Like a Prayer

Madonna and Patrick Leonard wrote and produced it, and it was the first song they worked on for the album. She wrote the lyric in about three hours. She described it as the song of a passionate young girl so in love with God that He seems almost the male figure in her life. Leonard was uneasy about a line he heard as sexual and asked her to change it, but she insisted on keeping it. She wanted a gospel sound, and around September 1988 they recorded Andraé Crouch's choir at Johnny Yuma Recording. The bongos and Latin percussion were dropped. Guy Pratt played bass and Bruce Gaitsch guitar, and Leonard used guitar recorded by Prince on the introduction. Shep Pettibone and Bill Bottrell remixed the 12-inch versions.

Released on 3 March 1989, it entered the Hot 100 at number 38 and reached number one on the issue dated 22 April, for three weeks, her seventh. In the UK it entered at number two, then spent three weeks at number one, and it topped the charts of twenty countries. Rolling Stone ranked it number 55 on its 2021 list of the 500 greatest songs, and NME placed it third among the greatest pop songs in 2011.

Mary Lambert directed the video in January 1989, with Madonna receiving stigmata, dancing before burning crosses and kissing a black saint played by Leon Robinson. Pepsi had signed her for 5 million dollars and premiered a commercial built around the song during the Grammy telecast in February. After the video aired, the Vatican condemned it and Pepsi canceled the campaign. She kept the money. When the video won Viewer's Choice at the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards, she thanked Pepsi for causing so much controversy.

Live

She first sang it on the 1990 Blond Ambition World Tour. At Live 8 in London in July 2005 she sang it with Birhan Woldu, and in 2012 it closed her Super Bowl XLVI halftime show, with a choir and CeeLo Green. On the Celebration Tour of 2023 and 2024 she mashed it up with Act of Contrition, and on 18 April 2026 she sang it at Coachella with Sabrina Carpenter.