FEATURE:
Our Lady the Divine
Madonna’s Like a Prayer at Thirty-Five
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MAYBE not as significant…
as a thirtieth or fortieth anniversary, I think that a thirty-fifth anniversary is still important and big. Madonna’s seminal album, Like a Prayer, turns thirty-five on 21st March. One of the defining albums from the Queen of Pop, it topped the charts in the U.S. and the U.K. With timeless singles such as Like a Prayer and Express Yourself on the album, there are few who can argue against the majesty of this 1989 work of genius. I want to explore it further now. I am going to come to some reviews for Like a Prayer. First, in 2019, Vice marked thirty years of a classic. An album where Madonna truly established herself as a serious and meaningful artist:
“Madonna was already a superstar before she released Like a Prayer, which turns 30 years old this week. She had produced at least half-a-dozen era-defining hits (“Holiday,” “Like a Virgin,” “Material Girl,” “Into the Groove,” “Papa Don’t Preach,” and “La Isla Bonita”), and her previous album, 1986’s True Blue, had sold more than 25 million copies. But, in a way, she was also strangely underrated. When Like a Prayer came out in 1989, six years after she hit the ground running with her infectious debut single, “Everybody,” critics lauded Madonna for changing our conceptions around how a female pop singer could present herself and conduct her career. But they didn’t necessarily regard her as a “great artist.”
"Critics flock to her uneven product the way liberal arts magnas flock to investment banking," Robert Christgau, the self-styled “Dean of American Rock Critics,” wrote in his review of True Blue. "So desperate are they to connect to a zeitgeist that has nothing to do with them that they decide a little glamour and the right numbers add up to meaningful work, or at least 'fun.’”
Like a Prayer certainly confirmed Madonna’s flair for fun; with its kindergarten-friendly lyrics about “pink elephants and lemonade” and treacle-sweet, Beatles-y psychedelia, “Dear Jessie” remains one of her most charming singles. But the album as a whole, Madonna’s first undisputed masterpiece, also proved once and for all that she was a meaningful artist, not just an uncommonly savvy and driven pop star. She bared her navel on the album’s cover, and her soul in its songs.
Even three decades later, it’s difficult to separate the album from the scandal that surrounded its release. When the brilliantly provocative “Like a Prayer” video debuted in February 1989, just a day after the release of a high-profile Pepsi commercial starring Madonna, the Vatican and various religious groups condemned the clip for including allegedly blasphemous imagery. Here was Madonna dancing in front of burning crosses, kissing a Black Saint, and displaying what looked like stigmata on her palms.
As the video continued causin’ a commotion, Madonna stood by it, telling the New York Times that “Art should be controversial, and that's all there is to it.” Pepsi bosses were so keen to distance themselves from the button-pushing singer that they pulled the commercial without trying to take back her $5 million fee.
Today, Madonna still seems fabulously unbothered by the whole thing. She breezily celebrated the anniversary of the “Like a Prayer” furor on Instagram earlier this month, writing: “Happy birthday to me and controversy.” Atta girl!
But where the “Like a Prayer” video controversy captured Madonna at her most bullish and brazen, the album that followed a few weeks later revealed new depths of honesty, vulnerability, and cathartic emotion. “Oh Father,” one of eight Like a Prayer tracks that she co-wrote with regular collaborator Patrick Leonard, is a glorious, classic-sounding ballad about taking back control from male authority figures, including her father. "I lay down next to your boots and I prayed for your anger to end / Oh father, I have sinned," she sings, extending the title track’s conflation of religion and real-life experience.
Funk workout “Keep it Together,” one of two tracks she co-wrote with another frequent collaborator, Stephen Bray, explores how family ties can feel suffocating and comforting at the same time. “Promise to Try,” another stellar ballad, finds Madonna grappling with the memory of her mother, who died when she was just five years old. "She's a faded smile frozen in time," she sings achingly. "I'm still hanging on, but I'm doing it wrong."
