MADONNA – “Like A Prayer”
A wonderfully simple, wonderfully dense record. “When you call my name / It’s like a little prayer / I’m down on my knees / I want to take you there”. That’s just the chorus: 21 words, and what’s happening in them? A pun on Madonna’s name, setting up her dual role as divinity and supplicant, receiving a prayer while on her knees, drawing a parallel between the (apparently) fixed relationship of worship and the mutual shifts of self and role in sex. Which is all “Like A Prayer” is, even before you look at the video: sex and religion, entwined like lovers all through the song, their identities melting.
The choice of “little” in that chorus isn’t accidental – it’s an Aretha call-back, Madonna putting herself in a tradition of women who steer a way in pop between the devout and the earthy (before exploding the idea of that ‘between’). She’s also inviting direct comparison between her stuff and the soul and pop canon 80s tastemakers have spent the entire decade working to sanctify. It’s easy enough to sit down and try and make a ‘classic pop single’, though – we’ll see plenty of examples of that, mostly hamstrung by caution. “Like A Prayer” bears some of the trappings of the intended masterpiece – hark! a choir! – and occasionally I play it and it feels too detached, missing the snap and bite of even a weaker early single. But those times are outweighed by the times I come back to it and end up transported. (My instinctive reaction as “Like A Prayer” starts to peak is to raise my eyes to heaven.)
Her voice has lost some of its rough, snarky hunger, but that was on the way out in any case: the roleplay of “Papa Don’t Preach” aside, none of her True Blue hits had much venom. One of the things “Like A Prayer” is doing is inventing a new voice for Madonna – contemplative, compassionate, but distant too. It’s the voice she’ll use on her ballads for the next decade at least. Here, working with the wash of organ and choir, she uses it to sound iconic in a literal sense – like a colour-saturated picture of her namesake on a mantelpiece, lips suddenly moving in miraculous benediction: “Life is a mystery…”
From that beginning “Like A Prayer” builds then falls back, establishes space then fills it – it’s perhaps the only pop song which actually deserves the term “sonic cathedral” – then breaks out halfway through to reveal an even larger scale. In the Immaculate Collection mix most of this build and release is ruined by a galumphing house beat: I love house music and all its works but on this occasion the hi-hat is the devil’s trick and the righteous should avoid it. (And let’s not even consider the “whoa – yeah!” guy.)
The danger of making something ‘epic’ is that the details get lost, but “Like A Prayer” avoids this. Take, as one touch of many, the way the beat comes in for the first time under that long “home” in the intro: faintly latin, all disco, discreetly dispelling the aura of kitsch the intro has teased us with. It’s also a hint that ‘home’ might mean the club, the party, the world that the song finishes so triumphantly in, with the gospel soloists and Prince’s guitar and a horde of imaginary dancers all joining in together. Or the way the rhythm guitars switch between low-end grind to high-end skip and jangle during that climax. By then the song is romping home, triumphant, and the switch is a memory of its undertow, a reminder that this release was earned.
Very few of Madonna’s other hits are quite so obvious in their ambition, very few as clearly personal. But if “Like A Prayer” was only interesting in the arc of her own life and career it wouldn’t be so good. It feels immense not just because it’s long, or addressing big themes, but because it manages to pull together the strands of a pop decade as rich and confusing as itself. New pop’s sense of the pop single as event; the rediscovery of soul and gospel roots; the power of celebrity; the continued evolution and relevance of club music; even and especially the skyscraping portent of stadium rock. Pop stars are always having to prove themselves – they rarely earn the right to coast, and while this is the most renowned of Madonna’s event singles it’s not the first or last. But it’s the best, even though I’m usually suspicious of great singles which seem designed intentionally to be that: “Like A Prayer” pulls off everything it’s trying to achieve, and it’s trying a lot.
10
[...] is a mystery By humanizingthevacuum Another excellent Ewing review. This one, part of his years-long project of dissecting every British number one single: [...]
