Madonna, Prince, and Michael Jackson are typically said to comprise the (un)holy triumvirate of world bestriding 80s pop universalism, the “first stars of MTV” who were, intriguingly, all born in the summer of 1958. In my opinion, Prince does not quite belong in the company of the other two; he didn’t sell as many records as they did and, ultimately, he was more of an auteur, an inventive, off-the-wall (no pun intended) mad scientist preoccupied with pushing musical (and other) boundaries rather than with album sales, a bona fide art freak whose mass appeal was more by accident of his creative brilliance than by design of his commercial nous. Madonna and Michael Jackson, however, are perhaps more readily comparable; the king and queen of pop, record company scions concerned with shifting units, dominating airplay, and making millions. Also interesting is that analysing two of their biggest 80s records – Thriller and Like a Prayer – reveals a similarly Janus-faced dichotomy between, on the one hand, cynical and simple-minded 80s pop and, on the other, a darker, more adult underbelly.
Almost every song on Like a Prayer is about Madonna’s tormented relationship with men and – let’s face it – substitute father figures. For much of the album, however, this torment is articulated through the reality-denying fantasy of Britney Spears-style bubblegum pop, which is what got Madonna on the radio and, indeed, paved the way for Britney Spears. “Express Yourself”, for example, is an ebullient slice of 80s dance music in which Madonna exhorts her female audience to pressure their boyfriends into openly declaring their love and, if they fail to do so, bailing on the relationship. The erstwhile (and minted) Material Girl also suggests that money and “fancy cars” don’t make for enduring love, a sentiment that was no doubt essayed in the drawing room of her Scottish mansion.
Despite the celebratory air of female empowerment on “Express Yourself”, the song unmistakeably positions men at the centre of a woman’s universe. The irresistibly catchy “Cherish” takes this somewhat obsessive tendency a step further into psychotic stalker territory, while also providing an amusing testament to the unshakeable solipsism of teenage romance with a postmodernist reference to Romeo and Juliet. Like a Prayer’s retreat from the messy and painful reality of human relationships into the fantastical La La Land of everlasting love reaches its apotheosis on the forgettable “Dear Jessie”, which is riven with the imagery of children’s fairytales – rainbows, magic lamps, falling stars, and the land of make believe.
But just as Thriller incongruously placed the Boyz II Men-like banality of “The Girl is Mine” alongside edgy and cutting-edge pop like “Beat It”, many songs on Like a Prayer betray a greater worldliness, or even world-weariness, than “Dear Jessie” or “Cherish”. “Till Death Do Us Part”, for example, was apparently written about Madonna’s divorce from Sean Penn. Musically, it’s the same buoyant and frantic pop of the album’s flagship singles, but the lyrics are considerably darker; they lament an increasingly loveless marriage, and hint at an intensifying climate of domestic abuse. Seemingly, the union is destined to end fatally and only, quite literally, when death do us part. Violence also hangs over the album’s closing song, “Spanish Eyes”, a sombre, guitar-and-piano driven ballad in which the good, grieving Catholic girl prays for her slain lover, a victim of, presumably, gang violence.
Madonna spies a possible retreat from the cold, cutthroat world depicted on these records in an unexpectedly traditional source; the nuclear family. Even this institution, however, turns out to be riven with complications and disillusionments. Its most ecstatic exaltation comes on “Keep it Together”, a tribute to Madonna’s siblings. But such sentiments are difficult to reconcile with Like a Prayer’s other family-related tracks, two of which are about Madonna’s parents. “Promise to Try” is a rather maudlin ode to her mother, who died when Madonna was a mere four years old. Despite its aching vocals and stripped-down instrumentation, the song is curiously lacking in genuine emotion. “Oh Father”, on the other hand, is a believably embittered diatribe against her poor old dad, who apparently was never abusive, but who made the capital mistake of marrying the family housekeeper a few years after Madonna’s mother died, thereby forever stymieing the proper resolution of Madge’s Electra complex.
So mother is dead, father a traitor, the Latin Lover of “Spanish Eyes” taken before his time, the idealised beau of “Cherish” but a figment of the teenage imagination. Only the evil, abusive husband (here played by Sean Penn) remains. And that, presumably, is where God comes in, to redeem the flawed relationships of this fallen world with His perfect unconditional love. “Like a Prayer” opens the album and, ostensibly, it’s an exploration of Madonna’s Catholicism. It starts in haunting fashion, with a gospel choir and some genuinely unsettling existentialist philosophising about all of us being alone in the universe. Madonna later claimed that the song is about a girl who is “passionately in love with god” but, surely, this passion results from sheer disappointment and disillusionment with (corporeal) male relationships. God thus obligingly appears as the perfect dream lover and father, a fairytale for grownups – the ultimate pop icon. The album’s cheesy love songs are mere extensions of the religious delusion articulated in its opener: in the end, “Dear Jessie” is no more fantastical than “Like a Prayer”, except that the latter has a vast and millennia-old institutional architecture from which to draw its veracity.
On balance, Like A Prayer is less compelling and inventive than Purple Rain or Thriller. And yet, although only the title track rivals the genre-defining brilliance of “Beat It” or “Billie Jean”, the duds are few and far between (one of them, in fact, is “Love Song”, an anodyne collaboration with Prince during which even Madonna sounds bored). To be sure, after a couple of listens, the interminable synth chords and electronic beats start to become wearying but, mercifully, the album skilfully balances its ballads and its pop songs.
Overall, though, Like a Prayer’s most notable quality – and one characteristic that it does share with Purple Rain – is an all-permeating eroticism. Almost everything is charged with sex – Madonna’s relationship to god, to her father, to her boyfriends, to her abusive husband – with only the (comparatively stiff) songs about her deceased mother and the infant Jessie detaching themselves from the endemic cycle of sin, guilt, punishment, and redemption. The entire album is a nod to the inherent, clandestine, Dionysian sensuality of the Roman Catholic religion, a stark contrast to the sexless, sunny, apollonian Evangelism of, say, U2. After all, what, in the end, is “like a prayer” – what could possibly compare to a direct conversation with our creator? Madonna doesn’t spell it out, and she doesn’t have to.
7/10
Highlights: “Like a Prayer”, “Cherish”, “Oh Father”