Like A Prayer (song) - Legacy

Legacy

"'Like a Prayer' is a very important song to me. I felt the impact that it was going to make. That song means a lot more to me than 'Like a Virgin'. I wrote it and it's from my heart. It's a very spiritual song. I think I was much more spiritually in touch with the power of words and music by the time I started recording the song and the album."

—Madonna speaking of "Like a Prayer"'s importance to her.

"Like a Prayer" is considered by both critics and fans to be one of Madonna's best songs and one of the greatest songs ever. It was ranked sixth on Blender magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born", while Rolling Stone included it in their list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", at number 300. In 2003, Madonna fans were asked to vote for their "Top 20 Madonna singles of all-time", by Q magazine. "Like a Prayer" was allocated the number one spot on the list. Another similar poll conducted by MSN Entertainment in 2008 had the same result.

Campbell noted that the popularity and the media mayhem surrounding the song and the music video helped introduce a very important factor in the celebrity world: the reception of free publicity. "Like a Prayer"'s impact was more evident on its parent studio album, which shot to the top of the charts once it was released in April 1989. The music video also served as evidence of the emergence of the video commodity as a different entity from the song that spawned it. As author Judith Marcus argued in her book Surviving the Twentieth Century, Madonna used the church to make her point on victimization. For Marcus, the main impact of the video lies in the fact that Madonna emerged from the role of a victim by "empowering" herself. The author asserted that the video metaphorically "attacked" the Church's demand for female compliance, indicted the Church's precept of a dichotomy between body and spirit, and at the same time assailed the Church's denial of female spirituality. Campbell noted that the video does not follow any definite narrative, although there is a plethora of images in it. He found sequences where Madonna does not sing the song, but her voice is heard, as most interesting since it pointed out the rapid evolution of the music video medium and Madonna's own work, which had moved beyond a simple capture of a live performance, as was the case for the music video of her first single, "Everybody" (1982); by 1989, such videos were already a distant memory.

Like the video, the song was noted for merging disparate and contradictory musical features in it. Campbell found that the simple melody of "Like a Prayer" offered an easy listen, as the contrasts in sound, rhythm and texture appealed to different target audiences. The usage of choir and organ in the song was an unprecedented blend of pop with religious music, which paved the way for gospel music to be more mainstream than before. In 1999, the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance held a seminar on the different implications and metaphors present in the song; it was headed by professors Martin Katz, George Shirley and Michael Daugherty. The main topic discussed was the fact that there can be different metaphorical meanings of the song, as the word "like" can be taken in separate contexts. Shirley explained that although when one thinks of "Like a Prayer", they would first think of its visual aspects, but for him the lyrics are far more important as they reinforce the postmodern nature of the video. The ambiguity of the word "like" blurs distinctions between a human lover and God, evident strongly in the line "Like a child, you whisper softly to me". This was further explained by Katz, who added: "The music of 'Like a Prayer' is probably a mitigating one, blunting and softening the harder edges, the more challenging content of the lyrics and the video."

Taraborrelli commented that "in the end, the events surrounding 'Like a Prayer' only served to enhance Madonna's reputation as a shrewd businesswoman, someone who knows how to sell a concept." Before Madonna's deal with Pepsi, pop stars in general were not given much artistic freedom by sponsors. However, Madonna had said from the very first day that she would be doing the commercial in her very own way, which Pepsi had to accept. While she said that it was never her intention that Pepsi be the fall guy in the fiasco surrounding the video, Taraborrelli argues that Madonna stayed true to herself. Although the commercial intended to promote Pepsi the soft drink, she did not bother to hold even a can of the product, leading Taraborrelli to comment that "Madonna the pop star was going to do it her way, no matter what Madonna the businesswoman had agreed to do." She maintained all along that the Pepsi ad and the music video were two different commodities and she was right to stand her ground. Taraborrelli noted that after "Like a Prayer", the recruitment of pop stars and athletes to sell soft drinks became commonplace. However, none of them generated the level of excitement on par with Pepsi's failed deal with Madonna.