This is a great record. A worthy 10.
Maybe the idolators understand the magic of pop better than anybody else, even, or especially, the idols they worship; since where the idols can get rattled, depressed, uncertain, pig out on drugs, turn up four hours late for a concert, become negligent with regard to their duties to the Inland Revenue, make crappy records, or die, the idolators will happily accept and embrace all of it; because they are dizzy with unquestionable and unquestioned love for those they choose to idolise, whatever their idols may do, and however painfully they might hurt them. If the new album’s substandard, it’s because we aren’t quite worthy of it, we’re not advanced or close enough to appreciate what drove the artist to extract ten-year-old rejects from their bottom drawers and pass it off as new music. As with football teams, or parents, we stand by them, regardless. Not for idolators the exhaustive, exhausting schemata of the open to and sceptical of everything “critics,” those who can securely classify the differing degrees of their love for different aspects of the same anatomy, the people who just know that the Verve lost something vital when they gained that auxiliary definite article, who are fully aware that Morrissey or Björk are career variables whom the rational would only approach every five years or so. But then, what truck has pop ever had with rationalism, especially when it comes to adding up the total bill for territories gained or souls lost? After all, we idolise idols precisely because of their superhuman status; they can do things we can’t, or won’t. They are never like us; even with the alleged democratisation of punk it quickly became clear that only John Lydon could ever hope to be John Lydon.
From her name upwards, Madonna knew that she had to be worshipped if she were to mean anything, and that another couple of years of “La Isla Bonita”s would lower her perspective to a curious over-shoulder gaze from newly disinterested consumers. So she had to come back with a blockbuster, something that Debbie or Gloria or even Belinda couldn’t have achieved, for all their various reasons. When the single of “Like A Prayer” came out it seemed to stop the rest of pop, momentarily but vitally; as with “Two Tribes,” it made everyone else in the Top 40 at the time seem like trespassers on newly privatised land.
The perspective of Madonna aspiring to God(dess)hood on “Like A Prayer” – she gives a barely perceptible whisper of “God” at the beginning of the track before the backwards guitars flood in and immediately slam, smashed, into a decisive wall of steel in order to suggest that all “rock” had been leading to this – has to be considered in balance with the rest of the Like A Prayer album, which focuses, at times very sorely, on the fallacies and mortalities of mothers (“Promise To Try”), fathers (“Oh Father”), errant husbands (“’Till Death Us Do Part”) and Prince (“Love Song”). Along with Erotica it is Madonna’s most palpably human record.
From the intro onwards – and the song may or may not have involved his active participation, as musician, writer and/or producer – it is also hard to imagine “Like A Prayer” without the immense precedent of Prince to inspire it; here is the dayglo Dadaism familiar from Sign ‘O’ The Times, mixed with peculiar logic into that brew of unquenchable spiritual faith (“The Cross”), although the influence of the Pet Shop Boys (especially “It’s A Sin”) can hardly be discounted. “Like A Prayer” is perhaps the only pop single of the late eighties which could use a gospel choir and get away with it; Andrae Crouch and his Disciples are an indispensable part of the song’s architecture, rather than a tacky addendum. The use of the church organ is as unarguable and definitive as, say, Scott Walker’s “Manhattan” or Arcade Fire’s “Intervention.”
The song itself is all about worship, and Madonna seems intent on arguing passionately against the opening proposal of “Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone” since she goes on to demonstrate how impossible it is to live a life of any description on one’s own. As the video depicted the tableau of the black saint and the sinner lady, so does Madonna blend spiritual and carnal with a recklessness comparable with the Spencer of Cookham; thus the line “When you call my name, it’s like a little prayer” could have been sung by the Ronettes or the Shangri-Las a generation earlier, but then we get the more explicit “In the midnight hour, I can feel your power” – and the question here is: who is worshipping, and who is asking to be worshipped? Note that it’s the “you” who is calling Madonna’s name but this is enough to get her “down on my knees.” And later, there’s the ambiguous “You’re in control, just like a child/Now I’m dancing” – so again the idol here could be parent as well as, or instead of, lover or God; and really the three (the Holy Trinity!) all merge into one (“Just like a dream, you are not what you seem”).
