Like a Prayer (song) that multiple times in history, black men have been punished for kissing or desiring white women. Grant believed this was where the racial equality message of the video came across as most poignant. On the contrary, when the curtain falls and the scene shifts to a smiling Madonna among the burning crosses, professor Maury Dean felt that another explanation was inevitable. Madonna portrays a successful heroine and thus the whole video becomes about female empowerment. The first live performance of "Like a Prayer" was on the 1990 Blond Ambition World Tour. She sang it wearing a dress that looked like
Like a Prayer (song) (Flanders region) and the Netherlands, while peaking at number 15 in Belgium (Walloon region). In the United States, "Feels Like a Prayer" reached number seven on the Hot Dance Club Songs chart. We Are the Fallen, an American gothic metal band, covered "Like a Prayer" live in 2008. Nick Duerden from "Spin" complimented the performance and the track for being "so successfully pulverized that one wondered whether it wasn't written specifically to become the world's greatest heavy rock anthem." In June 2017, Leonard released a piano ballad version of the track, with vocals from singer Dana Williams. In the same