Madonna's Like a Prayer (1989) is a study in what a prayer is and what it merely resembles. The song's title is precise. Like a prayer, not a prayer. Madonna, raised Catholic, knew the difference. The chorus repeats the phrase as a confession of form: the singer is not asserting that she is praying, only that what is happening to her looks structurally like one. A name is being called. A response is being expected. The body is being asked to do what bodies have always done in the presence of the holy.
The song became a number-one hit in nearly every chart it appeared on. It also became, almost immediately, controversial — for the music video's imagery, for the gospel choir, for the willingness of a pop song to name God in the same breath as desire. The controversy obscured the song's most interesting quality, which is that it stays in the simile. Like a prayer is the precise position of a great many listeners. The song does not promise to leave it.
The verse it shares form with is brief and old, from a Davidic psalm of pursuit and rescue:
"I have called upon thee, for thou wilt hear me, O God: incline thine ear unto me, and hear my speech."
A Verse That Defines the Form
The verse is one of the simplest prayers in the Hebrew psalter. Three movements: I have called — the act. Thou wilt hear me — the assumption. Incline thine ear — the request. The Hebrew for call here is qara — to summon by name, the same verb used elsewhere for naming creatures, calling out to a friend, summoning an army. The verse does not specify what David is praying about. It specifies that he is praying as a call to a name. The form is the prayer.
Madonna's chorus uses the same form. I'll take you there — the act. The assumption is harder to read in the song, but the song is built on the assumption that the call is heard. Hear me call your name would be the chorus's strongest line. The verse and the song both rest on the conviction that calling is a real act, not a wish.
What the Simile Allows
A simile is a comparison that admits its own gap. Like a prayer is not a prayer because the singer is not — at least not in the song's frame — fully a believer. But the simile is a kind of door. It says: I do not yet inhabit the form, but I can hear it well enough to imitate it. The verse from Psalm 17 is welcoming on this point. I have called in the Hebrew is a perfect-tense verb, but it is offered to anyone willing to attempt the action. The Psalter does not check the caller's credentials before accepting the call.
This is why the song's chorus can move so many listeners who do not call themselves religious. The form is teaching the listener what calling sounds like. Whether the listener follows the simile across to its referent is left to the listener.
What the Music Video Did
The 1989 video for Like a Prayer was directed by Mary Lambert and remains one of the most-debated music videos in the medium's history. It includes a black saint coming to life, burning crosses, and a gospel choir whose lead vocal carries Madonna into the song's bridge. Pepsi pulled its sponsorship. The Vatican condemned the video. Madonna was clear in interviews that she had grown up Catholic, that the video was a wrestle with the church she had been formed by, not a dismissal of it. The song stays inside that wrestle. Like is the operative word.
The verse from Psalm 17 has been wrestled in similar ways for three thousand years. It is, in its psalm, surrounded by lines about enemies, vindication, and the speaker's claim to integrity. David is not in a calm room when he writes it. He is calling because he is being chased. The Psalter accepts this kind of call. It accepts calling from desire. It accepts calling from desperation. It accepts calling from confusion. I have called upon thee is open enough to handle Madonna's like.
What the Song Does Not Settle
The song ends without resolution. The choir lifts the final chorus into something like ecstasy, but the singer never says she is changed. Just like a prayer — the simile is held to the end. The verse it imitates also ends in posture rather than answer. Incline thine ear is a request, not a closure. The Psalter is full of psalms that end with the speaker still asking. Psalm 17 is one of them.
The Forty Seconds
Read Psalm 17:6 once. I have called upon thee, for thou wilt hear me, O God: incline thine ear unto me, and hear my speech. Forty seconds. In that time the chorus of Like a Prayer sits down inside the verb the verse uses. The song is, by its own admission, the simile. The verse is the form the simile is reaching for.
The chorus is the spectacle. The verse is the call. Like is what makes the song singable by anyone willing to imitate the form before claiming the faith.