On January 9 1999, Madonna began filming the music video for Nothing Really Matters at Silvercup Studios in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens in NYC.
The imagery in the video was inspired by Arthur Golden’s 1997 bestselling novel, Memoirs Of A Geisha. It marked Madonna’s first collaboration with Swedish director Johan Renck, who had been introduced to Madonna by Ray Of Light video director, Jonas Åkerlund.
On January 2 1999, Madonna’s The Power of Good-Bye peaked at #14 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart in the USA. The single remained #14 for 6 non-consecutive weeks.
On December 31 1999, the following Madonna videos were included in the Much Music: Top 100 Videos Of The Century includes Express Yourself #3, Ray Of Light #8 and Like A Prayer #47.
Happy New Year!
On October 5 1999, Madonna’s The Video Collection 92:99 was originally scheduled to be released, but was later renamed The Video Collection 93:99 and was finally released on November 2 1999.
The original release was planned to include the Erotica music video, but excluded the video for The Power of Good-Bye. The actual release excluded Erotica, and added The Power of Good-Bye to the collection.
The following music videos were included in 93:99
Bad Girl
Fever
Rain
Secret
Take A Bow
Bedtime Story
Human Nature
Love Don’t Live Here Anymore
Frozen
Ray Of Light
Drowned World/Substitute For Love
The Power Of Good-Bye
Nothing Really Matters
Beautiful Stranger
Were there any missing music videos that you thought deserved to be included in 93:99?
On September 9 1999, MTV staged a tribute to Madonna, the most-nominated artist in Video Music Award history, by presenting a host of male drag performers dressed up as Madonna from her past music videos.
Madonna also introduced Paul McCartney, and then together they presented the Video of the Year.
Madonna was also nominated and won a VMA for:
Beautiful Stranger was also nominated for:
On July 26 1999, Beautiful Stranger hit #1 for the first of two weeks on the Top 100 Canadian Singles chart published by RPM.
In the U.S. a commercial single had been withheld for Beautiful Stranger to drive sales of Maverick Records’ Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me soundtrack album, limiting the song’s chart potential on the Hot 100 despite favorable support from radio. In a rare move, Warner Music Canada opted against following the lead of its U.S. counterpart and instead released the song as a CD maxi-single on July 20th, 1999.
During the week of its release, Beautiful Stranger was spending a second week at #4 on the Canadian singles chart based on the strength of its airplay alone, however the loss of its bullet indicated that it had likely peaked at radio. Fortunately, the added boost from sales of the domestic maxi-single was enough to earn Madonna her 17th #1 single in Canada – her first since 1995’s Take A Bow, despite having achieved three Canadian top-5 hits in the interim between 1996 and 1998.
On June 26 1999, Madonna’s Beautiful Stranger debuted at #5 on the Billboard Hot Dance Play chart in the USA.
