Like a Prayer (song) Age" observed that from "Turkey to El Salvador to anytown USA, around 500 million eyes [were] glued to the screen. Leslie Savan from "The Village Voice" noted that the commercial qualified as a "hymn to the global capabilities of the age of electronic reproductions; it celebrates the pan-cultural ambitions of both soda pop and pop star." The day after the Pepsi commercial premiered, Madonna released the actual music video for "Like a Prayer" on MTV. Religious groups worldwide including the Vatican immediately protested the clip, saying that it contained blasphemous use of Christian imagery. They called for the national boycott
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