Madonna’s Like A Prayer: 30th Anniversary Celebration

Like A Prayer is an album that proclaims self-expression and liberation, but also directly explores the struggle of holding such principles while searching for their place within Catholic ideology. It also explores the joy, conflict and complicated dynamics of family. Madonna elaborates, “The theme of Catholicism runs rampant through my album. It’s me struggling with the mystery and magic that surrounds it. My own Catholicism is in constant upheaval.” A project she remarked at the time as being one of her most personal, this conflict was central to the inspiration and basis for the album. As she further discussed, “I had my own ideas about God and then I had the ideas I felt were imposed on me.” With the help of longtime collaborators, producer Patrick Leonard and Stephen Bray, Madonna dissects the emotional and spiritual consequences of these impositions throughout Like A Prayer, while also exploring themes of love, relationship and conflict, “Sometimes, the music is sort of there, already written by either Pat Leonard or Stephen Bray. They give it to me and it inspires or insinuates a lyric or feeling. Then I write out the words in a free form, and we change the music to fit the form. Other times I’ll start out with lyrics, or I’ll have written a poem and I’ll want to put that to music. Then I end up changing the words a little bit to make them more musical. Sometimes I’ll hear the melody in my head. I don’t write music and I don’t read music, so I’ll go to Pat Leonard, who is an extremely talented musician, and I’ll sing it to him and make him play it, making chords out of it. Then I write the words to the song.”

Sonically the album is a display of Madonna’s continually evolving sound beginning with the release of her debut self-titled album in 1983. Working with legendary producer Nile Rodgers for her sophomore album Like A Virgin, she began to transition from a heavy reliance on 80’s synthesizers and drum machines to a healthy blend of real instruments. As the decade drew to a close, her sound continued to evolve further with the 1986 album True Blue.

Madonna discussed the sonic inspirations for many of the compositions on Like A Prayer remarking, “The songs “Keep It Together” and “Express Yourself,” for instance, are sort of my tributes to Sly and the Family Stone, “Oh Father” is my tribute to Simon and Garfunkel, whom I loved.” Leonard shared a similar sentiment in a recent Billboard interview when discussing the sound of the project, “It was one of those things I was always on my soap box saying “let’s get real musicians in.” This prominent use of live instrumentation is featured throughout the album, combining supreme musicianship with Madonna, Bray and Leonard’s ability to create incredible melodies.

Rather extraordinarily, this critically acclaimed and fan beloved project was written within a rather short period of time as Leonard discussed in a Billboard interview, “We wrote ‘Like A Prayer’, ‘Spanish Eyes’, ‘Till Death Do Us Part’, ‘Dear Jessie’, ‘Promise To Try’ and ‘Cherish’ in a two week period. I was working on another album at the time, so she’d just come in on Saturdays or days off. Nothing took more than four hours ever.”

Like A Prayer was released on March 21 1989, debuting at number 11 on the US Billboard Charts, and rising to the top spot a few weeks later, where it stayed at the peak for six consecutive weeks. It was Madonna’s newest release since the 1987 remix album You Can Dance, and her first full-length release of all new material since True Blue. The album was pioneering due to the nature of the physical release. Each copy of the LP, CD and Cassette in the initial pressing were scented with patchouli oil, reportedly to simulate church incense creating a sensory experience, complimenting the audio and visual experience, the latter being videos. Madonna was a fierce advocate for gay rights since the beginning of her career and took the opportunity to raise awareness about the increase in the number of AIDS infection. As a result the album included a pamphlet in the CD promoting safe sex and condemning the bigotry and stigma that came with diagnosis.

