Background and Development
Madonna worked on the album with Stephen Bray and Patrick Leonard, who she collaborated with for 1986's True Blue. She also enlisted the help of fellow icon Prince for their duet on "Love Song". Madonna co-wrote and co-produced every song on the album. Recording began in September 1988 and continued until January 1989. Madonna and her husband Sean Penn filed for divorce in January 1989, following a nullified divorce filing in late 1987 and several well-publicized fights involving Penn, one of which led to a 60-day prison term. The incident inspired the song "Til Death Do Us Part", which details the failed marriage. Like a Prayer developed an introspective theme, utilizing confessional lyrics about personal issues. Madonna described the album as a collection of songs "about my mother, my father, and bonds with my family. It's taken a lot of guts to do this." It was claimed the album was her "most different" work to date.
Like a Prayer was dedicated to Madonna's mother, who died when Madonna was five. The songs "intertwine her search for faith with her search for her mother." Madonna's struggle with religion inspired the album. "The theme of Catholicism runs rampant through my album", she said. "It's me struggling with the mystery and magic that surrounds it. My own Catholicism is in constant upheaval." "The album is drawn from what I was going through when I was growing up", Madonna told Rolling Stone. She added, "I'm still growing up."
Read more about this topic: Remixed Prayers
Famous quotes containing the words background and, background and/or development:
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)