I LOVE Madonna (part 6 section g)

Number 1 – Like A Prayer. Released: March 21st, 1989.

By the time Madonna released 1986’s True Blue, most critics had written her off as pop fluff. Even though she was beginning to expand her musical range with songs like ‘Live to Tell’, ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ and La Isla Bonita’, most of that album was radio light. By the time her forth studio album was released, most of the world was anticipating the same ole, same ole.
With the decline of her marriage to Sean Penn behind her Madonna released what has been called her greatest and most personal record to date. ‘Like A Prayer’ found the singer growing up with a collection of pop confections layered with live instrumentation, sophisticated arrangements, deeply felt lyrics, and a stronger, more assured vocal. This was the beginning of Madonna, the musical adventurer.

The album opens with a clamouring guitar riff that explodes and transcends into the angelic first chords of the title track. “Life is a mystery/Everyone must stand alone/I hear you call my name/And it feels like home.” Go the lyrics in what is arguably Madonna’s best song. A church organist’s fingers dance across the keyboards for the song’s dramatic build to the Andrae Crouch Choir’s (led my Niki Harris) joyful vocal performance, carrying the song to heights no pop song has climbed to before, or since. This is the closest Madonna’s music has ever come to being a religious experience.
From salvation to inspiration, we get lead into a blockbuster of a track. ‘Express Yourself’ sees Madonna demanding a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and getting women to demand it to. “Don’t go for second best, Baby/Put your love to the test” go the lyrics that, eighteen years later, are more insightful then what comes out of the majority of pop starlets today. This also saw Madonna at her most vocally powerful and soulful since her early days.
The merging of two musical institutions took place, and the result was ‘Love Song’. Madonna and Prince perform a brave and unconventional duet that takes it’s time to grow on you, but leaves it’s mark once it has. Although it has it’s critics, I love the fact the song sounds at odds with itself, especially with the ‘I’m over you’ lyrics of “Don’t try to tell me what your enemies taught you/I’m gone/But I just want you to know/this is not a love song that I want to sing.” The knife is in and then she twists it.

The compelling, ‘Till Death Do Us Part’ is a song where Madonna, seemingly confronted her own personal demons, pours her heart out about her turbulent first marriage. Madonna neatly glides along the windy, complex music arrangements and manages to sound sorrowful on top of the running upbeat melody as she delivers punch “I think I interrupt your life” after punch “The bruises they will fade away/You hit so hard with the things you say” until the final, heart breaking confession of truth that will ring true to most women in abusive relationships “She's had enough, she says the end/But she'll come back, she knows it then/A chance to start it all again/Till death do us part”. Madonna has never since been so brave in painting her personal life through lyrics.
The heart-wrenching piano-ballad "Promise To Try" touches on the death of her mother, and is sung to her childhood self, perhaps in a way of distancing herself a little from a part of her life she still had yet to come to terms with. “Don't let memory play games with your mind/She's a faded smile frozen in time” go the lyrics that at times are too emotionally honest to bear. Anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one, while young, will relate and understand the inner turmoil one faces in trying to remember what little you can, and using photographs to fill in the blanks.
‘Cherish’ is a delightful confection of radio-friendly pop that returns to her more traditional, earlier sound. The melody is tight and punchy giving it an overly infectious feel whilst Madonna’s tone sounds playful. This joyous little whirl of a song is followed by another in ‘Dear Jessie’. Dedicated to her co-writer, Patrick Leonard’s daughter, this is a Beatles inspired, Sgt. Pepper-esque, slice of magic. Never before or since has Madonna sounded so, well, motherly as she sings about pink elephants and leprechauns in a delightful lullaby of a song.

As ‘Dear Jessie’ ends, the string arrangement turns somber, and leads us into the modulated hook and over dubbed harmonies of ‘Oh Father’. Madonna exercises the demons she held over her father’s behaviour after the death of her mother. Perhaps overly dramatic in the lyrics “Maybe someday/When I look back I'll be able to say/You didn't mean to be cruel/Somebody hurt you too” can be forgiven since it appears she is singing this as her past self without hindsight. In whatever aspect this song is meant, it is still a dark and powerful expression of childhood confusion, and parental grief.
‘Keep It Together’, which evokes Sly & The Family Stone’s ‘Family Affair’ without the use of samples or artless imitation, is another soulful corker of a song. With it’s lyrics of family unity and strength, Madonna seems to be directly addressing the her of ‘Oh Father’. “When I look back on all the misery/And all the heartache that they brought to me/I wouldn't change it for another chance/'Cause blood is thicker than any other circumstance”.
She bravely and elegantly confronts the (in 1989) still taboo issue of AIDS with ‘Spanish Eyes’. With its purring Spanish guitar and atmospheric and reflective lyrics, Madonna moves into social commentary, as she personally deals with friends inflicted with the disease, and who had died while she was a struggling artist on the streets of New York. “I light this candle and watch it throw/Tears on my pillow/And if there is a Christ, he'll come tonight/To pray for Spanish eyes/And if I have nothing left to show/Tears on my pillow/What kind of life is this if God exists/Then help me pray for Spanish eyes.” Madonna was showing great improvement lyrically as she was musically and vocally on ‘Like A Prayer’, but she still retained her wit and humour. On ‘Act Of Contrition she recites the Catholic prayer of forgiveness before death, over a rock riff and the title track’s vocals playing backwards (usually considered a sign of the occult by those crazy fanatics). When she reaches the gates of Heaven the woman who was named after the virgin mother of Jesus is shocked to find that her reservation has been dubiously deleted from the host's computer.

Although the album may not have the musical and lyrical flow of ‘Erotica’ and ‘Ray of Light’, it was the platform from which Madonna, as a musical envelope pusher, jumped off. Translating her pain and her joy into music, she was finally able to move out of the pop trappings, and open herself up, and the world, to the endless ways that popular music can touch. Issues of Religion and Catholicism, Sex, Feminism, Divorce, Death and Family each demand your attention, and are presented with the confidence of woman hitting her stride.
It could be said that each Madonna album takes her, for better or for worse, to the next level in her growth. In that case ‘Like a Prayer’ was the death of a Pop Star and the birth of an Artist.