Meanwhile, the sad and aromatic “Pray for Spanish Eyes” is a seeming eulogy for lives lost to America’s worsening AIDS crisis. The man Madonna still describes as her BFF, former Studio 54 bartender Martin Burgoyne, had succumbed to the disease in 1986. “How many lives will they have to take? How much heartache?” Madonna sings, pleadingly. It’s certainly worth remembering that Madonna included an AIDS fact sheet with Like a Prayer in a bid to reduce the stigma and ignorance surrounding the disease, one the recently departed President Ronald Reagan had ignored for as long as possible. "People with AIDS—regardless of their sexual orientation—deserve compassion and support, not violence and bigotry," the sheet stated matter-of-factly.
But the album’s most shocking track is probably “Till Death Do Us Part.” Underpinned by a deceptively perky keyboard riff, the lyrics hint at domestic abuse ("The bruises they will fade away / You hit so hard with the things you say") and violent rows ("He starts to scream, the vases fly"), offering a devastating summary of a dysfunctional relationship: "You're not in love with someone else / You don't even love yourself / Still I wish you'd ask me not to go." Coinciding with the end of Madonna’s first marriage to Sean Penn (she’d filed for divorce in January 1989), it’s one of the most affecting moments in Madonna's discography, though she’d later go on the record denying allegations that she had experienced physical abuse during their relationship.
Still, the album never becomes too introspective to work as stadium-ready pop. The Romeo and Juliet-referencing “Cherish” is a retro melodic gem in the vein of “True Blue.” The Sly and the Family Stoinspired funk missile “Express Yourself' offers a feminist rallying cry that would inspire generations to come: Christina Aguilera and the Spice Girls have both hailed it as influence. When Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” debuted in 2011, many pop fans and music critics noted its distinct resemblance to “Express Yourself.” Madonna said Gaga's song sounded "familiar" and felt “reductive,” but Gaga insisted she didn't intentionally reference the Madonna anthem, telling NME in 2011: “If you put the songs next to each other, side by side, the only similarities are the chord progressions. It’s the same one that’s been in disco music for the last 50 years."
The accompanying video is a queer classic that's been likened to "Tom of Finland meets Fritz Lang's Metropolis," with Madonna presiding over a futuristic city fueled by shirtless male workers. And the immortal title track mixes religious and sexual ecstasy so thrillingly, it could make a celibate atheist want to dance.
Then again, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that Like a Prayer's most heavyweight track on paper turns out to be its frothiest in practice. Like a Prayer is a rare beast: an iconic pop album that retains its ability to surprise you, using richly evocative songcraft to explore deeply personal themes—sometimes spiritual, sometimes socially conscious—from a woman’s perspective. With it, Madonna had once again remodeled people's expectations of what a female pop singer could achieve. Decades before Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Ariana Grande’s Thank U, Next, it laid the foundation for the deeply persona pop blockbuster, auteured by a strong woman at the peak of her creative powers”.
It is interesting reading these deep features. Ones which provide us with context and background. How Like a Prayer fits into her discography. How it defines Madonna. Even if some would say 1998’s Ray of Light is her greatest work, there are many more who argue that this honour should go to 1989’s Like a Prayer. There was a lot of retrospection around Like a Prayer on its thirtieth in 2019. People keen to mark such an important album. Albumism did so in a fascinating feature:
“Madonna’s Like A Prayer is “as close to art as pop gets,” Rolling Stone’s J.D. Considine opined in his review of her fourth studio album published nearly thirty years ago in April of 1989. Though I don’t doubt that Mr. Considine likely meant well, his declaration is borderline asinine, if you ask me. His insinuation is that pop music can never actually be considered art and is forever destined to fall short of warranting this qualification. That pop music is somehow inherently less than other musical forms. Um, yeah, I’m calling bullshit.
