The last of Madonna's 12 #1 hits in the US, "Music" is an upbeat song with a simple message: "Music makes the people come together."
She was 42 when the song was released in 2000, but still in tune with the club scene, where it was huge (it was also a #1 Dance hit). The song finds her imploring the DJ to put another record on, a request that would likely be granted considering her status as grande dame of the dance floor.
The video is a parody of rap videos. It shows Madonna cruising around in the back of a limo going to clubs and enjoying the spoils of success. The limo driver was played by Sacha Baron Cohen in character as Ali G, a British comedian who would act like a gangsta rapper and interviews various politicians and dignitaries with ridiculous questions.
He had a popular TV show in England at the time, but wasn't known in the US until 2003, when HBO gave him a show in the States. He once asked a drug enforcement officer why they don't give the drugs they seize to charity, and asked a prominent lawyer when it's OK to kill someone.
Madonna was visibly pregnant with her son Rocco while filming the video for this song, so she tried to keep it hidden by swaddling herself in large fur coats. The animated section of the video was put in because it was too difficult to film in live action.
On her 2001 Drowned World Tour, a video screen showed shots of Madonna's previous personas as she performed "Music." She played almost entirely new songs on the tour; this was the only time she showed clips of her past.
Near the peak of Napster's popularity as a free music repository, an unfinished version of "Music" was leaked on the Internet a few months before its release date. The subsequent publicity turned many artists against Napster, as it was becoming more and more common for unreleased tracks to appear on the service. Instead of forming partnerships with Napster, many of these artists decided to join lawsuits against them, and Napster was shut down as a free service in July 2001.
Madonna performed the song on her 2006 Confessions Tour as a mash-up with The Tramps' "
Disco Inferno ," wearing a white suit similar to the one worn by John Travolta in
Saturday Night Fever, which was also the main inspiration for the roller-skate choreography.
Madonna performed "Music" at the 2001 Grammy Awards to open the show. She came out in a limo that was "driven" by underage rapper Lil' Bow Wow.
The song was nominated for Record Of The Year but lost to "
Beautiful Day" by U2.
"Music" was the first single and title track to Madonna's eighth album, the follow-up to Ray Of Light. She found herself in an expansive mood reflective of the song. "Everything in life moves in cycles," she told Billboard. "There's a period where you're quiet, and there's a period where you explode. In the time leading up to Ray Of Light, I was in a quiet space - making lots of discoveries and going through lots of changes. It was an introspective, questioning time. Then, almost without warning, I felt like I needed to explode. I didn't feel the need to be so introspective. I felt like dancing. And that's reflected in these songs."
Madonna has made a career of reinvention, and on the Music album she got her glow-up by teaming with a new producer (and co-writer): the French musician Mirwais Ahmadzai. He was the former guitarist for Taxi Girl, an influential French pop band with ties to punk, disco and techno, and the perfect candidate to bring a unique energy to the album. But the partnership was almost over before it began as each only spoke a little of each other's language. With the help of a translator, things began running more smoothly, and ended with Madonna calling his work "the future of sound."
When the earlier mix of this song hit the Internet before the official release date, some fans accused Madonna of leaking it herself. She replied: "Oh, please! If I was going to leak my record, I would've put a better mix of it out there. I practically had a nervous breakdown when the track got out there. I wasn't even finished with the record when it happened ... I don't want my whole album to be leaked. I don't care if you're my 83-year-old grandmother, you're not getting my record before I'm ready for you to have it."
When "Music" hit #1 in the US, it gave Madonna chart-toppers in the '80s, '90s and '00s. Her next single was "
Don't Tell Me," which went to #4. She had several more hits that decade (including "
Hung Up" and "
Give it 2 Me") but never returned to the top spot.
Madonna opened the
World Cup final halftime show in 2026 with "Music" as she performed it on her Confessions Tour - with roller skating and the '70s classic "Disco Inferno" blended into the mix. Her part opened with a pre-recorded segment before she walked onto the field flanked by Brazilian soccer legends Ronaldo and Ronaldinho. She was only on the field for about 15 seconds before ceding the spotlight to the Muppets, followed by BTS, Justin Bieber, Shakira and the kids from P.S. 22 in nearby Staten Island (the match took place in East Rutherford, New Jersey - Spain beat Argentina 1-0). The overcrowded show took a lot of criticism, but Madonna was well received. Even though she didn't get much camera time, she established a motif with the line "music makes the people come together," and she kept the energy level up, unlike Justin Bieber, who walked around strumming an acoustic guitar. Madonna had recently released her album
Confessions II.
