She took me there.

When "Like A Prayer" debuted via a Pepsi ad during The Cosby Show, I lost my shit. It was so clearly one of her best and most interesting songs, and—something she hasn't done in a while  these days but which we hope she will do again—a total surprise for me.

I've been doing these posts on what other songs were on the Billboard charts the week certain Madonna songs were #1, but I couldn't do that in good conscience with "Like A Prayer" since Tone Loc and other despicable shit was so prevalent in 1989.

So instead, here is a selective list of what else was on Billboard's "Hot Dance Music" charts the week "Like A Prayer" jumped from #5 to #1:

#1 "Like A Prayer" by Madonna. See above.

#4 "Real Love" by Jody Watley. I was already really impressed with Jody for having remained in the spotlight so long after her solo debut. I bought all of her singles, and this was no exception. It's kinda En Vogue-ish to listen to now, but was fun to dance to at a time in my life when real love was the last thing I was settling for:

#9 "Music Lover" by S-Express. It was no "Theme From S-Express," but "Music Lover" found me dancing up an inconvenient sweat (who would go home with a sopping-wet college kid in 1989? I hadn't even heard of raunch queens yet) in my Chicago days daze. It's hard to believe it was from 1989—the video is strictly '90s:

#17 "Baby Baby" by Eighth Wonder. I fucking love "I'm Not Scared" by Patsy Kensit's vanity group, but "Baby Baby" was quite the spunky little pop hit. She is one of those people I tend to think of as trapped in 1989—I don't say her name and realize right away that she must have aged 20 years in the past 20 years:

#20 "Electric Youth (Remix)" by Debbie Gibson. Oh, I loved the Debster. I really loved her entire first record (why wasn't "Red Hot" a single, too, since everything else was???) and I liked Electric Youth lots. She released a perfume at the same time of the same name and I went to a drug store in Hyde Park (I lived there while attending school at The University Of Chicago) and purchased some in order to get an official Electric Youth T-shirt (black, of course) that I wore out dancing. I told people it was intentionally campy but I kinda liked Debbie too much for it to truly be camp. P.S. Debbie looked TERRIBLE on the cover of this album, like it was shot for $35:

#21 "Stop" by Erasure. Every note that had come from Erasure up until that point was golden to me. A song by Erasure filled the gay dance floor like almost no other artist at the time save for Madonna. I saw them live on The Innocents Tour (Pierre et Gilles shot their tour program) and sang every song. My companion Jung-Soo turned to me and said, "You're not bad!":

#50 "I Only Wanna Be With You" by Samantha Fox. I loved Sam Fox even if she was a Madonna knock-off. The best song from this album was "I Wanna Have Some Fun," but "I Only Wanna Be With You" had a wicked BPM, a term I learned from the icky stripper/music-store clerk I lived and other things with. Also, Sam wins the award for most shocking coming-out of all time. Even the most broad-minded among us would never have looked at her and thought, "Dyyyke!":