Like a Prayer turned Madonna into a pop icon. Does it hold up?

25:00How Madonna changed pop music

This year, Madonna turned 65 — and the Queen of Pop is ready to reclaim her throne. 40 years after her first album was released, she's set to hit the road this fall with a career-retrospective show called The Celebration Tour.

Culture critics Craig Seymour, Maura Johnson and Syrus Marcus Ware join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to look back on Madonna's hits, misses and criticisms — including the ongoing cultural impact of Madonna's song Like a Prayer.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: I want to talk about one of those controversial moments [from Madonna's career]. We get to the end of the 80's. Madonna's established herself as this force of pop, and it's not just the songs. The songs do a lot of work, but it's also the music videos, right? You have videos like Papa Don't Preach or Open Your Heart. They're touching on topics that nobody else wanted to touch — topics like teen pregnancy and sex work. But it was a reaction to Like a Prayer that took her fame to another level.

It is a song and a music video that had Pope John Paul II calling for a Madonna boycott. Syrus, this video features burning crosses and a Black man wrongfully accused of murdering a white woman. Looking back at it, what do you make of that video now?

Syrus: Okay, so definitely anything that you do that requires the pope to call for an international boycott, you might be on the right track as an artist. This video was a huge moment. We see this addressing of police brutality. We see the police arresting this Black man after Madonna sees these white men kill a white woman in an alley, and then a Black man comes to rescue her and gets accused of being the murderer. This video was significant.

WATCH | Official music video for Like a Prayer:

But I have to say, it's also a bit strange. Madonna comes in, she witnesses the murder, and she at any point could go and confess. She waits until the end of the video to do it. We have the Black man also being this Black Jesus.… So on the one hand, it's great [for] addressing the fact that Black people are wrongfully accused of all of these things in our society because of anti-Blackness. I'm glad that she made that point. The burning crosses and all of that? It's a bit much. There's this white saviour part where she's kissing his toes, she's saving this Black person, and it didn't really land well for me in that respect. But, hey, when I was in grade six, which is when that song came out, that song was played heavily. It's a good video, and it also leans into this white saviour complex, which is very classic Madonna.

Elamin: I was going to say, when you say it was a bit much, I'm like, that's the M.O. for Madonna's career. But Syrus, you were saying before we started the conversation that you were playing Like a Prayer for your daughter. What was the reaction there?

Syrus: Well, I showed her the video — and the music video is really the magic in that particular song. She was like, "Why is this Black choir suddenly singing at the end? I don't understand where they came from. They're floating in the sky." So she had questions. She said, "This is a great song, but can we play Material Girl now?" That's more of her jam.

Elamin: You know what? I forgive that. That's totally reasonable. I want to get back to Like a Prayer, Maura, because people call Like a Prayer this big turning point for Madonna. What were some of the things that she was dealing with personally at the time?

Maura: She was in a very big metamorphosis at the time. She had been trying to act. She was in Who's That Girl, and she was in Speed-the-Plow, the David Mamet play on stage. Her marriage to Sean Penn, which was all over the tabloids with helicopters flying over, had ended — and she turned 30.

One of the narratives that runs throughout Like a Prayer is a confessional narrative, but in interviews around the time of that record, she really framed it as sort of her taking more control over her career. And you can hear that, especially in the musical ambition that you hear all over that record. There are so many songs that just go far beyond what the boundaries of her career were seen to be on her first couple of records.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Ty Callender.