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Madonna · S4 E6
Like a Prayer
The burning crosses, the stigmata, the Billboard chart: the most controversial music video of the decade
Patrick Leonard's home studio in Encino, late 1988. Madonna sits at his piano, plays a chord progression she has never shared with anyone, and three hours later the title track of the most important album of her career is finished.
"Rain" (1993). Four years after Like a Prayer, Madonna makes a video that is essentially a love letter to the creative process. Shot in black and white and color, it shows her performing alone on a soundstage, no spectacle, no controversy. The connection to Like a Prayer is about what happens when Madonna strips the armor off. "Rain" is the rarest thing in her catalog: a moment of pure vulnerability without an agenda.
The Confessional Album
Like a Prayer is the record Madonna makes when everything in her personal life is falling apart: the Penn marriage is ending, her relationship with her father remains fractured, and the Catholic guilt she left Michigan with has never gone away. She takes all of it into the studio with Patrick Leonard and Stephen Bray and makes the most critically acclaimed album of her career. Rolling Stone gives it four and a half stars.
“I wanted to make a record that sounded like a prayer, and felt like a confession. Something that came from a real place. Not a character. Not a provocation. Just me.”
— Madonna, on the making of Like a Prayer
TAP TO REVEAL: How long did it take to write the "Like a Prayer" title track?
Johnny Yuma Recording, Burbank
One of the studios where Like a Prayer takes shape through late 1988 and early 1989. The Burbank recording complex is close enough to Hollywood to feel like the industry, but far enough to feel like work. Madonna spends months here with Patrick Leonard, building the album that will redefine what people expect from her.
Like a Prayer by the Numbers
Pray for Spanish Eyes
From Like a Prayer (1989). The album track that disappears between the hits and never gets the attention it deserves. A languid, Latin-flavored ballad co-written with Patrick Leonard, it sits on the album like a postcard from a quieter life. The vocal is gentle, almost whispered, and the production is warm and spacious. After the thunderstorm of "Like a Prayer" and the controversy of the Pepsi deal, this is Madonna exhaling.
Which Like a Prayer track is widely believed to be about Madonna's volatile marriage to Sean Penn?
She has survived the marriage, the tabloids, the Vatican, and the film critics. Next season: she stops playing defense and launches the most audacious creative offensive of her career, from Vogue to the cone bra to Blond Ambition.
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To be continued
Season 5: Blond Ambition
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