Patrick Leonard, a collaborator of Madonna, has uploaded demos from the ‘Like a Prayer’ album sessions in an attempt to foil an unauthorised auction of the pop star’s personal effects. Hear the three recordings below.

As Stereogum reports, Leonard uploaded the original demos of ‘Like a Prayer’, ‘Cherish’ and unreleased song ‘Angels With Dirty Faces’ to YouTube on Monday (July 22). The first two demos were apparently recorded the same days the songs were written.


In one video description, Leonard – who co-wrote and co-produced many of Madonna’s early albums – revealed that he hopes sharing the demos for free would “stop the sale of that cassette at auction”. “Not cool at all that someone would sell it,” he added. “Not theirs to sell.”

The auction in question is the sale of several personal items of Madonna’s, put up for bidding by the pop icon’s former friend Darlene Lutz. The cassette Leonard mentions is one of several on the block; its current bid stands at £1,032 ($1,283).

The 70 lots of Madonna items up for auction include photographs, jewellery, a used hairbrush with strands of Madonna’s hair and – most famously – a breakup letter she received from her jailed ex-boyfriend Tupac Shakur. Bidding for the letter began at £100,000. The auction closes in just under three days’ time.


Lutz had tried to auction the memorabilia in 2017, but a New York Supreme Court judge halted the sale after Madonna filed to stop the auction of items she described as “extremely private and personally sensitive”. But last April, a New York judge gave the auction the go-ahead after he ruled Madonna’s claims to invasion of privacy were on thin legal grounds.