The record really takes off immediately after the second verse, when the dual basses of Randy Jackson and Guy Pratt make their dramatic entrance underneath the church organ and the intensity of the “Life is a mystery” couplet is doubled; eventually it resolves into an epic call-and-response between Madonna and choir and absolution, or orgasm, is reached – but then recall the end of the video, after the burning crosses and the stigmata, when the black Christ figure is revealed merely to be a prisoner in a police cell; the curtains draw and reopen as Madonna and her cast take a bow (another clue to the future there). Illusion, a six-minute diversion – or can it be mistaken for transcendence?
Despite the hopped-up controversy of the video and Pepsi’s precipitous cold feet, all that Madonna really does with “Like A Prayer” is amplify the age-old conflict between spiritual and carnal in art and attempt to resolve it by sheer force of will and personality. Of course, throughout the record we are kept aware that this worship is “like a prayer” rather than a prayer in itself, rather than, say, “My Prayer” by the Platters – a song and group whose roots both go back deep into an unreachable church. If finally “Like A Prayer” has to take second place to “Running Up That Hill” – not simply because Kate Bush is, in the end, the greater and profounder talent, but also because where “Like A Prayer” compares to God (passive), Bush is intent on making a deal with God (active). And it was far from the only radical single in the charts of the period. But it was, by necessity first and desire second, the biggest; it possesses a grace which “Hey Jude” couldn’t quite grasp, it drops the mask, just as Madonna drops the blonde in the video, and reveals its singer as someone who feels, breathes, cries and shits just like the people who idolise her. Pop was obliged to take a breath, and count again.
Great stuff Punctum! (My guilty confession is that the “Just like a child / Now I’m dancing” segue currently and inescapably brings to mind Old Spice Guy and his “I’m on a horse” antics. Understandably I did not find room for this in the review)
After being over-exposed for almost the whole period of 1984 to 1987, she went away and came back as ‘artist’, hence this single and the album was an Event back in 1989. I remember the hippy rumours : the album sleeve smelt of patchouli oil and she did a few hippy-ish photoshoots (long Woodstock red hair).
This is where Madonna began fusing her media manipulation savvy with a Bowie-esque set of identities over the decade – she started hanging out with Sandra Bernhard etc, doing an ‘are we/aren’t we?’ interview on Letterman. I remember Martin Amis, at the time the ‘Sex’ book came out on 1992 commenting how, given the nudity, the stuff about her marriage etc, the one thing Madonna never revealed about herself was the creative process – as someone else said above, the music was something to hang the star persona on.
But this is about the music: it’s a great pop song, off a great album, which maybe in retrospect seems just a little too calculated, with not a chord, word or beat out of place, so I give it a 9.
Btw that link/comparison with Running Up That Hill (which came out 25 years ago this month…) is inspired.
I’ve just looked up the chart for 18 March 1989, and while its true that Madonna stands apart from everything else, it really was something of a golden age, incorporating;
4. Donna Summer – This Time I Know Its For Real
6. Paula Abdul – Straight Up
9. S-Express – Hey Music Lover
12. The Reynolds Girls – I’d Rather Jack
14. Soul II Soul – Keep On Movin’
17. Dusty Springfield – Nothing Has Been Proved
22. New Order – Round & Round
26. Bobby Brown – My Prerogative
28. Alyson Williams – Sleep Talk
32. Kon Kan – I Beg Your Pardon
40. Holly Johnson – Love Train
I am embarrassed to note that amongst this embarrassment of riches, my greatest enthusiasm at the time was ‘Who Wants To Be The Disco King?’ by The Wonderstuff, down one at number 29…
@28, 30. But ‘Running up that Hill’ isn’t a relig. song as such, right? It’s about men and women not understanding each others’ perspectives. God just enters as a strictly hypothetical, magic amulet to effect the desired understanding. Kate could just as easily have said something like “If I only could/click my red shoes together/and get us to swap our places…” No genuinely active deal-making is anticipated, and, goodness knows, a gospel choir on the track would have been farcical. So the comparison doesn’t work.
