WorldBeat

Madonna Makes 'Music for the World'

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BROOKE ALEXANDER, HOST: Hi, I'm Brooke Alexander with another WORLD BEAT exclusive. This week, we are devoting the show to a woman who has sold 130 million albums worldwide and has become the most recognizable face in the recording industry, Madonna.

Coming up, "Music" for the world, a new album, a global hit. From a virgin to Evita, two decades in vogue. And the producers shed a ray of light on working with Madonna. Legend has it that the Detroit-born Madonna arrived here in New York City's Times Square with $35 in her pocket and a bucket full of ambition.

Well, the bank account has increased, but the ambition, be it blond or brunette, has remained the same. As her latest album "Music" topped the charts in 23 countries, Madonna sat down for her first major TV interview with WORLD BEAT.

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Madonna, Unidentified Song

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MADONNA: I always want to write good music and I always, you know, every time I go in the studio I always think but god, I hope I can keep coming up with the goods and somehow it just happens.

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Madonna, Unidentified Song

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MADONNA: But I have to be inspired and I have to work with people that I find exciting.

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Madonna, "Amazing"

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MADONNA: As a songwriter, I'm really, I'm really conservative in a way in terms of, you know, song structure and verses and choruses and bridges and melodies and all that. So I think I like to find somebody who's a little bit more avant-garde and in the production department and then I like to marry their unconventional approach to music with mine, which is more conventional, and see what comes up.

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Madonna, "Ray of Light"

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MADONNA: I started working with William Orbit again because we had a relationship from "Ray of Light" and then we did "Beautiful Stranger" together and I love him and we work very well together.

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Madonna, "Frozen"

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MADONNA: I think that "Ray of Light"'s more trippy, more ambient...

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Madonna, "Frozen"

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MADONNA: ... more dense...

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Madonna, "Frozen"

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Madonna, Unidentified Song

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MADONNA: And I think the music is much more pared down, much more minimalist, in a way, more funky, just kind of funky flavor on the music than -- much more so than "Ray of Light."

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Madonna, Unidentified Song

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MADONNA: Guy Osiri (ph), my partner at Maverick, was given a demo by a French artist called Mirwais. Guy slipped it to me and said what do you think just as an artist to sign at Maverick and I just said oh my god, this is what I want. This is the sound. And I just flipped over it and I said please find out, you know, if he wants to work with me and collaborate, just try out one song together. And we did. And then I wanted more. And then we did two. And then I wanted more. And then we did three. And then that was it.

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Madonna, "I Deserve It"

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Madonna, "Impressive Instant"

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MADONNA: I'm going to do a small promotional tour for right now and do a couple of club dates and then, you know, hopefully I'm going to get my feet wet. I've already got ideas just from doing this little tour of stuff I'd like to do for a big tour. I mean I'd love to, I feel like it's time. I need to take a trip around the world, sing a few songs.

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Madonna, "Impressive Instant"

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TIM LISTER, "THE BEAT" (voice-over): BMG Entertainment, home to a diverse roster of artists from Christina Aguilera to David Gray and Outcast have announced the resignation of the two top Bertelsmann executives, Chairman Michael Doran (ph) and President and CEO Strauss Zelnick (ph). Reportedly both men were unwilling to accept diminished roles in the wake of the German media giant's restructuring.

ALEC FOEGE, MUSIC INDUSTRY WRITER: I think that you're going to find at a lot of the major labels people of a high rank stepping down in coming weeks and months because there is a huge amount of disagreement at the upper ranks.

LISTER: BMG is no stranger to changes in the top ranks with the recent forced retirement of Arista Records President Clive Davis. The old adage if you can't beat them join them rings true as Davis has received $150 million from Bertelsmann to start a partnership with BMJ. He gets his own label, Jay Records (ph).

