'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.

Discography