The Grammy Award-winning producer William Orbit, who worked with U2, Madonna, and many more, has died aged 69, his family and friends have announced.<\/p>\n
The London-born musician died at home on 23 July, with his family saying in a statement posted to his Instagram page that he will be “greatly missed by us and by so many whose lives he touched”.<\/p>\n
The statement read: “It is with profound sadness that the family and friends of William Orbit announce that William passed away at home on July 23 2026.<\/p>\n
“We are deeply saddened by his passing. He will be greatly missed by us and by so many whose lives he touched through his music, friendship and kindness.<\/p>\n
“We kindly ask that the privacy of William’s family and close friends is respected during this difficult time.”<\/p>\n
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Orbit, whose real name was William Wainwright, worked on the U2 songs The Hands That Built America and Electrical Storm.<\/p>\n
Orbit produced Madonna’s 1998 album Ray of Light, which saw the American singer move into electronica and trip-hop.<\/p>\n
He then worked with Madonna on her 1999 hit Beautiful Stranger and the 2000 album Music.<\/p>\n
Ray of Light saw Orbit pick up two Grammys for Best Pop Album and Best Dance Recording.<\/p>\n
He also won a Grammy for Best Song Written for Visual Media for Beautiful Stranger, which appeared in the 1999 film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.<\/p>\n
He was nominated for Grammys for his work on Pink’s song Feel Good Time, his own 2000 album Pieces in a Modern Style, and for Record of the Year for Ray of Light.<\/p>\n
With Blur, Orbit produced the 1999 album 13, which saw the band take a darker lyrical turn and produce hit singles such as Tender, Coffee & TV, and No Distance Left to Run. He also worked on their track Sweet Song from 2003’s Think Tank album.<\/p>\n
His other credits included the 2013 Britney Spears album Britney Jean, Nadine Coyle’s 2010 debut solo album Insatiable, and Melanie C’s 1999 debut solo album Northern Star.<\/p>\n
Orbit had a solo career that produced 12 studio albums, largely of electronic music, and was also a member of the groups Bassomatic and Torch Song.<\/p>\n
Source: Press Association<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Grammy Award-winning producer William Orbit, who worked with U2, Madonna, and many more, has died aged 69,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-586151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}