Flashback: A Little Backstory On "Like A Prayer"

-Taken from 'The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits' by Fred Bronson.

Madonna had been absent from the Hot 100 for a year and a half when she released the first single from her album Like A Prayer. The title track debuted at 38 the week of March 18, 1989, and shot to number one 5 weeks later, making it the fastest-rising number one hit since Michael Jackson's "Bad" in 1987.

Madonna wrote and produced "Like A Prayer" with Patrick Leonard, who had collaborated on two of her previous chart-toppers, "Live To Tell", and "Who's That Girl". Leonard remembers "Like A Prayer"  being the first tune written for the album. "Originally it had bongos and Latin percussion, and we decided to eliminate that quickly", he says. "It was written and the lead vocal was recorded within about three hours. Most of the songs on that record were written just like that, in a few hours...Once she came up with 'Like A Prayer', we decided, 'We'll do this with the church organ and we'll add a choir to it, we'll add Andrae Crouch's choir later on.' It was that simple. It wasn't something that took weeks; this is something that took hours."

Madonna and Patrick met with Andrae Crouch to tell him what they had in mind. "He gets the choir together and they sort of wing it," says Leonard. "He knows what he's going to do and he knows what he's going to tell them...but I know he's making it up as he goes along. He's listened to it in his car and he thought about what he's going to do...and it's very inspired."

Madonna talked about her religious upbringing with Becky Johnston. "I have a great sense of guilt and sin from Catholicism that has definitely permeated my everyday life, whether I want it to or not. And when I do something wrong, or that I think is wrong...if I don't let someone know I've wronged, I'm always afraid I'm going to be punished. I don't rest easy with myself. And that's something you're raised to believe as a Catholic."

Madonna told Johnston how the video of the song developed. "Originally, when I recorded the song, I would play it over and over again, trying to get a visual sense of what sort of story or fantasy it evoked in me. I kept imagining this story about a girl who was madly in love with a black man, set in the South, with this forbidden interracial love affair. And the guy she's in love with sings in a choir. So she's obsessed with him and goes to church all the time. And then it turned into a bigger story, which was about racism and bigotry...Then Mary Lambert got involved as the director, and she came up with a story that incorporated more of the religious symbolism I originally wrote into the song."

Before like a prayer was released, Madonna signed a one-year, $5 million contract with Pepsi-Cola which would include a series of commercials and sponsorship of Madonna tour. The first commercial was scheduled to use the song "Like A Prayer". "I like the challenge of merging art and commerce, Madonna said in Rolling Stone. The Pepsi spot is a great and different way to expose the record...the music will be playing in the background, and the can of Pepsi is positioned very subliminally."

The commercial had a different storyline than the video. For Pepsi, Madonna relived a birthday party from childhood. The two-minute commercial aired March 2, 1989, for the first and last time in the United States. Pepsi cited "consumer confusion" between the commercial and the video for "Like A Prayer". Fundamentalist groups threatened a boycott against the company because of what they considered to be Madonnas "blasphemous" video, but Pepsi said they arrived at their decision to pull the spot independently. Company spokesperson Todd McKenzie said, "If you've got an ad that has people confused, it's only logical to pull it." Pepsi did not ask for their money back, and Madonna did not offer.