From groups like Jaws of Clay to D.C. Talk, contemporary Christian music is stepping out of the shadows and facing a global market with a growing appetite for praise-based music. At a recent concert at the Oldtel Stadium (ph) in Florida, Christian music fans broke the stadium's concert attendance record and raised hopes for continued success and prominence in a burgeoning market.

DAN HASELTINE, JARS OF CLAY: It's sort of a strange phenomenon that there is now this thing called Christian music and it's different from regular music, you know, only in ideology, not in form or substance, really. In a sense, there's no difference.

LISTER: Look for more on Jaws of Clay and other members of the contemporary Christian music scene on WORLD BEAT in early December. For the rest of the week's top music news, log onto our Web site at cnn.com/worldbeat.

I'm Tim Lister. That's "The Beat."

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Rock Top Ten:

10. BRITNEY SPEARS, "Oops!...I Did It Again" 9. ALL SAINTS, "Saints & Sinners" 8. CRAIG DAVID, "Born To Do It" 7. RADIOHEAD, "Kid A" 6. TEXAS, "The Greatest Hits" 5. EMINEM, "The Marshall Mathers LP" 4. LENNY KRAVITZ, "Greatest Hits" 3. MARK KNOPFLER, "Sailing to Philadelphia" 2. MADONNA, "Music" 1. LIMP BIZKIT, "Chocolate Starfish & The Hotdog Flavored Water"

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ALEXANDER: When Madonna performed at the inaugural MTV Awards here at Radio City in 1984, she was setting the stage for a career which would influence popular culture around the world. Well, she has managed to stay in vogue while constantly updating her approach to music, video and fashion.

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Madonna, "Lucky Star"

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Madonna, "Take A Bow"

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UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: In her more down beat moments, Madonna has also amassed an impressive resume of popular ballads, from early hits like "Crazy for You" and "Live To Tell" to the stunning baby face collaboration, "Take A Bow."

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Madonna, Unidentified Song

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UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: Some of the softer edges to Madonna's music have come from her love of Latin culture and rhythms.

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Madonna, "La Isla Bonita"

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MADONNA: I wrote "La Isla Bonita" and it was, you know, that was it, you know? I always tell people that I'm sure I was Latin in another life. I mean I'm half Italian, so I suppose I am Latin. But I always end up writing Spanish songs or songs that have a Spanish flavor to them and I don't know, I love Latin music and I love Spanish, I love flamenco. I love Spanish guitars. I love all that stuff. I think I was a gypsy in another life.

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Madonna, "Don't Cry For Me Argentina"

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UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: Madonna's forays into film acting have drawn more criticism than praise. But her role in 1996 as Eva Peron in the musical Evita was an award winning performance.

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Madonna, "Bed Time Story"

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UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: As with her music, Madonna has always taken the utmost care in choosing the producers of her videos, considered some of the most eye catching in the business.

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Madonna, "Nothing Really Matters"

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UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: The ray of light in Madonna's career has led her to become the most controversial and celebrated female artist ever and there appears to be no end in sight.

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Madonna, "Nothing Really Matters"

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ALEXANDER: After the break, Madonna's musical journey crosses the Atlantic to Europe, where an Anglo-French alliance has helped her embrace electronica.

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SHAM AMBIAVAGAR, WORLD BEAT: Madonna's transatlantic connections are already well established. She worked on her "Ray of Light" album with a British producer of some pedigree, William Orbit, and she's worked for considerable periods of time in London. But what made her cross the channel to work with an obscure Frenchman who wasn't even well known in his own country?

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Mirwais Ahmadzai, "Disco Science"

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AMBIAVAGAR: Mirwais Ahmadzai, he'd been refining his techno house sound in his tiny Paris studio for more than a decade until eventually it gave birth to new disco sounds.

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Mirwais Ahmadzai, "Disco Science"

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MIRWAIS AHMADZAI, MADONNA PRODUCER: My strong influence was very American music but it's only the wrong music, (UNINTELLIGIBLE). And also we discovered the European sound from Kraft Werk. They invented a new genre and a new vision of disco.

