Madonna's banned commercial airs during MTV VMAs, 34 years later: 'Thank you, Pepsi, for finally realizing the genius of our collaboration'
The pop diva never apologized for the $5 million controversy, arguing that “art should be controversial, and that's all there is to it."
Thirty-four years after Madonna’s $5 million Pepsi commercial was yanked from the air due to the controversy surrounding her provocative “Like a Prayer” music video, the iconic ad is finally back on MTV.
During the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards, which aired Tuesday, the cola company surprisingly resurrected the long-shelved commercial for the beverage’s 125th anniversary, and Madonna seemed pleased, posting on social media: “34 years ago I made a commercial with Pepsi to celebrate the release of my song ‘Like a Prayer.’ The commercial was immediately canceled when I refused to change any scenes in the video where I was kissing a Black saint or burning crosses. So began my illustrious career as an artist refusing to compromise my artistic integrity. Thank you @pepsi for finally realizing the genius of our collaboration. Artists are here to disturb the peace.”
However, while it was vindicating to see the ad spot reach a new audience after all this time, it was also difficult to ignore the hypocrisy of the revised commercial’s new tagline, “Celebrating 40 Years of Disrupting the Status Quo” — a reference to Madonna releasing her debut album in August 1983 — when Pepsi once fired and effectively attempted to cancel the superstar disrupter.
Here’s what happened back in 1989:
Madonna makes her boldest artistic statement yet
The “Like a Prayer” video, which was directed by Mary Lambert (who had lensed Madonna’s MTV breakthrough clips “Borderline,” “Like a Virgin,” and “Material Girl”), was the pop provocateur’s most controversial video to date, at the time. (This was a year before the even more widely censored “Justify My Love” video, mind you.) Addressing racism, police corruption, and biracial love, the mini-movie starred actor Leon Robinson as a Black man wrongly accused of sexual assault, in a role inspired by Martin de Porres, the patron saint of mixed-race people.
The video also memorably featured Madonna singing in a clingy, low-cut slip (which — fun fact — once belonged to Natalie Wood) on a lawn bedecked with KKK-style burning crosses; experiencing stigmata-like bleeding from her hands; and a freeing a caged, crying saint statue of Robinson so that the two could engage in a kiss during a psychedelic dream sequence. It climaxed with Madonna ecstatically dancing in a Catholic church surrounded by a robed choir, as Robinson was exonerated thanks to her eyewitness testimony regarding his innocence.
Pepsi does not accept the Madonna challenge
Madonna’s two-minute, Joe Pytka-directed Pepsi commercial — a decidedly wholesome affair titled “Make a Wish,” depicting the pop singer watching old home movies and revisiting her childhood — was actually seen by an estimated 250 million people in more than 40 countries before Pepsi pulled it. It premiered during the telecast of music’s biggest awards show, the Grammys, on Feb. 22, 1989, and it aired a week later during television’s most popular sitcom of the era, The Cosby Show.
However, the day after Madonna's Pepsi commercial was widely released, “Like a Prayer” explosively premiered on MTV, and the supposedly blasphemous video immediately met with protests. The Vatican and various Christian groups even called for a worldwide boycott of Pepsi and all Pepsi subsidiaries (including KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut). Despite Madonna’s well-established reputation for being a disrupter, dating back to her shocking opening number at the inaugural VMAs five years earlier, Pepsi executives were reportedly blindsided by the backlash. Pepsi eventually caved to the pressure, canceling the then-groundbreaking $5 million endorsement deal, which not only included the “Make a Wish” ad spot but the sponsorship of Madonna’s upcoming world tour.
Everyone must stand alone
Madonna of course never apologized for the “Like a Prayer” video or expressed regret over her falling-out with Pepsi, explaining to the New York Times that “art should be controversial, and that's all there is to it.” Her career obviously was not harmed by the scandal; if anything, she only benefited from all the publicity. Like the shrewd businesswoman she has always been, she even got to keep that staggering-at-the-time $5 million paycheck, and MTV continued to play the actual video, if not the Pepsi ad, in high rotation.
“Like a Prayer” was nominated for Video of the Year and the Viewers’ Choice Award at the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards, winning the latter; ironically, the VMAs ceremony was actually sponsored by Pepsi that year. During her Viewers’ Choice acceptance speech, Madonna quipped, “I would really like to thank Pepsi for causing so much controversy.”
And 34 years later, she’s still thankful.
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