Interviewer: You and Prince wrote "Love Song" together, which is a wonderful
song. Did you and he work together or did he give you a track?
Madonna: No, he didn't give me a track. We sat down and just started fooling around. We had a lot of fun. What happened is that he played the drums and I played the synthesizer and we came up with the original melody line; I just, off the top of my head, started singing lyrics into the microphone. And then he overdubbed some guitar stuff and made a loop of it and sent it to me, and then I just started adding sections to it and singing parts to it. And then I sent it back to him, and he'd sing a part to it and add another instrument and send it back to me...it was like this sentence that turned into a paragraph that turned into a little miniseries. So it was great. It was a completely different way to work. And because of our schedules and everything, and he was in Minnesota and he likes to work there and I like to work here. So we kind of sent it back and forth. He's great. He's a real interesting...unique talent.
Interviewer: And it was an easy connection from the beginning for the two of
you?
Madonna: Yeah, it was. We started out being real admirers of each other's work. And, you know, we're already successful so we didn't have to prove anything to each other. We were on the same level. And I don't think he's had that same opportunity with other people that he's worked with. Because generally he tends to dominate everything.
Interviewer: "Act of Contrition," the closing track of Like a Prayer, has
backwards masking and other mysterious elements. Did he have anything to do
with that one as well? The credits only say, "Produced by the powers that be."
Madonna: Yeah, he did. He played guitar on it. He also played guitar on "Keep it Together."
Interviewer: I noticed on "Act of Contrition" that you have the choir from
"Like a Prayer" reversed on that.
Madonna: Yeah, we turned the tape and played everything backwards.