Picking my favorite Madonna song is like choosing my favorite child: I haven’t one. So I’m looking forward to Tuesday’s release of Celebration, her “So long, Warner Bros!” career collection. All the hits have been invited to the party (well, unless you’re an obsessive completist like me, sonically shined for the 21st century. And as further carrot to buy, the set sports two new tunes, the title track and “Revolver,” a little something recorded with Lil’ Wayne, whose contribution doesn’t detract the way I might have expected.

Choosing my favorite Madonna cover songs is an easier task (largely because so many are outright terrible). To date, I’ve featured four worthy selections, though I’ve neglected to include one of the best until today. English singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding covered “Like A Prayer” in 1989, just a few months after Madonna released the original.

Both artists were signed to Sire Records at the time, which quite possibly had something to do with Harding’s selection. His earnest take on “Like A Prayer” appeared on God Made Me Do It: The Christmas EP, issued in advance of his debut album, Here Comes The Groom.

In an interview segment on the same EP, Harding professes his love for the American folk scene of the ’60s and ’70s, and singer-songwriters like Phil Ochs, John Prine, and Steve Goodman.

“But,” he continues, “I’m also into a lot of incredibly popular modern things, as we all are, like Madonna and Cyndi Lauper. They sing and write some great folk songs but people are always a bit snobby about them — and so am I, sometimes — but I wanted to synthesize the two and make that folk tradition more available to people.”

Thus explains Harding’s fantastic “power-folk” rendition of “Like A Prayer”:

Purchase John Wesley Harding – “Like A Prayer” via iTunes, Amazon MP3.