Robyn Gallagher

20. Like a Prayer (1989)

Life is a mystery;
everyone must stand alone.
I hear you call my name
and it feels like home. 

I’ll start with the first Like A Prayer video I saw, which was the Pepsi commercial. Madonna watches a home movie of her eighth birthday, dancing in the street, grooves with a gospel choir and generally has a lovely time.

Then the proper music video was released and everything changed.

The Like a Prayer video takes the religious hint in the song and amps it up to 11, but in a way that managed to actually offend the Pope. There’s a church full of Catholic icons and a big ol’ gospel choir. And a black Jesus.

The short peroxide do of the True Blue days has been grown into a dark, curly style. It’s loser and wilder. Madonna wears a black dress, and I remember afternoon kids show 3:45 Live gave away a replica, much to the annoying of a viewer’s grandma, who angrily wrote to the paper about the “negligee” being promoted on the children’s telly.

I remember being a little bit confused by the Like A Prayer video. The wax Jesus was a little bewildering, and I didn’t get the important plot point that Madonna had witnessed a murder.

It has a Southern gothic feeling, and I reckon if it can slightly creep out a 14-year-old girl, it’s doing its job. The wax-face Jesus - aaargh, what’s that all about?

But the song gets really joyful at the end, so there’s the need for a nice big choir session, where everyone’s happy and jumping around, yet still manages to keep the slightly creepy tone of the uber religious.

By the way, like most Madonna songs, this song can be about love or it can be about sex. In fact, I think this one can specifically be about love or blowjobs.

I was really surprised by the ending of this video, probably because it was always faded out by this point when it screened on the telly. The video ends with a theatre curtain falling, then rising for a cast bow. There’s Madonna, the cast and the gospel choir all taking a final bow.

Is this a way for Madonna to remind viewers that it’s not real, that it’s just a music video. You know her, she doesn’t really prance about in front of burning crosses!

By the way, I actually prefer the 1990 remix of Like a Prayer from the Immaculate Collection. It’s just that bit more slammin’ and is more of a religious experience (where “religion” = “ace pop music”) for me.

19. The Look of Love (1987)

This is odd. I had the Who’s That Girl soundtrack. It was on tape and I bonded with it for a few months before I leant it to a friend and never got it back. And yet I can’t remember this song.

What I can remember from the soundtrack is Best Thing Ever, the Scritti Politti song from the period when Green Gartside was going though his MUST… WRITE… POP phase.

This song - not to be confused with the similarly titled Dusty Springfield classic - seemed to have escaped my long-term memory. I guess it didn’t have much appeal to me as a 12-year-old.

But it’s a nice enough song. It’s quite moody and atmospheric, but would probably have benefited from a proper music video, not just a montage of clips from the film that are far too cheerful.

Oh, Madonna, don’t throw your best songs away.

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A historical note. Madonna and Sean Penn filed for divorce at the end of 1987. Madonna took a break from making music videos in 1988. The only release that year was You Can Dance, the remixes album. She was resting, refreshing, reinventing (new hair style), preparing herself for 1989 and what were to be some of her most brilliant music videos.

18. Causing a Commotion

I see a pattern here. Madonna gets involved with a film soundtrack, resulting in a period of film soundtrack singles with hands-off videos.

Like Dress You Up, this one is also from a live concert. The sound isn’t great, making an average song sound worse.

What interests me the most is the evolution of her stagewear. Madonna’s wearing the tassled corset from Open Your Heart, paired with some black trousers. I’m guessing that later in the concert the trousers came off for the full Open Your Heart chair dance.

It was only a couple of years after this that the full-on cone-bra-and-power-suit costume was perfected for the Blonde Ambition tour.

Madonna’s been getting a lot of use out of corsets. And they’re not those neo-burlesque corsets housemouses are squeezing themselves into these days. Madonna’s corsets weren’t about elevating bosom. They were all about control. She’s controlling her body as much as she’s controlling every thing else in her life.

Except the things she can’t quite control, like her fraying marriage, of which this song dealt.