The album begins with its iconic track. Like A Prayer was released as the first single from the project, exploding onto the airwaves within a few weeks before the album release. Madonna discussed the recording of the iconic song, “It just…came out of my head. Pat had the chord changes for the verse and the chorus. We hadn’t written the bridge yet. I really wanted to do something really gospel oriented and acapella, with virtually no instrumentation, just my voice and an organ. So we started fooling around with the song, and we’d take away all the instrumentation so that my voice was naked.” While the song would begin in a sparse fashion, opening with the sound of distorted guitar, an organ and subtle harmonies, Madonna’s voice becomes central to the track, evoking the raw and naked atmosphere she describes, “Then we came up with the bridge together, and we had the idea to have a choir. In almost everything I do with Pat, if it’s uptempo, there’s a Latin rhythm or feeling to it. It’s really strange.”

Rather incredibly, Leonard revealed that Madonna’s first vocal take recorded for the song was ultimately the one used on the released product. He recalls some instrumentation was ultimately scrapped prior to release with the Latin sound not being so prominent on the completed version, “Originally it had bongos and Latin percussion. We decided to eliminate that quickly.” The Andràe Crouch Choir would contribute to the incredible back up harmonies present on the song, with Crouch allegedly listening to a demo of the track in the car before taking it to his choir to arrange. While Like A Prayer would be critically acclaimed, Patrick noted the apprehension of the record company to release this pop oddity as the first single from the album, “They weren’t happy and they thought it was going to be too complicated for people. I think she knew it and I think we believed in it together, in some way.”

The single would ultimately prove a commercial success too, becoming Madonna’s seventh track to reach number one on the Billboard charts. Her daring artistic integrity extended further to the visual companion. Madonna discussed the genesis of the music video in a 1989 interview, recalling, “Well, originally, when I recorded the song, I would play it over and over again, trying to get a visual sense of what sort of story or fantasy it evoked in me. I kept imagining this story about a girl who was madly in love with a black man, set in the South, with this forbidden interracial love affair. And the guy she’s in love with sings in a choir. So she’s obsessed with him and goes to church all the time. And then it turned into a bigger story, which was about racism and bigotry. I wanted to put something in about Ku Klux Klan, use burning crosses… but then Mississippi Burning came out and I realized I was hitting the nail on the head a little too hard. Too obvious. So I thought I should take a slightly different approach. My original idea was much sadder. Kind of: this is reality, and reality sucks.”

Themes of self-expression and liberation on the album are most evident in the pop classic Express Yourself. Released as the second single from the album, the track is an anthem of empowerment and control; Madonna sings of a need for disclosure in relationships behind the sound of a prominent horn line and funky guitar riffs, “The message of the song is that people should always say what it is they want, the reason relationships don’t work is because they are afraid.” She takes the message further with the song being an expression of female empowerment and the need for women to emancipate themselves through the power of self-expression. The artist further elaborated in a 1989 interview, “No matter how in control you think you are about sexuality in a relationship there is always the power struggle… always a certain amount of compromise… of being beholden, if you love them. You do it because you choose to. No one put the chain around this neck but me. I wrote “Express Yourself” to tell women around the world to pick and choose the best for yourself, before that chain around your neck, kills you instead. It’s my take on how man can express what they want, the same prerogative should be there for a woman too.”

The song would later be remixed by producer Shep Pettibone as would other songs featured on the album such as Keep It Together and Like A Prayer, incorporating keyboards and a drum track akin to the increasingly popular style of 90’s dance music. The album version however features predominately live instrumentation. This is one of two songs on the album long-term collaborator Stephen Bray would contribute to the project.

Oh Father is the most direct example of the conflict and cognitive dissonance between the need for expression and independence, but also the guilt of revolting against authority. It is a song of familial rebellion and spiritual actualization. Madonna proclaims over haunting strings “You can’t hurt me now I got away from you, I never thought I would. You can’t make me cry, you once had the power I never felt so good about myself.” While it is widely held that Oh Father is about her turbulent relationship with her father, religious motifs and imagery are prevalent within the lyrics of the song and the live performances performed on the Blond Ambition Tour.

