The Story of… ‘Like a Prayer’ by Madonna
Madonna’s iconic song ‘Like a Prayer’ was released 30 years ago this week, and it remains one of the greatest pop moments ever.
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But what inspired the song, who wrote it and where was the video filmed? Here’s all the important and fascinating facts:
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Who wrote ‘Like a Prayer’?
Madonna wrote the song with her long-time collaborator Patrick Leonard, and was included on her album of the same name in 1989.
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What inspired the song?
Madonna had not recorded any music throughout 1988, and following the critical and commercial failure of her films Shanghai Surprise and Who’s That Girl and the Broadway production Speed-the-Plow, she was in a creative crossroads.
Her marriage to actor Sean Penn ended, and she had also turned 30, the age at which her mother had died.
She said in the March 1989 issue of Rolling Stone that her Catholic upbringing gave her a feeling of guilt all the time: “Once you’re a Catholic, you’re always a Catholic — in terms of your feelings of guilt and remorse and whether you’ve sinned or not.
“Sometimes I’m wracked with guilt when I needn’t be, and that, to me, is left over from my Catholic upbringing. Because in Catholicism you are born a sinner and you are a sinner all of your life. No matter how you try to get away from it, the sin is within you all the time.”
She was also aware that her fanbase was growing up, and felt the need to record something totally different. She wanted her next album to dictate what could be popular in the music world going forward.
Madonna wanted to write about personal matters on her mind at the time, and for ‘Like a Prayer’, she chose topics she had never shared with the general public. She looked into her personal journals and diaries, and later recalled:
“What was it I wanted to say? I wanted the album to speak to things on my mind. It was a complex time in my life.”
Read the full article at SmoothRadio.com
