Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer‘ Through the Years, from Pepsi to ‘Deadpool‘ (original) (raw)

The title track from Like a Prayer is, by all accounts, Madonna’s most broadly beloved contribution to the pop-music canon. Even the Queen of Pop’s most ardent critics can’t help but bow at the altar of this gospel-infused conflation of spiritual and sexual ecstasy, a song that helped transform the singer from ’80s pop tart to bona fide icon in 1989.

Now, with its inclusion in the Marvel blockbuster Deadpool & Wolverine, “Like a Prayer” is reaching a whole new generation. Already one of Madonna’s most popular songs, it’s gotten an exponential boost since the film’s premiere, with over one million streams per day on Spotify alone.

To celebrate the song’s resurgence, we’re taking a look back at its evolution over the last 35 years, from its deceptively demure world premiere in that Pepsi commercial to its various live reinventions.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on March 3, 2014.

Pepsi Commercial

Following a teaser that aired during the 31st Annual Grammy Awards in January of 1989, Madonna premiered “Like a Prayer” in a Pepsi commercial during The Cosby Show, the #1 rated series on U.S. television at the time. Part of a $5 million sponsorship deal with the soft-drink company, the ad, titled “Make a Wish,” was an innocuous bit of nostalgia that would soon be eclipsed by the scandal surrounding the single’s forthcoming music video.

The Music Video

Madonna dances in front of burning crosses and kisses a black saint in a church pew in this modern morality tale about racial profiling and pious guilt, prompting both the religious right and cultural critics like bell hooks to cry foul. Eventually, the mounting outrage caused Pepsi to pull out of their multi-million dollar deal with the Queen of Pop. The singer’s response was reliably defiant.

Blond Ambition Tour

Madonna’s first live incarnation of “Like a Prayer” is also her best. Sure, her voice was raw and unrefined—“Life is a misstaree, eve’one mus stan alone,” she heaves—but her 1990 tour performances of the song displayed a rapturous, almost possessed quality.

MTV On Stage & On the Record

Then notorious for forsaking her older material, Madonna dusted off “Like a Prayer” in 2003 during the promotion of her album American Life. Thirteen years after her last live performance of the song, even Madonna’s comparatively reedier voice couldn’t diminish the song’s enduring magic.

Sticky & Sweet Tour

After performing crowd-pleasing but relatively anemic versions of “Like a Prayer” during her Re-Invention Tour in 2004 and Live 8 in 2005, Madonna reinvented the song for her Sticky & Sweet Tour in 2008, using elements of Mack’s “Feels Like Home” for an exhilarating techno mash-up that prefigured the EDM boom.

Super Bowl XLVI

Madonna closed her record-breaking Super Bowl XLVI halftime show in 2012 with “Like a Prayer,” and though she wasn’t singing live, it was the closest she’s ever gotten to her ecstatic Blond Ambition performances. (For those lamenting the lip-synching, she would go on to reprise this version of the song, completely live, during her MDNA Tour later that year.) And if there were any doubt, a stadium of nearly 70,000 football fans waving flashlights and singing along is a testament to the song’s transcendent, all-encompassing appeal. The performance’s final message of “World Peace” seemed attainable, if only for a brief moment.

Met Gala 2018

In 2018, Madonna dusted off her old chestnut for an epic performance at Vogue magazine’s annual Met Gala. The event’s theme was “Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” which seemed tailor-made for both Madonna and “Like a Prayer.” She slowly descended the steps of New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in a shroud, flanked on both sides by a choir of monks, as she sang a Gregorian-inspired rendition of the pop classic. A similar but widely criticized version was performed at Eurovision the following year as well as Madonna’s Madame X Tour, but neither captured the holiness on display at the Met Gala, which also included a stirring cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

Celebration Tour

Madonna mostly stuck to the original arrangements of her hits for her recent career-spanning Celebration Tour, but she opted for the darker, bass-heavy 12” Club Version of “Like a Prayer.” Flanked by neon crosses and dancers donning black masks spinning on a carousel, Madonna once again reinvented her 1989 anthem, bookending it with samples of Sam Smith’s “Unholy” and capping it off with a previously unheard extended version of Prince’s magnificent guitar solo.

Battle Royale Mix from Deadpool & Wolverine

When Ryan Reynolds and Shawn Levy met with Madonna to lobby her for permission to use “Like a Prayer” in Deadpool & Wolverine, she reportedly gave the star and director notes on the film’s climactic battle sequence. Clocking in at under three minutes—compared to the original’s nearly six-minute runtime—and featuring a slightly sped-up beat and other amped-up musical elements, the Battle Royale Mix used in the fight scene packs a royal wallop. No notes.

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