Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” is a stone-cold classic. It’s a ballad sung at bars and karaoke gatherings, and a feel-good, pump-you-up tune for everywhere in between. Even people born a decade after the song’s 1989 release know the words by heart. And while the song has solidified its place in the pop music canon with its unforgettable melody and lyrics, the Mary Lambert–directed “Like a Prayer” video is equally memorable. The controversial music video showed a buxom 30-year-old Madonna with a mop of inky black curls, barely clad for scenes that explored sexual, religious, and racial themes.

The story goes as follows: Madonna witnesses a crime, and a black man is falsely accused. She hides in a church, where she prays to a black saint, presumably Saint Martin de Porres, who resembles the accused man. She then falls asleep on a pew and has a dream in which the saint comes to life and kisses her forehead. In the dream, Madonna also encounters an uplifting, all-black gospel choir, later, and for an even more heated moment, she dances in front of burning crosses. At times, lines are blurred between Madonna reaching an ecstatic state of religious enlightenment or, well, an orgasm. (Also, the saint kisses her on the mouth, almost like a lover.) To make matters more sensitive, Madonna shimmies and grooves in a cleavage-baring slip dress with the straps louche-ly sliding off.

Soon after its release, the video came under fire. It was reportedly banned on state television in Italy, and condemned by the Vatican. Madonna’s Pepsi ad featuring the song, which was relatively tame and showed the entertainer going back to her childhood, was protested by several family and religious groups after airing only twice in the U.S. (It depicted the jumpsuit-clad entertainer dancing with Catholic schoolgirls.)

According to Madonna’s costume designer at the time, Marlene Stewart—who also worked with the singer on music videos including “Material Girl” (1984) and “Vogue” (1990)—Madonna’s use of religious imagery all tied back to her Catholic upbringing. “From the beginning, she really had her cultural heritage steeped in Italian Catholicism and the Catholic Church. It has been a big part of her artistic expression,” she says. “I think this song shows a certain reverence and it consumes her life and being, but at the same time, she commingles it with ideas of sexual ecstasy and religious ecstasy.”