I understand that the point’s a tricky one, after all ‘God only knows’ isn’t officially a relig. song either, the endlessly repeated word ‘God’ notwithstanding. And yet and yet there’s an overall hymn-like, gloriousness to that tune and its backing so that some quasi-religious feeling sneaks in after all!
XTC’s Dear God was a pretty big ‘college radio’ hit in the US throughout 1988 and 1989. And go here for what the President at the time (Bush I) thought about atheists.
@31. Made of Stone enters at #90!
Wonderful reviews from Tom and punctum, which have me dithering over my score even as I write. “Like a Prayer” was certainly a watershed moment in my own appreciation of Madonna, whose work held less and less interest for me in the late 1980s. This demanded attention, though, and when I shared a flat in 1991 with a Madonna fan it became my clear favourite.
I never thought of it as a 10, though, but now I know why: like Billy @5, I’m amazed to realize that I’ve been listening to the wrong version all along, thanks to my non-fan impulse to get the compilation rather than the original album. The single mix (on the video) is clearly superior, and has to bump up the 8 I was considering giving it.
I’m still shy of a 10, I think. In comparison to many of the late-’80s number ones, it clearly stands out, but something about it just doesn’t push my personal 10 button. So, a 9 for now.
I’ve never understood why people rate this song so highly. For me, it’s the least accomplished of the four singles off that album and certainly one of her lesser Number Ones. Compared to, say, Into The Groove or even Who’s That Girl the arrangement sounds clumsy and ill-thought out and the gospel choir just feels cliched. And that’s before you take into account the whole boring ‘controversial’ Christ video yadda yadda yadda. Just a 5 from me, where as Express Yourself and Cherish would be both 9s.
#32: Why do you always have to be one of these people who searches to find the one wrong thing in any argument?
#32 maybe the comparison you’re looking for would be Candi Staton’s “You Got The Love”. It’s closer in sentiment to LAP than “God Only Knows” or “Running Up That Hill”.
An excellent post and lots of excellent comments, worth the wait! Nothing to add other than, re-listening to the album right now, it’s extraordinarily varied (as Punctum points out, prob. influenced by Sign O The Times’ omnivorous appetite) and high end from start to finish. True Blue really pales alongside it.
Speaking of pale, I’m sure other blondes had gone to the dark side to show their serious intent before this, but can’t think of any off the top of my head.
Quoting “a little prayer” might be Madonna positioning herself alongside Aretha and strong women, but by singing “in the midnight hour” two lines later I’d guess she’s more likely to be signposting a switch to soulful ie serious pop, in the grand/dying 80s tradition.
You heathens over here might not have batted an eyelid at the religious overtones of the video, but in Good Catholic Ireland it was headline news. The video was either banned or heavily watershedded – I can’t remember which – with enough loud scandal that every teenager in the country went hunting for it – those with BBC/ITV access were suddenly very popular.
Re: 38. The first blonde to follow Madonna’s lead and go dark to signify a change of intent was, of couse, Tracy Tracy of The Primitives that summer, as ‘Sick Of It’ failed to capture the public imagination. I wonder if Chris Roberts was disappointed…
#38 Debbie Harry in Videodrome, or was she going back to her natural colour?
#38/40 Long preceding Madonna was Debbie Harry for the disastrous “Koo Koo ” solo LP in 1981. When that went down the tube she grabbed a blonde wig for the cover of Blondie’s next LP “The Hunter” but it was too late.