Describing the track as “The second half of Live To Tell” she noted the subject of the song as addressing not only her father but also those in power, “Oh Father” is not just me dealing with my father. It’s me dealing with all authority figures in my life.” Sonically the song is melancholic and represents a cathartic point on the album. Madonna further discussed the process of recording the ballad noting, “Lots of times Pat Leonard would come up with a piece of music, like Oh Father, we did very little to change it musically and he just throws the music at me and I listen to it over and over again and somehow the music suggests words to me and I just start writing the words down.” Leonard, who co-composed the track, described the recording session in an interview with Billboard, “The ‘record’ button was only pressed three times. It was pressed to do the track, live, with her singing live. Then we did the orchestra. And then we did a double of her vocal when we were mixing. That’s it. So it’s real. It’s something that I really wanted to do and she was kind enough to say “let’s try this,” and it was not easy.”

The orchestra is one of the focal points of the song conveying the emotional resonance presented in the lyrics with a theatrical quality. Madonna notes how Leonard’s talents as a composer would lead to the creation of strange and unusual tracks like this, “That’s the great thing about Pat. I mean, Pat puts together these really strange chord progressions and these really great time signatures, and I’ll listen to it and I won’t even think about it. I’ll just put it on, and I’ll just keep playing it over and over again; it’s like free association. I’ll start singing words to it and making them fit. I don’t think of structure. I don’t think of first chorus, first bridge.“ Oh Father would ultimately be released as the fourth single on the album, a rather unconventional single choice, but the song would prove fairly successful peaking at number 20 on the Billboard Charts. Leonard would favour Oh Father as his favourite collaboration with Madonna stating, “My favourite thing that we ever recorded, ever — or wrote — is “Oh Father.” That to me is the best thing we ever did.”

Promise To Try is arguably the most poignant song on the album. An aching but sweeping ballad, Madonna addresses the death of her mother when she was only five years old. Opening with just piano, She addresses the “little girl” inside, guiding her for the future but also reflecting on the grief and sadness of losing a maternal figure. “Will she see me cry when I stumble and fall, does she hear my voice in the night when I call, wipe away all your tears, it’s gonna be all right.” Another partnership between Madonna and Leonard, the genesis of this song was similar to other collaborations on the album, “Once again, he just sat down and started playing. And I started singing. And we built it from there. We’d start stuff and we’d come back to it.” On the track Madonna notes the struggle of loss and grief but also the strength needed to move forward and continue the maternal relationship even after one has passed, “The song “Promise to Try” on the new album is about letting go of that. It’s about a yearning to have her in my life but also about trying to accept the fact she’s not. As in the lyric “Don’t let memory play games with your mind/She’s a faded smile frozen in time.” Yes, I wish, but it’s not going to be. I do talk to her often. I mean. I always have. I don’t know if she can hear me or not, but I tell her things that a girl can only say to her mother. Private things.”

One of the many highlights of this incredible song is Madonna’s vocal performance, presenting an almost childlike quality reflecting the vulnerable lyrical content of the song. Leonard noted that after recording the classic ballad Live To Tell, off the 1986 album True Blue, they often began to record the lead vocal only once, favouring the feeling that comes from that initial vocal performance, “Oftentimes the vocal that she did was the lead vocal, we didn’t even change the lead vocal. That was it. She sang it. It was done. I put the track together, she would sing it, and that was it. We learned from that. This idea of a ritualistic vocal session doesn’t make any sense. You perform now. You know the song, perform it. And oftentimes, the energy that’s there because you’re in this creative space is much more pure than when you’ve thought about it and worked on it and practiced it in your car and all that stuff.”

Madonna similarly recalls the same approach was taken during the recording of her vocals on the project, “I mean, we had every intention of going back and fixing the vocals, but then we’d listen to them and say, “Why? They’re fine.” They were a lot more emotional and spontaneous when I did them with the musicians. It’s probably because I didn’t feel the pressure of knowing that this was going to be the final vocal. So I decided not to go back and clean them up.” The sparse instrumentation featuring just piano and slowly building with strings further convey an emotive and mature sensibility to the composition, acting as an audio companion to the dark subject nature of the track.

