The Meaning Behind “Music” by Madonna and the Material Girl’s Mission Statement

In 2000, Madonna released Music as the follow-up to her 1998 trip-hop masterpiece, Ray Of Light, with the latter’s electronic meditations giving way to a kind of dance-pop enlightenment.

So if Madonna were to offer a mission statement, “Music” would be it. She emerged from New York’s Danceteria in the early 1980s. She broke ground, pissed off the squares, and continues to sing and dance. “Music” remains an utter banger and also features one of the material girl’s finest hooks.

Boogie-Woogie

Madonna demands of the DJ to put a record on. But not just any old record will do. Something powerful enough to transform the revelers into blissful motion.

Hey, Mr. DJ, put a record on,
I wanna dance with my baby.

Co-written with the French dance music producer Mirwais, Madonna’s party hit connects various periods of dance music—from the deep grooves of funk to the hypnotic minimalism of krautrock.

At its heart, “Music” celebrates the irrational. And few activities will help one abandon self-awareness and shyness like dancing. If the DJs are doing their job well, then what takes over is the primal urge to move in time with the invisible physics of sound happening between the bodies.

Moreover, the dance floor is one of the most reliable places to leave the prosaic disappointments of life behind. At least for a night.

Hey, Mr. DJ, put a record on,
I wanna dance with my baby.
And when the music starts, I never wanna stop,
It’s gonna drive me crazy.

Come Together

Music is the great unifier, and here Madonna sings that it can connect the capitalists with the proletariat looking to destroy the class above it. I’m not sure if Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Trotsky would agree, but regardless, Madge finds solidarity on the dance floor. And it may be my favorite Madonna lyric.

Music makes the people come together,
Music mix the bourgeoisie and the rebel.

However, she wasn’t thinking about economic theory or politics. The inspiration for the song’s most recognizable line was actually a Sting concert. In 2000, she told Rolling Stone she was struck by how the audience behaved while Sting performed his latest solo music. Then, once he began playing Police songs, the crowd abandoned their politeness and, she said, “suddenly, people lost their inhibition.”

“That’s what music does to people,” she thought. “It really does bring people together, and it erases so much. And so that’s how I came to the hook of [‘Music’].”

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