Like a Prayer (song) of free publicity. "Like a Prayer"s impact was more evident on its parent studio album, which shot to the top of the charts once it was released in April 1989. The author further argued that the controversial clip was evidence of the emergence of the "video commodity as a different entity from the song that spawned it". As author Judith Marcus explained in her book, "Surviving the Twentieth Century", Madonna used the church to make her own point on victimization. For Marcus the main impact lay in the fact that the clip ultimately portrayed an empowerment message, questioning and "attacking"
Like a Prayer (song) 20 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop songs chart. "Like a Prayer" was ranked at number 25 on the 1989 Hot 100 year-end chart, and was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in May 1989, for shipment of a million copies of the single. According to Nielsen SoundScan, it has also sold 1.1 million digital downloads as of December 2016. In Canada, the song reached the top of the "RPM" Singles Chart in its ninth week. It was present on the chart for 16 weeks and was the top-selling single in Canada for 1989. In Australia, "Like a