Relationships form another key theme present throughout the album, the very highs and lows of what a relationship entails. Cherish is one example of joyous celebration. The song is jubilant, upbeat and forms a contrast in style and sound from the rest of the album. In a 1988 interview with Spin magazine Madonna discussed her thoughts on love citing, “Love is the ultimate escape. And really, what’s wrong with channeling all your energies into love? I’m not saying that’s all there is to life, but it’s better to be obsessed with love than some of the other obsessions that are available to us.” While Madonna conveys her experiences of domestic violence on Till Death Do Us Part, Cherish signifies the best that relationships and love can offer. She noted the stark contrast in tone both sonically and lyrically from the rest of the album in a 1989 interview with Molly Meldrum, “I mean like it. I think it’s a very catchy, sweet song and I almost didn’t put it on the album because I thought thematically I felt it was the black sheep.” She continues. “It was so kind of positive and up without any serious message in it but then I decided that it was good to have that there because it kinda balances everything. Wasn’t so sober.” The composition has traces of rockabilly influence, recalling tracks from the artists back catalogue such as the 1986 classic True Blue. This is particularly noticeable in the percussion with strong snares, tambourine and finger snaps, complimented by keys and prominent synth horns. While Madonna’s re-evaluation of Cherish has been more critical as time has gone on with her recently labelling it as “retarded” in a 2012 interview with Rolling Stone, the track represents an escape both sonically and lyrically from the confronting themes present throughout rest of the album.

Till Death Do Us Part is a song that explores the opposite spectrum of relationships; dealing with the concerning subject of domestic abuse and violence. Madonna sings of a dysfunctional masochistic relationship of constant upheaval and conflict. Verbal and physical abuse is described over the sound of menacing drums.

“He takes a drink, she goes inside he starts to scream, the vases fly he wishes that, she wouldn’t cry.”

What is most confronting about the lyrical content of the song is that it is loosely based on Madonna’s own real life experience of domestic abuse, “Like most of the songs on my album, it’s very much drawn from my life, factually speaking, but it’s fictionalized, too.” However she clearly expresses a detachment lyrically from the song to an extent. Parts of the story are based on real life experience, however parts are also fabricated for dramatic effect, “It’s about a dysfunctional relationship, a sadomasochistic relationship that can’t end. Now that’s where the truth stops, because I would never want to continue a terrible relationship forever and ever and ever until I die.” In a 1989 interview with Vogue, she further acknowledges how art gives her the opportunity to contrast real life experiences with the power of imagination, “People don’t see that you can take some of your experiences from real life and use part of them in your art. They try to make everything an absolute truth.”

Sonically the music is purposive and relentless with rapid percussion combined with racing synths. Leonard, who produced the song, noted the contrast between the dark subject matter of the lyrics and the light, danceable nature of the music, “Till Death Do Us Part” — which had an uncomfortableness about it and yet it felt all bubbly and perky, but it wasn’t. And I always thought that was a great lyrical position…a tremendous amount of conflict. But you feel like you can skip rope to it.”

Dear Jessie is unique within Madonna’s catalogue and the development of the psychedelic track is just as unique. Many songs on the album deal with Madonna’s own experiences, thoughts and feelings on religion and family. Dear Jessie, however was inspired by the daughter of producer Patrick Leonard. Madonna serenades the subject of the song about a world filled with mermaids and magic lanterns. This visual imagery is rampant throughout the lyrics and this style of songwriting was somewhat unique among her catalogue at this time. Her playful vocals are accompanied by an arrangement of sweeping strings akin to a lullaby or nursery rhyme, with folk like percussion and pulsing harmonies. Leonard discussed the casual creation of the song in an interview with Boyculture, “Madonna would sit on the couch and I would sit at my keyboard and I would show her what I had and we would make adjustments and we started working on that song and it just didn’t quite make any sense at first — it was a subject matter question. I remember using the song and title “Dear Prudence” as a reference and she said, “What about ‘Dear Jessie’?” and I said, “That’ll work.” She then wrote those lyrics and sang that demo. Bad-ass.” The tempo abruptly changes during the bridge incorporating acoustic guitar and trumpet with layers of instrumentation. Leonard once discussed the genesis of the song further stating, “The music was very playful and it sounded like a child and Madonna started coming up with ‘pink’ elephants and lemonade’. I was saying it’s got a very Beatle-like attitude.” Rather interestingly, he notes very little difference between the demo recording of the track and the released product, “Truth is, we took the drums off. Otherwise, it’s the same recording. We added a couple other little things to it.” Dear Jessie is one of the most eclectic and ambitious songs, both on the album and within Madonna’s catalogue at the time.