#41 Blonde isn’t Madonna’s natural colour either as those old Penthouse snaps made very clear !
Great write-up Tom – especially considering that it’s something of an impossible task to sum this song up in such a short space, it’s weirdly hard even to write a comment that feels adequate. So much packed into it – the most impressive aspect of it, in terms of craft, is the ease with which it reflects its themes of religious and sexual rapture in its own sound – even more so than the inevitable (but gloriously so) gospel choir, it’s moments like that amazing key change entering the bridge.
It’s one of the Madonna songs that I find most emotionally affecting – it’s almost cathartic, this huge resolution of all that sex/religion tension. So dismissing it as attention-seeking controversy isn’t quite the right angle for me, though obviously it’s part of it; what I hear isn’t Madonna starting (or continuing) beef with the Catholic Church, but her laying to rest the beef it started with her, freeing herself from the hooks with which it trapped her as a child. I hear it partially as revenge: a woman who knows that all eyes and ears are on her, and using her voice to conflate religious worship with oral sex in all those minds. And, from a more generous angle, affirming the purity and holiness of sex and sexuality, completely exploding the Church-fuelled idea that it was something to be ashamed of or guilty about. And I don’t hear this as mere controversy-seeking; taking on an institution in this manner is brave and gutsy, no matter how famous you are yourself.
So, the song gets an easy [10]; the album, though, I find totally overrated. It has its moments – I love “Oh Father” particularly – but a lot of it lives in the shadow of the title track; it definitely feels like it got critical props because of a) critics making up for previously underrating or dismissing her, b) its defining characteristics being serious, critic-friendly ones. I’d put it beneath Erotica, True Blue, Madonna, Bedtime Stories and maybe even Ray Of Light.
Tom also OTM about The Immaculate Collection; it was my introduction to all of M’s ’80s hits, and I loved them from the off so it couldn’t have botched them to the point of total wreckage, but compared to the originals those remixes really are travesties. So wrong that it’s the default entry point to her back catalogue.
Yes I think the ho-humming re SACRILEGE! is a generational diffidence also, maybe? those of us old enough to remember actual prosecutions for blasphemy were heartened and entertained by all this side of things — well, i was, anyway
#45 I think the UK response to all that stuff was a bit muted after Ken Russell, Life of Brian et al; it didn’t have that sort of impact. We had moved on to the Rushdie controversy at this point in time.
@36. Everything else you wrote was right-on and pretty much wish-I’d written-it great. My quick mention of XTC and Bush was meant to contribute positively to your very good idea that there was a kind of resurgence in religious themes in culture at large at the time. (I spent the whole 90s in the US and this basic point became urgent – part of the peace dividend from the end of the cold war turned out to be spent on finding new enemies and fighting culture wars at home. Damn it!) Sorry if I came across as completely negative.
@38. Other blonde->dark: Nico, Debbie Harry in The Hardest Part vid.. Not sure of the motivations in those cases. Mad. herself was very clear in interviews that she always felt more ethereal as a blonde, and now at least for this song she wanted to come down to earth.
yes i agree the battles had largely already been fought, what i mean is that there was a pleasure in they’re having been safely won over here — in our place for our times — as opposed to an active “bored now, this is old news” response, which seems a jadedness too far…
Interesting, this blonde vs brunette angle. Who exactly decided that blonde represented frivolousness and absence of gravitas, as opposed to brunette’s more seriousness and absence of fun? There are exceptions from the blonde camp like Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly. I’m struggling to come up with a ditzy brunette.
I like this but only up to a 6 or 7 as I’m another who finds it to be more than a bit overcooked as Madonna falls prey to “superstar comes back with BIG single” syndrome and does far more than she needs to with it. But, as the teachers say, full marks for effort. She does sound good on it though and I loved the LAP album (and wish I still had my copy with the perfumed inner sleeve)