向镜头的小女孩，我们认为这个女孩就是Lourdes。或许专辑开头那些均匀震动的节拍构建的并不是一个海底世界，而是可以从羊水中听到的孩子的心跳，或甚至是一个新Madonna在孕育的声音。无论这些声音对你有什么意义，曾经那个在MV中拥抱鲜有衣物遮盖的男人时的Madonna，向我们展示了她溺爱孩子的母亲的一面。
Reinvention, thanks to the template that Madonna set, is almost a cliché ritual in pop, like a motion that must be gone through for every star who needs a hook upon which to hang their new album. So too is self-discovery: How many times have you heard an artist claim that this album, the newest one, is her or his “most personal one yet”? But on Ray of Light, Madonna is so all-in committed to her metamorphosis that it’s hard not to believe her. “Nothing Really Matters” is a Buddhist-lite song about living in the moment and discarding the selfish motives of stardom. Even the notable love songs on the album, like the transcendent “The Power of Good-Bye,” are about turning away from the chaotic romantic entanglements that once characterized her public life and lyrics. “You were my lesson I had to learn,” she sings, as if all the turmoil she sang of on past albums had just melted away.
重生，正因Madonna开创的先河，重生在流行乐坛中已经是过于滥用的仪式了，每个明星要发布新作品时都以此当噱头宣传，像是必走的流程一样。自我探索亦是，大家也听过很多次“这是我迄今为止最私人专辑”这类的话了吧。但在专辑《Ray Of Light》中，Madonna如此全心全意的专注于她的转变上，使我们很难不信服她。歌曲《Nothing Really Matters》是首佛教般冷淡的歌曲，讲述活在当下，抛弃为名而生的自私动机。尽管专辑里几首最显眼的情歌，像出类拔萃的歌曲《The Power of Good-Bye》，都是讲述着摆脱混乱的爱情纠葛，这曾是描绘她聚光灯生活的特征和歌词。“You were my lesson I had to learn”她唱道，好像她在过往专辑里提到过的混乱也随之无影无踪。
With what’s happened to the culture since, it’s easy to bemoan Madonna opening up the floodgates of this airy, sacred lifestyle: Ray of Light has to be in some ways to blame for Goop and the countless other millionaire celebrities—everyone from Jessica Alba to Dr. Oz—who preach the gospel of wholeness and wellness, sanctimonious and Instagram spirituality. And yet, on Ray of Light, Madonna sounds so confident and alluringly in control of her powers, you might be able to overlook the more dubious moments, like “Shanti/Ashtangi,” in which she recites a hymn in Sanskrit over a techno-pop beat.
自从专辑面世后造成的文化冲击后，很多人或许会埋怨Madonna开创的这种无忧无虑、非世俗生活方式的流行：某种程度上，专辑《Ray of Light》要为一下人事物负责，电商Goop，无数来自从Jessica Alba,到Dr. Oz这样地方并成为百万富翁的名人——宣扬信仰的完整与富足，伪善Instagram式的精神生活。然而，在专辑《Ray of Light》中，Madonna听起来很有自信，自我力量掌控的模样十分迷人，你可能会忽略一些比较迷惑的时刻，如歌曲《Shanti/Ashanti》中她在Techno-pop节奏下，用梵文背诵赞美诗。
Madonna had recently taken voice lessons for her role in the musical Evita and, as she put it about her work prior to improving her technique, “There was a whole piece of my voice I wasn’t using. And I was going to make the most of it.” Her newly trained voice explodes out of the speakers on the title track, the character of her upper register suddenly like crystal. Though “Ray of Light” is “a mystical look at the universe and how small we are,” it’s also just one of the strangest songs in history to ever become a radio smash, a sugar-high piece of acid-club psychedelia. She also exposes a certain vulnerability that had not been on display in the heady days of Erotica. “Mer Girl,” which closes the album, is a tender psalm about the death of her mom. It ends the album on a remarkably reflective and unresolved note, while also pointing to the reason Madonna has needed to be so many different people across her life to begin with: “I ran and I ran,” she sings. “I’m still running away.”
当时Madonna为她在电影《Evita》扮演的角色接受了声乐训练，她谈到为工作提高自己的嗓音机能时说：“有一整段声音我从未使用过，我得最大程度地利用好它。”，比起提升技术，她更在乎作品的成果。在专辑同名曲《Ray of Light》中，她焕然一新，训练过的歌声从音响中爆发时，高音区的质感霎时变为水晶般。尽管歌曲《Ray of Light》用神秘的眼光探讨宇宙以及我们的渺小，它也是史上最古怪的电台热单之一， 一首甜度超标的迷幻舞曲。她也展现了从未在令人陶醉的Erotica时期流露的脆弱，专辑结尾曲《Mer Girl》是关于她母亲去世的温柔赞美诗，这首歌以一种令人深思和迷惑不解的音调收尾专辑，也指出为何Madonna从生命伊始起就扮演不同的角色。“I ran and I ran,” 她唱道 “I’m still running away.”。
Madonna played a large role in reopening mainstream American music to the club sounds of Europe in ways that have reverberated since. You can hear Ray of Light in artists as disparate as Britney, who worked with Orbit years after Madonna on “Alien,” to the adventurous producer and vocalist Grimes, who called Ray of Light a “masterpiece.” It is important, in 2017, to reveal something serious about yourself and the world through your work if you are a pop artist, and much of this can be traced back to Ray of Light, not to mention Janet Jackson and George Michael, who in the years before also made ambitious and weighty records.