Indeed, it is precisely this type of myopic perspective and critical snobbery that has plagued Madonna since she first emerged on the public stage back in 1982. Despite her millions upon millions of loyalists worldwide, and arguably due in large part to their preoccupation with her unabashedly iconoclastic persona, a sizeable contingency of critics and listeners still refuse to take her seriously as an artist and songwriter. But let’s not waste any more time lamenting the naysayers, shall we? Like A Prayer is, in fact, art. And arguably matched only by Ray of Light (1998) released nearly a decade later, it remains her artistic pinnacle to date, in my opinion.
Other more discerning interpreters of Madonna’s musical repertoire often cite Like A Prayer as her first serious album, following the more whimsical fare—or “brassy dance-pop” as the New York Times’ Stephen Holden likened it—found on her first three studio albums: Madonna (1983), Like A Virgin (1984) and True Blue (1986). “Serious” is a relative term, open to interpretation, mind you. For I know I took Madonna very seriously when I first heard “Everybody” back in ’82. I was five years old. But I knew a perfect pop song when I heard it, even then.
Perhaps more accurately, Like A Prayer is Madonna’s first personal album, throughout which she balances the fictional with the autobiographical more than she ever had up until that point. Joined once again by True Blue co-producers and fellow Michigan natives Patrick Leonard and Stephen Bray, she began recording the album in September 1988. One month prior, she had turned 30, the same age her mother—to whom Like A Prayer is dedicated—had been when she succumbed to breast cancer in 1963, when Madonna was just five years old. The following year, her four-year marriage with Sean Penn—to whom she dedicated True Blue—dissolved and ended in divorce. Meanwhile, Madonna’s attempt to cross over to film and seize upon the modest success of Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) hadn’t gone too well, with two back-to-back box office mishaps in Shanghai Surprise (1986) and Who’s That Girl (1987).
So, suffice to say, Madonna was in a particularly reflective state of mind when recording sessions commenced. Hence it’s no great surprise that amidst all of the other turmoil in her life, she also reawakened all of her conflicted feelings about her Catholic upbringing. These sentiments ultimately informed the title of the album and the controversial, gospel-tinged title track and lead single “Like A Prayer,” the video for which caused an irrationally disproportionate amount of attention and rebuke by more rigid segments of the American populace. It also ruffled the robes of the Vatican brass, due to its religious and racial imagery, coupled with the song’s perceived sexual double entendres.
“It's me struggling with the mystery and magic that surrounds it,” she confided to the New York Times around the time of the album’s release. “My own Catholicism is in constant upheaval. When I left home at 17 and went to New York, which is the city with the most sinners, I renounced the traditional meaning of Catholicism in terms of how I would live my life. But I never stopped feeling the guilt and shame that are ingrained in you if you are brought up Catholic.''
When the dogmatic dust finally settled from the bombastic, bible-thumping brouhaha over the video, listeners were able to devote more of their attention toward the ten other songs that comprise Like A Prayer. The next two official singles lifted from the album reinforced Madonna’s penchant for pop perfectionism, beginning with the anthemic “Express Yourself.” Echoing the clarion call tone heard on the Staple Singers’ 1971 black empowerment mantra “Respect Yourself,” the kinetically crafted song finds Madonna encouraging women to affirm and articulate their own needs, while deconstructing the superficial dependence on materialism in relationships. The buoyant, wistful love song and third single “Cherish” bears the closest resemblance to her radio-friendly fare of previous albums, introducing some warmer, winsome fare to the otherwise ruminative affair.
For my money, the album’s most powerful and memorable moments can be found in its more understated and introspective moments. The plaintive, piano-driven “Promise to Try” revisits the emotional impact of her mother’s death, while the symphonic, strings-laden swell of “Oh Father” is one of the most stirring moments, as Madonna examines her fractured relationship with her father in the wake of the loss they’ve shared. While she harbors resentment toward him for unspecified discretions, she also expresses empathy and understanding, reflecting, “Maybe someday / When I look back, I'll be able to say / You didn't mean to be cruel / Somebody hurt you too.” It’s a refreshingly candid and compassionate moment for Madonna, who has remained relatively taciturn when it comes to discussing her father publicly.
