According to Douglas Kellner, the album and its singles were particularly influential on the music video field. The video for the title track "Like a Prayer", which depicted Madonna as a witness to a murder of a white girl by white supremacists, Catholic symbols such as stigmata, Ku Klux Klan-style cross burning, and a dream about kissing a black saint, was extremely controversial and gained a great deal of attention. Jon Pareles wrote that the video "set a media circus in motion, stirring up just those issues of sexuality and religiosity that Madonna wanted to bring up". The Vatican condemned the video while critics accused it of sacrilege and heresy. Madonna commented, "Art should be controversial, and that's all there is to it." Taraborrelli wrote that the song and its video also served to enhance Madonna's reputation as "a shrewd businesswoman, someone who knows how to sell a concept." Stewart M. Hoover wrote that the music video pushed boundaries by "bringing traditional religious imagery into the popular music context". Similarly, Daniel Welsh from "The Huffington Post", wrote that the video "catapulted Madonna to the ranks of music video heavyweight, and proved to the world she really meant business". The music video for "Express Yourself" was also noted by critics for its exploitation of female sexuality and came to the conclusion that Madonna's masculine image in the video was gender-bending; authors Santiago Fouz-Hernández and Freya Jarman-Ivens commented that "the video portrayed the deconstructive gender-bending approach associated with free play and self-reflexivity of images in postmodernism." Author John Semonche explained in his book "Censoring sex" that with "True Blue" and "Like a Prayer", Madonna pushed the envelope of what could be shown on television, which resulted in increase of her popularity. In 2020, "The Independent" named it one of the 40 best albums you have to listen before you die. In a retrospective 2020 review, "Spin" magazine named "Like a Prayer" the eighth best album of the last 35 years.