Video will appear as you scroll through the story
Madonna · S4 E5
The Pepsi Deal
$5 million, the Vatican, a boycott, and why she kept the money anyway
March 2, 1989. Two hundred and fifty million people tune in to watch a Pepsi commercial featuring Madonna and her new song, "Like a Prayer." Twenty-four hours later, the actual music video drops on MTV, and Pepsi executives watch burning crosses fill their television screens.
"Secret" (1994). Five years after the Pepsi scandal, Madonna releases a song about hidden truths and double lives. The video, shot in a smoky Harlem after-hours club, is all shadows and ambiguity. Madonna has always operated with a public version and a private version running simultaneously. "Secret" is the closest she comes to admitting the duality is the design.
The $5 Million Handshake
The deal is straightforward: Pepsi pays Madonna $5 million to premiere "Like a Prayer" in a television commercial during The Cosby Show. The ad is wholesome and nostalgic, featuring Madonna watching home movies of her childhood birthday party. Pepsi gets the biggest pop star in the world. Madonna gets a global audience for her new single and a check that clears before anyone sees what she has planned.
TAP TO REVEAL: Did Madonna know what would happen when the music video aired?
“I didn't do anything wrong. I made a commercial for Pepsi, and I made a video for myself. They're two different things.”
— Madonna, press conference, April 1989
PepsiCo Headquarters, Purchase, New York
The corporate campus where executives approved a $5 million deal with Madonna without seeing the music video for the song they were sponsoring. The Pepsi commercial and the MTV video are two completely separate productions. Pepsi only saw their version.
The Fallout
Till Death Do Us Part
From Like a Prayer (1989). The most brutally honest song on the album, hidden in plain sight. The title borrows from the wedding vow, but the lyric reads like a diary entry from the worst night of a marriage: arguments that escalate, doors that slam, silence that is worse than shouting. Co-written with Patrick Leonard during the final months of her marriage to Sean Penn, it never becomes a single, never gets a video, and most fans skip it. That invisibility is what makes it powerful.
Who directed the "Like a Prayer" music video that caused Pepsi to pull their commercial?
The Pepsi scandal is prelude. The Like a Prayer album is about to arrive, and it will be the record that elevates Madonna from pop star to cultural force.
0 XP earned this session