Madonna’s Like A Prayer is an undeniable classic. Sung at bars and karaoke gatherings, it's a feel-good, pump-you-up tune for any occassion. Even people born a decade after the song’s 1989 release know the words by heart, and while the song has solidified its place in the pop music canon with its unforgettable melody and lyrics, the video for Like A Prayer, directed by Mary Lambert is equally memorable. The controversial music video shows a 30-year-old Madonna with a mop of black curls, scantily clad, in scenes that explore sexual, religious, and racial themes.
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The story goes as follows: Madonna witnesses a crime, and a black man is falsely accused. She hides in a church, where she prays to a black saint, presumably Saint Martin de Porres, who resembles the accused man. She then falls asleep on a pew and has a dream in which the saint comes to life and kisses her forehead. In the dream, Madonna also encounters an uplifting, gospel choir. She dances in front of burning crosses. At times, lines are blurred between Madonna reaching an ecstatic state of religious enlightenment or, well, an orgasm. (Also, the saint kisses her on the mouth, almost like a lover.) To make matters more sensitive, Madonna shimmies and grooves in a cleavage-baring slip dress with the straps sliding off.
Soon after its release, the video came under fire. It was reportedly banned on state television in Italy, and condemned by the Vatican. Madonna’s Pepsi ad featuring the song, which was relatively tame and showed the entertainer going back to her childhood, was protested by several family and religious groups after airing only twice in the U.S. (It depicted the jumpsuit-clad singer dancing with Catholic schoolgirls.)
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According to Madonna’s costume designer at the time, Marlene Stewart—who lso worked with the singer on music videos including Material Girl (1984) and Vogue (1990)—Madonna’s use of religious imagery all tied back to her Catholic upbringing. “From the beginning, she really had her cultural heritage steeped in Italian Catholicism and the Catholic Church. It has been a big part of her artistic expression,” she says. “I think this song shows a certain reverence and it consumes her life and being, but at the same time, she commingles it with ideas of sexual ecstasy and religious ecstasy.”
As always with Madonna, clothing plays a central part in the video. In the first scene, Madonna wears a coat that was from Stewart’s own wardrobe, which she notes had a religious significance: “The idea was that it was a priest’s robe, or of a religious order.” One of the most memorable pieces was Madonna’s structured slip dress. According to Stewart, she had found the chocolate-brown piece at Los Angeles’s Western Costume Company. “She used to wear lingerie as outerwear,” she says. “So I found this incredible slip with built-in boning, and it had ‘Natalie Wood’ the name inside of it, who it was made for. At the time, people used to make costumes and it had the name [of the celebrity] inside of it. It was used as an undergarment, but it was built like a dress because of the way they used to create costumes and slips. They had a lot more structure to them.” The lingerie was symbolic, she adds. “I think what it translates to is wanting to be provocative. It is the whole idea of having rules, like, ‘You can’t do this,’ ” she says. “If you follow the tenets of the religion, there is something about showing lingerie, wearing lingerie as outerwear, which is very sinful in some way. She was playing with and pushing that boundary.”
The timelessness of the look was intentional. “What was wonderful for me was that it was pre-commercial,” Stewart says. “I used to get designers sending me literally just closets full of clothes, wanting to put them on her. But as long as you just have things that are iconic and simple, it will always be about you and you aren’t a hanger for someone else.” In the case of Madonna, that’s an understatement.
