Like A Prayer - Madonna (1989)
For most of the 80s, it might have been easy to dismiss Madonna as an empty pop act. There was no doubting her chart success, but anybody who was looking for authenticity might have been better off elsewhere.
That changed as she turned 30, ended her (first) celebrity marriage, and looked around at the changing sensibilities in the music world.
Her work was more pop than pure dancefloor, but she always forward thinking and curious about what was cool and innovative in dance music. The voice she could give to underground cultures as a massive pop star was something she leaned into over and over again.
If there was one thing Madonna was always good at, it was catching a spark in a bottle that was ahead of its pop cultural moment, but not by too much to alienate.
Here she managed to do just that, this time combining it with her own explorations of fame and spirituality and sexuality.
The big hits here are the kind of brash, bright, funky, processed soul that was slightly ahead of the curve. The “new jack swing” sound would be all over the pop world in just a year or so.
After trying off and on for several years, this album featured a collab with Prince. Love Song, if we’re being honest, sounds more like a Prince track featuring Madonna than the other way around. Uncredited, but there’s also no way that’s not Prince dealing on guitar on Act Of Contrition.
The Beatles-y chamber psych of Dear Jessie folds neatly into a thoughtful but brutal ballad about fathers and daughters and inter-generational trauma.
For me, Madonna’s catalog is the still-to-come Ray Of Light and everything else. But this is the first time, I think, you had to recognize her as a complete artist.