Madonna在欧洲Club音乐重新接受美国主流音乐方面的扮演了重要角色，影响经久不衰。你可以在不同的艺人里听到《Ray of Light》的影子：如Britney Spears你都还能在她与William Orbit合作的歌曲《Alien》；热衷挑战的制作人，歌手Grimes称赞《Ray of Light》是件杰作。在当今2017年，一个流行艺术家如何用作品认真地向世界表达自己的想法是非常重要的，这些作品很多都可以追溯到专辑《Ray of Light》上，更不用提Janet Jackson和George Michael在几年前也曾做过的野心和影响后辈的作品。
If I have one major gripe with Ray of Light, it’s a certain dissonance that this born-again Madonna causes in me that other reinventions did not. As a young gay man, I had been ennobled by Madonna’s earlier hedonistic pride, excited by her exaggerated glamour (though also aware of its problematic aspects: her provocative image, particularly in the song and video “Vogue,” heavily cribs from black and latino gay culture) and defiant sexuality. There are times I feel a bit confused listening to Ray of Light as she all but dismisses her prior escapades, referring to them as a “silly game” on “Drowned World.” Perhaps it’s unfair to lay this responsibility at her feet, but I had always felt that Madonna’s liberated vision of life, in part, reflected my own, a life that, because of any number of circumstances or choices, might not involve kids and a family and red brick home, or any of the traditional domestic and spiritual touchstones venerated on Ray of Light. This is not a knock at her, really—life is complicated and filled with phases, something that Madonna’s career has come to symbolize.Maybe, too, it’s nice to have a fantasy of peace after the tumult that is our twenties and thirties, even if it’s mostly just that: a fantasy. I’m certainly not there yet, but it’s perhaps reassuring to hear Madonna—content on the other side of chaos—let us know that all the breakups and late nights and insecurities will someday culminate in stability.
如果我对专辑《Ray of Light》有什么不满的话，那就是只有这次重生的Madonna震感到我了，其他的重生产物都没有。作为一个年轻的同性恋者，我被她早期享乐主义式的骄傲所鼓舞，对她夸张的奢华，具挑衅性的性感行为感到激动（尽管也注意到有问题的地方：她在特别是《Vogue》MV里的极具侵略性形象是从黑人或拉丁裔的同志文化中偷来的）。有时听专辑《Ray of Light》会让我感到困惑，因为她几乎否定了她之前所做的出格行为，在歌曲《Drowned the World》中称这些事只是"silly game"。也许把责任推给她有些不公平，不过我总一直觉得Madonna的对生活解放的憧憬，在某种程度上，反映了我自身，尽管我不可能有孩子，家庭，红砖砌的房子，及任何专辑《Ray of Light》所推崇的传统家庭观，精神境界。这不是要攻击她，只是因为人生很复杂，具不同的阶段，一些Madonna事业所象征的事物。或许，在二三十岁的喧嚣过后，能有一种平静的幻想也是不错的，即使它基本上只是一种幻想。我还没到那一步，不过听到她满足于背离混乱，告诉我们所有的深夜分手，不安感终将以稳定告终时，或许是能安心的。
Of course, we know how it ultimately ended. Just one album later, the disco-tinged Music, Madonna would admit to feeling trapped by the quieter life. “I feel like an animal that's, like, ready to be sprung from a cage,” she’d tell The Face at the time of the release of Music, which, with its winking attitude, helped her keep up with the vampy Britney, by then fully ascendant and coming for her crown. “I’ve been living a pretty low-key domestic existence and I miss things.” So much for all that. For a brief shining moment with Ray of Light, Madonna became Her Holiness, the sage of synth pop. And the world heeded the call.
当然，我们都知道最终的结局。仅仅是一张专辑后，略带迪斯科味的专辑《Music》问世，在《Music》刚发行时，Madonna对The Face杂志坦言：“承认自己被静谧的生活困住了，像只从牢笼里蓄势待发要跳出来的猛兽。”这种反复横跳的态度，帮助她更上了青春横溢的Britney Spears的步伐，当时绝对的顶流人物。“这些年我一直低调地过着家庭主妇生活，我很怀念过往。”最终总结，在短暂闪耀的《Ray of Light》时期中，Madonna成为她自己的教皇，synth pop圣人，全世界都在留意着这一呼吁。
