page_title: Devil Pray
section_title: Recording and composition
hierarchical_section_title: Devil Pray / Recording and composition
context_page_description: "Devil Pray" is a song recorded by American singer and songwriter Madonna for her thirteenth studio album, Rebel Heart. It was written and produced by Madonna, Avicii, DJ Dahi, and Michael Diamond, with additional writing by Arash Pournouri, Carl Falk, Rami Yacoub, and Savan Kotecha. During the early stages of the album, Madonna was encouraged by her manager to work with Avicii and his team of songwriters. Together, they worked on seven songs and "Devil Pray" was composed after Madonna desired to talk about her experiences with drugs and quest for spirituality. Lyrically, the song deals with themes of drug addiction, sin, temptation, and the desire for salvation.
  "Devil Pray" is a techno-folk song, which combines elements of country-pop and has similarities with Madonna's own single "Don't Tell Me", Avicii's previous work and The Animals' version of the traditional folk song "The House of the Rising Sun". The song received high praise from critics for its musical elements, while also being highlighted for its self-conscious lyrics. However, there was some criticism towards the list of drugs used in the chorus.
context_section_description: "Devil Pray" was written and produced by Madonna, Avicii, DJ Dahi and Michael Diamonds, with additional writing done by Savan Kotecha, Carl Falk, Rami Yacoub and Arash Pournouri. Avicii and Falk were also responsible for providing keyboards and programming, with Falk also providing guitars. Additional recording and mixing was done by Angie Teo, while Demacio "Demo" Castellon was the song's engineer and mixer. "Devil Pray" has been described as a "moody mid-tempo semi-acoustic pop", techno-folk, "lite-EDM" and "acoustic guitar-with-electro-cowboy" song with a "woozy" house beat about overcoming addiction, with a more "country-tinged" and "folksy" style in comparison to other tracks on the album. Critics found similarities between the song and Madonna's own single "Don't Tell Me" (2000) for its "country-pop elements" and the traditional folk song "The House of the Rising Sun", due to its "bluesy-vibe".
  "Devil Pray" brings Madonna "as a devoted disciple, drawn to a darker kind of prayer", as noted by The Quietus's Amy Pettifer, and its story deals with sin, temptation and deliverance. The song starts with hand claps and guitar, "whose country edge is [...] characteristic of Swedish producer Avicii's own output", claimed Pettifer. The chorus contains "an intoned, warning list of narcotic distractions" that "offer brief relief", as she sings, "And we can do drugs, and we can smoke weed, and we can drink whiskey  /  Yeah, we can get high, and we can get stoned  /  And we can sniff glue, and we can do E, and we can drop acid."
  During the second verse, Madonna "seems to understand her own spiritual plight when she sings [...], 'Mother Mary, can't you [help] me? / 'Cause I've gone astray / All the angels that were around me / Have all flown away'," before warning, "Lucifer is near". Later, she advises that although providing brief relief, the use of those drugs will not provide any positive effect on the user, warning, "Yeah, we can run and we can hide / But we won't find the answers" and invite them to "get help" for making the "devil pray". Then, a "pitched down" voice joins in a "plea for [her] soul to be saved". As she sings, "Ooh, save my soul, save my soul, save my / Devil's here to fool ya", a "bed of throaty, orgasmic samples rises in the mix", and "a hundred tiny Madonna-voices in coital abyss."
caption: The lyrics of "Devil Pray" talk about consuming psychoactive drugs like MDMA (ecstasy).
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