The one duet on the album brings Madonna together with legendary recording artist Prince on the track Love Song. The song is a consummation of many attempts at a collaboration between the two, beginning with the concept of writing a musical together, which was abandoned early in development. Madonna notes “We just kept getting together and he seemed to fight the idea of just writing songs for a record together because he’s done that with so many people.” After Prince attended a performance of the 1988 broadway play Speed The Plow starring Madonna, he sent her a tape featuring music from their previous meetings. Love Song was born from this compilation and further develops themes of relationship and desire on the sonic backdrop of sparse drum machines and synths. Madonna notes the genesis of the song as being developed through a back and forth collaborative process, “What happened is that he played the drums and I played the synthesizer and we came up with the original melody line; I just, off the top of my head, started singing lyrics into the microphone.” The progression of the project however was completely collaborative as she discussed the writing of the track, “We kind of sent the tapes back and forth to each other and we keep building it, it was like he would write a sentence and I would add onto it. And then send it back to him and he would continue the story.” Madonna who played keyboard on the song, credits the unusual synth arrangements to her own limited knowledge and ability to play the instrument. The track intertwines nicely with the themes present throughout the album as she noted in a 1989 Rolling Stone interview, “Love Song” does have spirituality about it, the kind that exists between two people. It’s really about that push and pull of a relationship. The back and forth: I love you, I hate you. I want you, get away from me. You build me up and tear me down. That constant rubbing.”

Madonna has referred to Like A Prayer as an album about the unity and power of family. This theme is most evident on the second Bray collaboration present on the album, the funky Sly and The Family Stone inspired Keep It Together. The song would be the final single released from the album. She discussed the meaning of the track explaining, “Isolated by fame and shaken by the failure of my marriage, I could only reach out to the stability of my family roots, and “Keep It Together” is for that only.” Prince would feature on the song as a musician, playing guitar but remaining un-credited. Older musical styles and artists as Madonna mentions, would largely influence the composition of the song, “In the past, my records tended to be a reflection of current influences. This album is more about past musical influences.”

Pray For Spanish Eyes further develops the Spanish influence present in Madonna’s work on the previous album True Blue. A Collaboration between Madonna and Leonard (who also produced the similarly Latin inspired La Isla Bonita on True Blue and Who’s That Girl), she sings of a society ravaged by gang violence and the loss of lives to this epidemic. Madonna had long been a fan of Spanish music and the influence is further illustrated on this song. She noted in a 1989 interview, “I love Spanish singing. I’m very influenced by Spanish music. When I lived in New York for so many years I was constantly listening to salsa and merengue. I mean, that stuff was constantly blaring out of everybody’s radio on the street.” While lyrically there is constant reference to Latin culture, this is tied in with the religious motifs present throughout the album. Sonically, the track seems like a natural development of La Isla Bonita with Madonna immersing herself even more so in Spanish musical styles. Acoustic guitar complimented with Spanish horn arrangements and prominent keys create a noticeably visual experience to the song.