The sobering “Till Death Do Us Part” explores the dissolution of her marriage to Penn, with Madonna fluctuating between playing the real-life role of the victim (“I think I interrupt your life / When you laugh, it cuts me just like a knife / I'm not your friend, I'm just your little wife”) and assuming the voice of the observer (“They never laugh, not like before / She takes the keys, he breaks the door / She cannot stay here anymore / He's not in love with her anymore”). Her second verse is a particularly brutal reproach of her ex-husband, as she declares, “The bruises they will fade away / You hit so hard with the things you say / I will not stay to watch your hate as it grows / You're not in love with someone else / You don't even love yourself,” while her conflicted, vulnerable heart surfaces in the verse’s closing line, “Still I wish you'd ask me not to go.”
Other standout moments include “Keep It Together,” an upbeat ode to family solidarity that lobs another presumed dig in Penn’s direction: “blood is thicker than any other circumstance.” And of course, the lush, leftfield soul of “Love Song”—co-written and co-produced by Prince (whose uncredited guitar work also appears on “Like A Prayer,” “Keep It Together” and “Act of Contrition”)—is notable for being a once-in-a-lifetime songwriting collaboration between two of the most influential figures in the past 40 years of popular music.
"If it had not been clear with True Blue, Like A Prayer staked Madonna's motive to master the album format,” Quentin Harrison, Albumism contributor and author of Record Redux: Madonna, explains. In retrospect three decades on, the album signaled not just Madonna’s emboldened commitment to crafting cohesive albums, but also a pivotal, transitional point in Madonna’s recording career.
As the new decade arrived, and with the expansive, career-to-date compendium The Immaculate Collection (1990) neatly synthesizing her most popular songs to date, Madonna turned to exercising more creative freedom than ever before. In the ensuing years, she continually redefined and reinvigorated her musical footprint, beginning with 1992’s Erotica, which found her exploring not only new and bold thematic territory, but previously untrodden sonic paths as well. She moved on from her longtime partnership with producers Bray and Leonard, and gradually forged stronger connections with dancefloor-friendly collaborators like Shep Pettibone (Erotica), Nellee Hooper (1994’s Bedtime Stories) and William Orbit (Ray of Light). And together with these and other musical kindred spirits along the way, Madonna created art—yes, art—of the most thrilling caliber”.
I am going to end with a couple of reviews for Like a Prayer. I am going to start with a Rolling Stone review from 1989. They were extremely positive about Like a Prayer. One couldn’t deny the power and importance of Madonna then. Climbing to heights few other artists ever have, Like a Prayer is an album that still sounds so compelling and accomplished. The Queen of Pop hitting a peak and standing out as one of music’s greatest ever artists:
“Ever since Madonna‘s bellybutton first undulated its way into mass consciousness, her fame has been more a matter of image than artistry. Never mind whether there was any depth or resonance behind it; for many of her fans, the image alone — Madonna as wily, wanton boy toy, gleefully manipulating the material world — was resonant enough. For others, it was just an act, a coolly calculated pop ploy designed to sell records.
With Like a Prayer, Madonna doesn’t just ask to be taken seriously, she insists on it. Daring in its lyrics, ambitious in its sonics, this is far and away the most self-consciously serious album she’s made. There are no punches pulled, anywhere; Madonna is brutally frank about the dissolution of her marriage (“Till Death Do Us Part”), her ambivalence toward her father (“Oh Father”) and even her feelings of loss about her mother (“Promise to Try”). Yet as intensely personal as these songs are, the underlying themes are universal enough to move almost any listener. Likewise, the music, though clearly a step beyond the pop confections that earned the singer her place on the charts, remains as accessible as ever.
Don’t expect to be won over instantly, though, for Like a Prayer is more interested in exorcising demons than entertaining fans. The album is in large part about growing up and dealing with such ghosts from the past as parents, religion and the promises of love. At times, the album can be heartbreaking in its honesty — read through the lyrics to “Till Death Do Us Part,” and you’ll feel guilty for ever having glanced at a tabloid with a Madonna & Sean Wedding Shocker headline.
