Keep It Together: Remembering The “Forgotten” Single From Madonna’s Classic ‘Like A Prayer’ Album

Madonna’s own family affair

Despite the conciliatory tone of this track’s lyrics, the “Queen Of Pop” has, like most of us, a complex relationship with family. Her mother died when she was young, and the dynamic between her and her father, Tony, was strained by the arrival of a stepmother (Joan, who died in 2024). Madonna was fiercely competitive with her siblings, but there’s never been a suggestion the bond didn’t begin to strengthen as she grew older. “When I was in high school and started dancing seriously, I’d say I got closer to my brothers,” she told Interview magazine. Her late brother Christopher was actively involved in her success during the Like A Prayer era, becoming the artistic director of the Blond Ambition World Tour.

Keep It Together helped spawn a masterpiece

While Keep It Together is a fine track, the decision to give it a standalone release led to arguably the greatest Madonna single of all time. As it was the fifth track lifted from Like A Prayer in most major markets, label executives thought the release might need a little sales support with the inclusion of a new recording. When Madonna and new producer (and former remixer) Shep Pettibone came up with Vogue, those same executives decided to hold that thrilling track back for release in its own right.

It was a smart call: Vogue would become the world’s best-selling single of 1990. A suite of remixes were instead commissioned and used as B-sides for Keep It Together’s 12” and maxi-CD releases (a new format at that time, introduced as vinyl sales started to wane).

There was no promo video for Keep It Together

No other female artist came close to mastering the art of the music video in the 80s than Madonna. Not only sitting among the best 80s promo videos, the clips created for Express Yourself and Material Girl can be placed among the greatest promo videos of all time. Yet with the “Queen Of Pop”’s career developing at such a rapid rate at the start of the 90s, Keep It Together was issued without a visual accompaniment.

In fairness, Madonna was busy even by her standards at the start of the new decade, planning her groundbreaking Blond Ambition World Tour, and filming Dick Tracy and assembling that movie’s soundtrack album, I’m Breathless. Her next visit to the video set would, however, result in one of the best Madonna promo videos of all time, the David Fincher-directed Vogue.

The standout album cut wasn’t picked as a single everywhere

Although the first three singles from Like A Prayer were synchronised for global release (with strong videos to support them), each territory began to follow a different course after that. The US issued Oh Father next, before going with Keep It Together as the album’s final single, on 30 January 1990. Europe largely passed on both tracks, instead picking Dear Jessie, which became a UK Top 5 hit at Christmas.

Keep It Together opened strongly on the US Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at No.8. It reached the same spot in Canada, while it went all the way to the top in Australia, where it was issued as a double A-side with Vogue.

Keep It Together closed Madonna’s most legendary concerts

Keep It Together made for the stunning finale of the 1990 Blond Ambition World Tour shows – a brave choice given Madonna’s catalogue of more familiar hits (even at that relatively early stage of her career). The set piece conceived for the performance was inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange, and was styled with more than a nod to the other great cinematic masterpiece of the early 70s, Cabaret, starring Liza Minnelli. Madonna’s canny pick of influences ensured that Keep It Together would be a showstopping finale in a run of concerts packed with groundbreaking firsts.

Buy Madonna box sets, vinyl and more at the Dig! store.