{"id":731886,"date":"2026-08-08T21:50:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T21:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/731886\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T21:50:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T21:50:16","slug":"madonna-pays-emotional-tribute-to-william-orbit-your-music-gave-me-a-magic-carpet-to-fly-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/731886\/","title":{"rendered":"Madonna pays emotional tribute to William Orbit: “Your music gave me a magic carpet to fly on”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Madonna<\/a>\u00a0has paid an emotional tribute to her former collaborator\u00a0William Orbit<\/a>, saying \u201cin many ways you were my\u00a0ray\u00a0of\u00a0light\u201d.<\/p>\n

Orbit, whose real name was William Wainwright, died at home on July 23 at the age of 69.\u00a0His passing was announced yesterday (August 7)<\/a>, although no cause of death was shared.<\/p>\n

His working relationship with Madonna shot him to stardom in the late \u201990s, winning him three\u00a0Grammys<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 two for 1998 album \u2018Ray\u00a0Of\u00a0Light\u2019 and one for the song \u2018Beautiful Stranger\u2019.<\/p>\n

Madonna has now\u00a0reflected on\u00a0their\u00a0time together in a moving tribute on her Instagram, where she said she had \u201can epiphany\u201d when she started working with him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized that music did not have to fit into categories or genres,\u201d she wrote. \u201cSo\u00a0we created our own. You pressed a magic button inside of\u00a0me\u00a0and I fell into a galaxy of unrealized dreams. Your music gave me a magic carpet to fly on and I visited many places. Sad and joyful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Posted alongside their Grammy acceptance speech for \u2018Ray\u00a0Of\u00a0Light\u2019, she continued: \u201cI say in ways I\u2019d never sung before. I used words without caring if they made sense or not. In\u00a0may\u00a0ways you were my\u00a0Ray\u00a0Of\u00a0Light \u2013 as was my daughter Lola, who was born around this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was starting a new chapter. I was choosing another road to walk down \u2013 and you were right by my side with your crooked teeth and your genius way of\u00a0hearing\u00a0music. The studio was often church-like and I would sit in silence, waiting for your ideas to explode out of your keyboard or your guitar and then I would run with them\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

She continued: \u201cI miss those days. Only you could inspire me to write a song like \u2018Drowned World\u2019 or \u2018Swim\u2019.\u00a0You were so otherworldly.\u00a0So\u00a0singular.\u00a0The years passed and I moved on to make music with other people, but I have never forgotten you or the magical time we spent together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGoodbye Billy Bubbles,\u201d she concluded. \u201cI was so lucky to have known you and fallen down the rabbit hole with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Madonna began working with Orbit after he remixed her songs \u2018Justify My Love\u2019 and \u2018Erotica\u2019, and\u00a0was recruited to produce \u2018Ray\u00a0Of\u00a0Light\u2019 after sending her a cassette of instrumental tracks in 1997.<\/p>\n

His incorporation of techno and trip-hop-inspired beats into Madonna\u2019s music helped to rejuvenate her career, with the album selling over 16million copies around the world.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Earlier this year,\u00a0he said he had written a \u201csuccessor\u201d to \u2018Ray\u00a0Of\u00a0Light\u2019, but\u00a0said he\u00a0had\u00a0had \u201cnil response\u201d from Madonna<\/a>\u00a0despite reaching out to her.\u00a0He made it clear that there were \u201czero hard feelings\u201d between them, though, saying he would \u201calways love that woman\u201d and crediting her for\u00a0making his career.<\/p>\n

In an obituary for Orbit<\/a>,\u00a0NME\u00a0noted:\u00a0\u201cAfter \u2018Ray Of Light\u2019, Orbit found himself in hot demand. He co-produced Blur\u2019s most experimental and intimate album to date, 1999\u2019s \u201913\u2019, which yielded the lovely, gospel-flecked single \u2018Tender\u2019, and worked on hits by All Saints (\u2018Pure Shores\u2019, \u2018Black Coffee\u2019), U2<\/a>\u00a0(2002\u2019s frenetic \u2018Electrical Storm\u2019) and\u00a0Pink<\/a>\u00a0(2003\u2019s retro bop \u2018Feel Good Time\u2019).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, he later confided that he felt unable to capitalise on his post-\u2018Ray Of Light\u2019 purple patch. \u2018A cleverer person than me would have gone: \u2018You\u2019ve won the lottery! You\u2019ve made a record everyone loves and made a shitload of money. Stop right now with all the remixes. Get a plan together to take it to the next level,\u2019 Orbit told Classic Pop<\/a> in 2022. \u201cBut I never did. I let it slip away\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

See a range of other tributes to Orbit here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Madonna\u00a0has paid an emotional tribute to her former collaborator\u00a0William Orbit, saying \u201cin many ways you were my\u00a0ray\u00a0of\u00a0light\u201d. Orbit,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":731887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,5720,96,1581,47,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-731886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-dance","tag-entertainment","tag-pop","tag-top-stories","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/731887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}