This is serious stuff, and nowhere is that more apparent than on the title tune. Opening with a sudden blast of stun-gun guitar, “Like a Prayer” seems at first like a struggle between the sacred and the profane as Madonna’s voice is alternately driven by a jangling, bass-heavy funk riff and framed by an angelic aura of backing voices. Madonna stokes the spiritual fires with a potent, high-gloss groove that eventually surrenders to gospel abandon.
The tracks that Madonna coproduced with Patrick Leonard — which include “Like a Prayer” — are stunning in their breadth and achievement. “Cherish,” which manages a nod to the Association song of the same title, makes savvy retro-rock references, and “Dear Jessie” boasts kaleidoscopic Sgt. Pepper-isms. When Stephen Bray replaces Leonard as coproducer, even an unabashed groove tune like “Express Yourself” seems smart and sassy, right down to Madonna’s soul-style testimony on the intro: “Come on, girls, do you believe in love?”
Believing in love doesn’t seem as easy for Madonna as it once did, though. “Till Death Do Us Part” takes its wedding-vow title almost mockingly, as the singer contemplates all the ways her marriage seems to be killing her. “The bruises, they will fade away/You hit so hard with the things you say,” goes one verse, and it’s hard not to be shocked. But the saddest thing about the song isn’t the abuse endured by Madonna (for this hardly seems a fictional “I”); it’s her helplessness in the face of her husband’s self-loathing: “You’re not in love with someone else/You don’t even love yourself/Still I wish you’d ask me not to go.”
But difficult love seems a familiar refrain in this collection of songs. “Oh Father” mirrors many of the horrors hinted at by “Till Death Do Us Part” (which provides plenty of material for armchair psychiatrists), and despite the song’s lush string arrangement, there’s still a disturbing amount of ache in lines like “You can’t hurt me now/I got away from you, I never thought I would.” Not that it’s all bad love and childhood trauma. “Promise to Try,” for instance, is about gathering a certain strength from feelings of loss and abandonment, as Madonna tries to live up to the memories she holds so dear.
The worst that can be said of the album’s obviously confessional numbers is that they engender such powerful emotions that an admirable pop song like “Keep It Together” seems almost trivial by comparison (when in fact it’s a rather impressive invocation of the importance of family). Fortunately, Madonna maintains an impressive sense of balance throughout the album, leavening the pain of “Till Death Do Us Part” with the lighthearted love of “Cherish,” contrasting the trauma of “Oh Father” with the libidinal power games of “Love Song” (a coy, musically adventurous duel-duet with Prince) and juxtaposing the ecstatic fervor of “Like a Prayer” with the Catholic injoking of “Act of Contrition.”
As for her image, well, you may see her navel on the inner sleeve, but what you hear once you get inside the package is as close to art as pop music gets. Like a Prayer is proof not only that Madonna should be taken seriously as an artist but that hers is one of the most compelling voices of the Eighties. And if you have trouble accepting that, maybe it’s time for a little image adjustment of your own”.
I am going to end with Consequence’s 2019 review of Like a Prayer. If you have not heard this album in a while, then make sure that you do spend time with it. Such a powerful and moving listen from start to finish, we mark its thirty-fifth anniversary on 21st March:
“It helps that Like a Prayer is a masterpiece, representing real growth for the former material girl. It opens with a musical thesis statement: an aggressive, rebellious guitar that’s instantly replaced by a heavenly choir. This is the tension at the heart of the album, and it makes the song, “Like a Prayer”, an electrifying listen. Those gospel-tinged choruses are part of the fun, but the real joy is in the transgression. Madonna grew up in a deeply religious household and is purposefully blurring the lines between sexual and religious euphorias. It means more than it would coming from a born atheist. It’s more wrong. Some — perhaps even Madonna — might call it naughty.
