#LikeAPrayer is the 2026 hashtag for DJ Josh Fawaz’s dance/electronic cover of Madonna’s 1989 single — the track NewEngen and Buffer named the season’s “unofficial 2026 Summer Anthem” and the centrepiece of TikTok’s #SummerAnthem lip-sync format. The tag covers both the song’s chart run and the seven-second creator format that pushed it onto FYPs through May and June.
Quick Facts
- Original: Madonna, “Like a Prayer” (1989)
- 2026 cover: Josh Fawaz, released April 2026 via Hallwood Media
- Chart peaks (US): No. 3 Dance Digital Song Sales, No. 11 Hot Dance/Electronic Songs
- International: Charted in Australia and the UK; radio support in Australia
- TikTok trend: #SummerAnthem lip-sync, 7-second format
Origin
Josh Fawaz, a producer who has spent the back half of the 2020s scoring dance-radio crossovers, released his cover of “Like a Prayer” in April 2026 on Hallwood Media, with an extended mix following on Beatport. The Madonna original is one of the most-covered songs in pop, but Fawaz’s version pairs the gospel-leaning vocal line with a clean four-on-the-floor production that lands cleanly in dance-radio rotations and feels engineered for short-form vertical video.
What It Means
The TikTok format around the song is intentionally simple. Creators film a seven-second clip lip-syncing the chorus, drop on-screen text reading “2026 Summer Anthem,” and tag #SummerAnthem and #LikeAPrayer. The low production bar — no transitions, no special effects, no choreography — is what makes the trend work: NewEngen reports that small creators have hit millions of views on first attempts, and that early viral momentum is what kept the snowball going through May into June.
Social Media & Spread
By early June 2026 the track sat alongside Charli XCX’s #RockMusic and the AI-generated #PuertoRicoSong as one of the three defining TikTok audio formats of the season. Where Charli’s track rewards a tightly edited transition, the Fawaz cover does the opposite: it rewards posting, period. That asymmetry — high reach for low effort — explains why brand accounts and creator coaches kept naming it “the easiest viral entry point of the season” in trend round-ups.
Commercial Success
Billboard chart tracking has the cover climbing to No. 3 on Dance Digital Song Sales, debuting at No. 19 on Digital Song Sales and reaching No. 11 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs over the course of 2026. The cover also picked up chart placements in Australia and the UK, with commercial radio support in Australia, the kind of country-level radio play that dance-floor crossovers from Australian-friendly producers tend to convert into.
Variations & Related Tags
The audio circulates under #LikeAPrayer, #LikeAPrayerRemix, #SummerAnthem and #JoshFawazLikeAPrayer. It sits in the wider 2026 dance-radio cover wave that also returned Madonna catalogue work to Billboard’s dance charts via “I Feel So Free” earlier in the same window.