Act of Contrition closes the album in a particularly memorable fashion. A pseudo-reprise of Like A Prayer, the Andràe Crouch Choir contribution from the title track is sampled on this outro, albeit looped and played backwards. In conjunction with these samples are some unused guitar parts (performed by Prince) also sampled in reverse. Leonard recollected on the experience in a 1989 edition of music magazine Smash Hits, “The engineer just flipped over the tape of “Like A Prayer” and played it backwards and Madonna just sat there with the microphone and said a prayer, just like that. The guitar on it is Prince’s, when they worked on their song together he heard ‘Like A Prayer’ and loved it and wanted to do something on it, so we sent him a tape and he played a bunch or stuff, none of which we used on the released version, but it worked beautifully for that piece.” These unorthodox recording effects when combined together create a visceral and distorted experience. Madonna further elaborated on the recording of this unique track stating, “Pat put out a microphone, and I just started fooling around; and that was free-form, too. Whatever was on my head. It’s totally unedited.” This instrumentation in conjunction with Madonna’s prayer personifies the basis of her declaration on the album. There is a religious and spiritual dimension to the artist, however she will express them on her own terms and through her own expression.

While the project spurred many extended versions and remixes of the most of the album tracks, including an incredible extended remixed version of Like A Prayer featuring more of Prince’s contribution on guitar, the album would produce one original B Side. Supernatural. The track would appear as a B Side to the single release of Cherish. Leonard who produced the song with Madonna, discussed the track further, “It’s almost a novelty piece. The lyrics are about sleeping with someone who’s dead in a spiritual sense. It’s about sleeping with a ghost. It’s a real kind of weird funk tune with a very strange groove.” It’s not hard to see why the song did not appear on the final configuration; it is somewhat of an oddity both musically and lyrically from the themes and musical motifs of the rest of the album. It however, provides a fascinating insight into the experimental nature of the album sessions. Both Bray and Leonard have discussed tracks worked on during the Like A Prayer sessions that remain unreleased. Bray notes that two songs, one entitled First Is A Kiss supposedly about practicing safe sex and another, Love Attack produced during these sessions remain unreleased. He describes the former as being “a really catchy tune chock full of fantastic harmonies.” Leonard has discussed a completed unreleased track, entitled Angels With Dirty Faces recorded during these sessions, giving further clarity in 2017 after sharing a snippet of the song on Instagram, “It’s a finished song with her vocal that no one has ever heard and it’s pretty damn good.” He also briefly describes a number of instrumentals produced during the sessions that never got past basic development, ‘Boss’s Nova’ is a Latin feel idea that never got there. No vocal. Just an idea, ’20’s Jazz’, the same, as is ‘Mid Tempo’. Sparks that made no fire. It happens.” Madonna further elaborated on why certain tracks did not find a place on the finished project, “I wrote a lot of songs for the album, and then I went through a process of editing what I was going to keep or not. I feel that there is something that links all the songs together, a common theme having to do with Catholicism, family, relationships, things like that. I had written a lot of other songs, but I didn’t feel they went with the theme, so I cast them aside.” There were also tracks produced during these sessions however that were given to other artists. Songs such as Possessive Love, a track co-written and produced by Madonna, Leonard and Jai Winding, was given to pop singer Marilyn Martin for her 1988 album This Is Serious.

With the release of Like A Prayer in 1989, Madonna continued to solidify her place as one of the most exciting and daring artists in the music industry, as she would continue to do throughout her career. She favoured artistic integrity but also knew the power of being accessible with her craft, and in doing so continued to lead commercial and critical success as the decade drew to a close. She was also continuing to explore deeper themes with her writing and became increasingly introspective in her work and experimental musically. The album, music videos and corresponding Blond Ambition Tour would be among many highlights in the incredible career of one of the most crucial artists to contribute to the sound and visuals of popular music.

“What I do is total commercialism, but it’s also art. I like the challenge of doing both, of somehow making art that is accessible and making commerce something artistic. I think I have a very healthy point of view about myself.” — Madonna.

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Quotes Extracted From:

New York Times March 1989
Rolling Stone March Issue 1989
Songtalk 1989
Smash Hits Issue 1989
Interview May 1989
Billboard Magazine
Boyculture
Smash Hits May 1989
Molly Meldrum 1989 Interview

Special Thanks:
John Cameron
DrownedMadonna.com
AllAboutMadonna.com