AMBIAVAGAR: This was what led Madonna to him, the video to Disco Science, made by his friend, the director Stefan Zebnawi (ph).

AHMADZAI: I asked him to send it to Maverick because he knows someone at Maverick. The boss of Maverick, Guy Orbit and he paid (UNINTELLIGIBLE). And she heard it and she called me very quickly. In musical terms, she's underground like me. It's difficult to understand that, but for me it's the truth. I want to be very precise about that. You know, she's not looking after the fashion. She's looking after the new thing, you know, because she needed it, like me.

AMBIAVAGAR: But Izmar Wass (ph) also riding the crest of a wave of international interest in French dance music. After decades of languishing in the pop doldrums, France is producing world class names like Daft Punk (ph), Err (ph) and Mojo (ph), not to even mention its rap and hip hop artists.

AHMADZAI: English journalists, they don't know very well France and they're, with the Channel, a lot of people from England...

AMBIAVAGAR (on camera): The Channel tunnel?

AHMADZAI: Yes, they travel more and they realize that France, and especially Paris, could be a "city."

MADONNA: French people got it going on right now -- Mirwais, Mandino (ph), everybody. But there's influences from French music from the '60s and the '70s on the album, as well.

AMBIAVAGAR: Across the water, the man who first helped Madonna establish her dance music credentials is even more passionate in his love of technology.

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William Orbit, "Adagio For Strings"

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WILLIAM ORBIT, MADONNA PRODUCER: It's the idea of all this humming, throbbing stuff, all communicating, all interconnected, all the electrons flying around, you know, and then the multitude of paths, this whole matrix of electronic activity going on there behind- the-scenes. And I mean I'm not an electronics guy, so a lot of it's a mystery to me. And I look at these things and they're kind of glowing and they're warm and all this activity is happening. And then finally out the speakers comes the music.

AMBIAVAGAR: When Madonna hooked up with William Orbit on her Ray of Light album, he'd already worked with a roll call of artists that most producers could only dream of -- Fleur (ph), Sting, Prince, Peter Gabriel, Human League, Kraft Werk (ph), the list goes on.

ORBIT: You set trends and don't follow them and that's something that may sound difficult, but, in fact, it just means a confidence thing. It's just not to look at trends. It's to do what you think is right and the chances are you will find people will follow you and that's something that Madonna liked me because I always had her philosophy and working with her I've also made -- strengthened my resolve to do the same thing.

AMBIAVAGAR: But for both men, technology is not all.

ORBIT: If you're in a nightclub and you're dancing and you're, you know, kind of good, I mean it doesn't matter. That's -- it's a kind of body thing, you're just going for it. If you're going to sit there and listen to your hi-fi system, you need to get more than that. And sometimes techno falls short in that respect, you know? I know I'm not going to name any names, but I can think of some bands who I think really had a chance to make a mark and they didn't put any tunes in there.

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Madonna/Mirwais Ahmadzai, "Paradise"

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AHMADZAI: That is a track album, we did it from scratch, you know, and for me, this track album (UNINTELLIGIBLE) we did because these tracks are not the most impressive tracks on the album, but (UNINTELLIGIBLE) on this track. I mean if you talk about the electronica, it's, for me, it is the next step.

ORBIT: And I feel like, I mean I'm at the kind of junction of science and melody, you know, because there's kind of art and there's commerce and there's science and there's communication and somehow I seem to have -- without making a conscious effort -- and I'm in the middle of it now -- I just won't try to think of any, think it's already floating like because I'm totally swept along.

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AMBIAVAGAR: Mirwais Ahmadzai and William Orbit, Madonna's European friends, helping her out with a little music. Now back to you, Brooke.

ALEXANDER: Well, that is all for this very special edition of WORLD BEAT. From Sham Embiavarga in Europe and from me, Brooke Alexander, in New York City, we will leave you with one more moment of material magic from the music of Madonna.

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