The album starts with a powerhouse 1-2 punch of “Like Prayer” and “Express Yourself”. “Express Yourself” is probably the single most joyful-sounding track on the album, and it comes from a place of anxiety. Madonna is urging a friend in an uncertain relationship to have a talk with their boyfriend. “Make him express how he feels,” she urges.
Listeners of a certain age might hear the chord progression and expect Lady Gaga to belt out, “Born This Way”. The similarities between the two songs was enough to cause a feud between Madonna and Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga’s defense is that the chord progression goes back to the ’70s, and Madonna told Rolling Stone that “Express Yourself” was “my tribute to Sly and the Family Stone.” Now, we could raise a polite eyebrow at her calling it a “tribute,” or we could just agree that all three artists are great and more people should listen to Sly and The Family Stone.
Most of Like a Prayer was co-written with Patrick Leonard. Two songs, “Express Yourself” and “Keep It Together”, were co-written with Stephen Bray. The only other collaborator is Prince. “Love Song” is a slinky duet with His Purpleness, with Prince’s signature guitar flirting with Madonna’s synths. It’s a drunken first date of a song, where they alternate assuring each other that “this is not a love song,” before asking, “Are you just being kind?”
There are a few purely positive moments on the album. There’s the bubblegum “Cherish” and the bedtime psychedelia of “Dear Jessie”. These are unambiguously happy. But Like a Prayer is Madonna’s best album because it is her most personal album. And a lot of her personal life is dark. “Till Death Do Us Part” deals with the dissolution of her marriage to Sean Penn. “Promise to Try” is a heartbreaking song about the death of her mother. “Oh Father” is all defiance and hurt, addressed to a father who is only half-forgiven. As a group, these songs make a mini-arc within the broader album, and the climax is “Keep It Together”: “Keep it together in the family/ They’re a reminder of your history.”
Does that sound less than enthusiastic? The beat is bright, disco, jaunty. The lyrics are more reserved. This is the same tension in the album from the beginning — the tension between the thing that is fun and the thing that is true, the guitar and the choir.
The final track of Like a Prayer begins how the album begins: with a raucous, muscular guitar. But this time, the church choir doesn’t cut it off. Instead, the choir hollers their approval and begins clapping along. In a solemn voice, sometimes reciting and sometimes singing, Madonna performs a Catholic prayer of contrition. “Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee.” For a moment, it seems that the tension has been resolved. Guitar and choir can coexist. As the prayer concludes, Madonna seems to find herself at a reservation desk — the front desk of Heaven, probably. “I have a reservation,” she says confidently. “I have a reservation,” she repeats. And how does the album end? With Madonna belligerently bellowing, “Whaddya mean it’s not in the computer!”
Ah well, perhaps she won’t get into Heaven after all. Perhaps that tension between guitar and choir cannot be resolved. Madonna’s priorities were never really in doubt, anyway. By mixing the sacred and the profane in a way sure to draw attention, Madonna went from being a regular old star to one of the most famous people on the planet. Of course, courting controversy for profit is as old as profit. But the way Madonna manipulated the media provided a blueprint for generations of the scandal-inclined.
More importantly, the music was fresh, honest, and real: a bubblegum pop exorcism. By making her music more personal, Madonna did more than improve on her earlier records. She stretched the boundaries of popular music and cemented her place as one of the greatest artists of our time”.
One of the greatest albums ever released, Like a Prayer was Madonna’s first real masterpiece – though not her last. Moving to 1992’s Erotica, 1994’s Bedtime Stories and 1998’s Ray of Light, Madonna would keep pushing boundaries and evolving as an artist. At the end of the 1980s, she showed why she was an artist with no peers! Reshaping the idea of what a Pop artist was and showing that she was not to be dismissed or seen as merely a Pop artist, this was an icon in full bloom. Touring at the moment, Madonna is still out there and bringing songs from Like a Prayer to the people. I know she will look back on this album when it turns thirty-five on 21st March. It is an album that is…
TRULY like no other.