"Batman Soundtrack" redirects here. For the Danny Elfman musical score, seeBatman (score). For the soundtrack to the 2022 film, seeThe Batman (soundtrack).
Batman is the eleventhstudio album by American recording artistPrince and thesoundtrack album to the 1989 filmBatman. It was released on June 20, 1989, byWarner Bros. Records. As aWarner Bros. stablemate, Prince's involvement in the soundtrack was designed to leverage the media company's contract-bound talent as well as fulfill the artist's need for a commercial revival. The result was yet another multi-platinum successful cross media enterprise by Warner Bros., in the vein ofPurple Rain.
The album was recorded in six weeks, from mid-February to late March 1989, and Prince used three tracks recorded earlier: "Electric Chair", "Scandalous!", and "Vicki Waiting". Originally, the songs "1999" and "Baby I'm a Star" from earlier albums were slated to be used in the film, but Prince instead recorded an entire album's worth of material withBatman samples and lyrics. In a 2010Rolling Stone interview, Prince revealed that the project was initially supposed to be a collaboration between himself andMichael Jackson: "Did you know that the album was supposed to be a duet between Michael Jackson and me? He as Batman, me as theJoker?" Prince would have sungfunk songs for the villains, while Michael Jackson would have sungballads for the heroes. This never came to fruition as Jackson was busy with hisBad World Tour and already signed withEpic Records (the label he had been with since 1975), while the film was aWarner Bros. production. The album was performed entirely by Prince, with a few exceptions:Sheena Easton duets with Prince on "The Arms of Orion", "Trust" features a sampledhorn part byEric Leeds andAtlanta Bliss, and "The Future" features strings byClare Fischer sampled from the then-unreleased 1986 track "Crystal Ball" and samples of theSounds of Blackness choir. "Batdance" includes a sample of Prince's technician Matthew Larson, and "Partyman" features a sample of spoken word from Anna Fantastic.[1] All dialogue sampled on Prince'sBatman album is taken directly from aworkprint ofBatman and therefore lacksADR andfoley. This is especially noticeable in the beginning of the first track, "The Future", with dialogue ofMichael Keaton speaking as Batman.
The producers originally wanted composerDanny Elfman, who was responsible for thefilm’s score, to collaborate with Prince but Elfman declined as he already had the score’s vision and did not want to be amusic arranger.[2]
In the album'sliner notes, the lyrics of each song are associated with one of the characters in the film: "The Future" and "Scandalous" are credited to Batman; while "Electric Chair" and "Trust" are credited to the Joker. "Vicki Waiting" is sung from the perspective of Bruce Wayne, while "Lemon Crush" comes fromVicki Vale; the two characters share the duet, "The Arms of Orion". "Partyman" was inspired by Prince's first meeting withJack Nicholson (out-of-character) on-set.[3]
"Batdance", whose lyrics consist mostly of samples from the film, is credited to all aforementioned parties, as well as Gemini, Prince's Batman-centricalter ego that resembles Batman villainTwo-Face—Prince on the right half of the body and the Joker on the left. Prince himself is credited with singing two lines of the album as himself: "Who do you trust if you can't trustGod? Who can you trust—who can ya? Nobody." in "Trust"; and the word "Stop!" that ends "Batdance" and the album proper (though the "Stop!" is actually asound bite of Michael Keaton, directly from the film where he tells theBatmobile to stop).
TheBatman era also marked a change in Prince's appearance; he switched out the elaborate costumes,polka dots andlace fromLovesexy for much simpler attire, usually donning dark blue/black clothing and "Batman" boots. The artist's hair was fully straightened from his signature wavy curls, as shown in the "Batdance" video. A picture of the cassette soundtrack is used in the opening theme of the popular TV series "Mr D" (2012).
In 2016, film criticMatt Zoller Seitz praised Prince's songs and music videos forBatman, more so than the film itself, stating that his songs "suggest a goofy, perverse, sensuous, somewhat introverted Batman film that so far we've never gotten from anyone", and arguing that Prince's music videos "are more psychologically perceptive than any of the Batman films".[14][15][16]
In 2019, a Symposium took place to discuss the album.[17]
Prince had to agree to sign the publishing rights to the songs used in the film over toWarner Bros.; Prince's hit singles from this album were not permitted to appear on any of his hits compilations until the 2016 release of4Ever, which included "Batdance". Only the B-sides "200 Balloons", "Feel U Up", and "I Love U in Me" appeared on his 1993The Hits/The B-Sides collection. On concertT-shirts which listed all of Prince's album titles to date, the song "Scandalous!" appeared in place of the albumBatman.[citation needed] Despite this, Prince performed a number of the album's tracks in concert over the years.[18] A 2005 special editionDVD of theBatman film contains Prince's related videos as a bonus feature (although the video for "Partyman" is an edited down version of the original seven-minute long video).
^Harris, Keith (June–July 2001)."Prince:Batman".Blender. Vol. 1, no. 1. New York. Archived fromthe original on August 20, 2004. RetrievedApril 16, 2017.
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