Music (song)

"Music" is the first single by Madonna, from the her eight studio album Music released on August 21, 2000. It was written and produced by Madonna and Mirwais.

=Song Information= Even though the official release of the song was scheduled to be on released on July, an unauthorized demo of the song first filtered on the internet on early May 2000, Madonna's then publicist Liz Rosenberg responded against this by saying the song was a "work-in-progress which was stolen", which caused Madonna and several other artists to actively protest against piracy. This also caused the delay of the release to August 22nd. It was then that all fans could buy and hear the new single. This time she would use a western, cowboy look for practically every "Music" single and that would be seen in the album and two videos. Like its title suggests, the song is an ode to music and dancing in general, parts such as "Music makes the people come together" can be an ode to music being an universal language.

=Music Video= The video for "Music" was directed by Swedish Jonas Åkerlund (wo had previously worked with Madonna before in the Ray of Light video). It was filmed in May 2000 on Los Angeles and was delayed 2 months due to Madonna being on her fifth month of her pregnancy with her son Rocco, in fact during the whole video Madonna wore a long white faux fur coat to hide her growing belly. The video stars Madonna, her longtime back up singer Niki Haris and one of Madonna's closest friend, actress Debi Masar, as well as famous comedian Sacha Baron Cohen in his famous role of Ali G as the driver in Madonna's limo (owned in real life by Puff Daddy). In the music video Madonna, Niki and Debi take a ride throughout L.A in the limousine, the song starts and Ali G is directed to take the girls to a club first, next they visit a strip club where he is not allowed to enter. It can be inferred that Madonna wanted to make some sort of parody towards the Hip-Hop world, which was considered by many back in the time, restricted only for men, it is in this part of the video that an animated sequence starts with an animated Madonna flying trough the city and fights with ninjas, this section was added as a result of Madonna's pregnancy. During one segment of the animated section in the background we can see animated neon signs with the titles of some of her old songs (Material Girl, Lucky Star, Vogue, Fever, La Isla Bonita, Borderline, Express Yourself and Rain), this was considered by many as a way of Madonna saying she was getting a little bit tired of her old songs, though it was never confirmed. Halfway throughout the video Ali G interrupts the music and asks Madonna to include him on her next single, but she snaps at him asking him to turn the music back on. The video ends with Madonna and her girlfriends riding on the limo and Ali G engaging in a rendezvous with many of the strippers met at the strip club. he video, like the song was extremely successful earning the Billboard Best Pop Clip of the Year award and the Best Dance video award at the International Dance Music Awards.

DVD Release

The video was the also the first to be released as a DVD single, which includes 2 different versions of the video, a shorted up one that omits several scenes involving the strippers, it also included a link to n official Madonna "Music" website (no longer active). The other version was the Hex Hector remix which incorporated scenes from other Madonna videos.

=Live Performances= "Music" has become one of the songs Madonna has performed in all of her tours on the 2000s, on the Drowned World Tour in 2001, the Re-Invention Tour in 2004, Confessions Tour in 2006 and the Sticky & Sweet Tour in 2008 and 2009. The very first live performance of "Music" at the 2001 Grammy Awards accompanied by Niki and Donna. During that performance Lil' Romeo scorted the girls out of a limousine, and began performing the song as scenery of Madonna's videos flashed on the screens (which containted imagery of the then unreleased "What It Feels Like For a Girl" video), during that same performance Madonna wore a T-shirt with "Material Girl" printed on the front. The song was then later performed at Madonna's 2 date concerts in London and New York, where it was used as the mini concerts' encore, once again accompanied by Donna and Niki.

"Music" was also performed on the Drowned World Tour, once again as part of the encore of the great show, after a very joyous, very urban Holiday Madonna decided to give the audience "Music" as an encore, Dressed in a Dolce & Gabbana shirt with "MOTHER" on the front and "F*CKER" on the back. For this performance she, Niki and Donna danced from corner to corner, then the whole dancing crew (16 in a row) gave a magnificent dance show and started doing deep-knee bends, while the crowd danced under a rain of golden snippets, resembling the Grammies 2001 performance. 3 years after the Drowned World Tour, on 2004 at the Re-Invention World Tour "Music" and "Holiday" were once again used as the encore, only that this time unlike in the previous tour, first came "Music" and then "Holiday" and unlike the Drowned World Tour, the version played was more slow, hip-hop based (this same version would be used one year later in the Live 8 charity concert). With Stuart Price playing the DJ in the middle of a cubicle pyramid-like structure. Madonna came out wearing a Scottish kilt featuring a very groovy dance by Madonna and her dancers (all in scottish kilts).

At the Confessions Tour in 2006, "Music" was successfully mashed with The Trammps' Disco Inferno, properly titled "Music Inferno". The performance began with a video interlude that features clips of some of her previous videos, the stage becomes into a dance floor as the dancers come out in rollerskating through the stage and the runways, Madonna later appears flanked by two female dancers, wearing a white suit, inspired by the film Saturday night Fever. She dances her way to the end of the catwalk and does the famous disco guns choreography while the rollerskaters do amazing tricks. A vocoder plays the chorus of "Where's The Party" and the whole audience gets boogie'ing to the infectious beat. 2 years later for the Sticky & Sweet Tour, the song got a very Old School touch, being mixed with Indeep's Last Night A DJ Saved My Life as well as Fedde Le Grand's Put your Hands Up 4 Detroit the song got a very "Urban street" touch with the screens open up like giant doors of a metro and belt out a horde of dancers who join Madonna in a high energy dance routine. All are wearing colourful outfits.

The song was also part of Madonna's 2005 concerts on London's G-A-Y previous to the Confessions Tour, as well as on the Hard Candy Promo Tour.

Re-Invention Tour

=Remixes= Music had a great collection of remixes, with excellent quality, ranging from Groove Armada, Deep Dish, Victor Calderone, Robbie Riviera and Hex Hector among others