'On 28 December, 1988, Madonna
filed an assault charge against her, then husband, Sean Penn
and they officially separated on 31st with the marriage ending
(after four years) on the 5th of January, 1989. Also in 1989, Madonna
(who was now thirty) released another album, 'Like A Prayer' which
spawned five aditional singles including top ten hits, 'Like A
Prayer', 'Express Yourself', 'Cherish', and 'Keep It Together',
not to mention the top 20 hit, 'Oh Father'. Despite the controversy
it generated her critics were forced to admit that he may very
well have been the best album of her career. 'Cherish' went on
to become the third of Madonna's singles to top the US Adult Contemporary
chart with 'Live To Tell' and 'La Isla Bonita' being the other
two. 'Dear Jessie', the sixth track from the album was sucessfully
promoted as a single outside the US and was accompanied by a striking
Disney-like animated video.
'Like A Prayer', the video, was totally denouced by the Vatican
for its 'blasphemous' mixture of eroticism, Catholic symbolism
and implied racism. There was a scene in which police mistake
an innocent black man for a murderer which I'm sure raised a
few eye brows. Then there was the scene with Madonna dancing
in a field of 'burning crosses' (a symbol of the KKK's historic
terrorism against blacks), you can bet that didn't win her any
favours. Pepsi, with whom Madonna has signed a deal where 'Like
A Prayer' would be included as a Pepsi commerical but when the
original music video appeared on MTV, Pepsi reniged and pull
their commerical from the air and cancelled all future plans
for future commercials with Madonna giving as their reasons for
canceling that the consumers may become confused with the music
video and their version and not the controversy over the actual
video, yeah right! Even though this forced Madonna to be 'in
breach of contract' for not fulfilling her commitment of 3 future
commerical she was allowed to keep the 5,000,000 she was advanced
as an endorsement.
At 32, in 1990, Madonna landed a role in the new Dick Tracy
film (as Breathless Mahoney - a demanding and powerful vamp)
co-starring with Warren Beatty (who she also dated for a time).
Dick Tracy did manage to earn Madonna some good reviews though
critics pointed out that it continued her tradition of performing
well when portraying characters quite similar to herself. Vogue,
a hit spawned from the music soundtrack of Dick Tracy earned
her another number one hit. 'Vogue' would be remembered as one
of her best songs and be ranked as one of the the top four music
videos of all time by MTV duing the early 1990s.
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