William Orbit, Madonna's Ray of Light Producer, Dies at 69

On July 23, the British music producer William Orbit — born William Wainwright — died at home at the age of 69, leaving behind a body of work that quietly reshaped the sound of popular music across three decades. Best known for his Grammy-winning collaboration with Madonna on Ray of Light, he possessed a rare gift for dissolving the boundary between the experimental and the accessible, guiding artists toward sounds they had not yet imagined for themselves. His passing, announced without a stated cause, was met with an outpouring of grief from collaborators who remembered him not only as a soni