There are some pop culture moments that should be left off limits in terms of “borrowing” or “paying homage.” Not only because they’re sacrosanct, but because it’s impossible to ever top them—therefore, why bother making a fool of oneself in trying? Just such a moment in pop culture history, it should go without saying (but apparently needs to be reiterated), is Madonna’s “Like A Prayer.” Not solely the song and the video imagery that went with it, but all subsequent live performances of the single that always inevitably included some form of a Catholic Church backdrop.
With Madonna’s first major live performance of the song for 1990’s Blond Ambition Tour, she incorporated her churchly set design to appear off to the side of a bordello-ready bed where she would simulate masturbation to the tune of “Like A Virgin” before ironically leading into “Like A Prayer.” Because no one thumbs their nose at that which is “sacred” better than Madonna. Which is yet another reason why J. Lo has no real business trying to do the church visuals thing in her latest movie, Marry Me. During which a scene written specifically so the song “Church” can be performed occurs in the name of showcasing “Kat Valdez” on a world tour that conveniently has a built-in marriage theme already. Never mind how sus that seems in terms of the engagement between her and fellow Latino pop star (/Madonna collaborator), Maluma—er, “Bastian”—being little more than a publicity stunt to boost sales. And yes, it was already enough to have a song called “Marry Me” without adding “Church” to the soundtrack for added matrimonial overkill. And, let’s just put it this way, “Chapel of Love” it is not.
What’s worse still in J. Lo choosing this derivative-from-Madonna aesthetic is that she doesn’t even bother trying to blend the sacred and the profane with artful irony. Putting on a skintight, flesh-colored bodysuit with a bejeweled cross down the middle doesn’t exactly scream “dancing in front of a bevy of burning crucifixes”-level controversy. Nor do the rather “tastefully-dressed” “nuns” that serve as her backup dancers. And speaking of, although it’s rare for other pop stars to even try to bother with the Catholic imagery “shtick” at all, for it is so well-known as “Madonna’s thing” that most know they shouldn’t touch it, maybe the only other pop star to make a noticeable attempt at Catholic irreverence was Christina Aguilera. When she opened at the 2003 EMAs. Perhaps freshly inspired from her performance with the Queen a few months earlier at the 2003 VMAs in August (during which everyone ignored the fact that she also kissed Madonna), Xtina, who hosted the awards show as well, commenced the spectacle with a performance of “Dirrty.” Complete with a choir that smacked of “Like A Prayer” vibes before Aguilera took the stage in a nun’s costume she was quick to remove in favor of showing off her then-trademark assless chaps (to that end, Madonna was also the one to bring “cowboy chic” to the forefront in the twenty-first century with 2000’s Music).
The nun’s garb, as mentioned, is incorporated into Lopez’s performance of “Church” as Kat—even though we all know Madonna did that form of “impiety” better as well on the Rebel Heart Tour, wherein she sang “Holy Water” with a coterie of stripper-nuns as she mounted a pole in the shape of a giant cross (ergo, “Bitch, get off my pole”). Of course, her various performances of “Like A Prayer” over the years was all mere preparation for such a spectacle.
As her go-to “peace” song—it’s her version of “Imagine,” if you must—Madonna has sung the track live in various instances designed to “call to action,” or at least give hope. For example, at Live 8 in 2005 and in the wake of the Paris attacks in 2015 (offering an “impromptu” set that she brought her son, David, to at République). The subsequent world tours after Blond Ambition, arguably her most Catholic-centric of all, that Madonna also chose to put “Like A Prayer” on the setlist for were always certain to maintain the religious motif that said single can’t evade being associated with. Case in point, when performing it for 2004’s Reinvention Tour, Madonna incorporated backdrops featuring both a choir and, in an indicative update to her faith, a series of Hebrew texts that would also appear in her 2008-2009 performances of it at the Sticky & Sweet Tour. For 2012’s MDNA Tour, Madonna donned another futuristic, metallic ensemble (vaguely similar to the look she sported for the Sticky & Sweet Tour) in the form of a robe emblazoned with “MDNA” on the back of it. Joined yet again by a choir—including M’s son, Rocco Ritchie, as a member—in robes (these ones black with a white cross down the entirety of the center), Madonna belted her classic to the audience with the expectation, as usual, that they would sing some of the lyrics back to her. 2012 was also the year she would perform this staple of her oeuvre at the Super Bowl, where classic black choir robes abounded, complete with a cameo by Cee-Lo Green (at the time, slightly more relevant).
For 2019-2020’s Madame X Tour, Madonna made the hit her closer (with “I Rise” as the encore), for she had taken a new shine to it of late thanks to the Like A Prayer album marking its thirtieth anniversary. Before reviving it for her first-ever “theater tour,” M “practiced” it at the likes of the Met Gala and Eurovision (where her rendition was panned). The latter performance was absorbed into the Madame X Tour as the most “church-y” yet since Blond Ambition. With a staircase fashioned in the shape of an “X” and her backing choir wearing robes with Xs on the chest, Madonna turned the cross image quite literally on its ear in favor of repurposing it for her latest persona’s moniker. Weaving the visuals from her original “Like A Prayer” video into the performance, Madonna showed especial love for the track and its significance to the overall thesis statement of her career: religion is oppression, spirituality is freedom (and also, Catholicism oozes sexuality as a direct result of repressing it). That’s where one should also note that when J. Lo does “church aesthetics,” it’s rather hooey, sexless (by way of being overly manufactured as “sexy”) and lacking any form of spirituality.
Of course, Madonna has never limited her haunting by the Catholic religion solely to the “Like A Prayer” visuals. It has been there from the start, in her donning of crucifixes as fashion accessories, in her use of the Pope’s image during the Who’s That Girl Tour, in the video for “Oh Father” (also from Like A Prayer), in the entire “Catholic segment” of the Blond Ambition Tour (including “Live to Tell,” “Oh Father” and “Papa Don’t Preach”), in performing “Live To Tell” while mounted to a mirrorball cross during the Confessions Tour, in the opening of the MDNA Tour with “Girl Gone Wild,” in her renditions of “Holy Water” and “Devil Pray” during the Rebel Heart Tour, in the videos for “Medellín” and “Dark Ballet”—and in a thousand other little subtle ways in which M has shown that the “spirit” is constantly on her mind. In other words, she isn’t “one and done” with the visuals for the sake of using them for some cornball moment like J. Lo’s “Church.”
So again, it must be said, if you’re going to touch “the Church aesthetics” as a pop star, you better damn well make sure they’re going to outshine Madonna’s—an impossible feat… based on her name alone.
