Classic or Dud: Prince's Batman "Soundtrack" Album

Most of the audience thought so and so did I. But it got me thinking about what is, and isn't gay.

Discussing sex with a guy is gay. Discussing sex with a woman is straight, even telling a woman, "Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to suck a cock," is straight.

Sports are gay, especially contact sports, unless you're the only guy on both teams, in which it's straight. Gymsare always gay, because afterwards, in the locker room, you're showering with other guys, and that is gay.

Watching pornography alone is neutral, like eating a sandwich. It's neither straight, nor gay. Watching pornos, with one or more other guys in the room, no matter how many other women are also in the room, is gay. Watching porn - even gay porn - with one or more women only, is straight.

Here's an interesting one - kissing a gay guy on the cheek, or letting him kiss you on the cheek, is neutral, as long as the guy is out of the closet. Hugging or kissing a straight guy is gay.

See, look, I know I'm homophobic, but not about gay guys. They don't bother me at all. It'sstraight guys who don't know they're gay. They fuck my shit right up. Like a guy calls me up and says, "uh, a bunch of us guys are gonna sit around in our underwear and watch the football game and drink beer and eat chips, and you know, maybe wrestle with each other a little, and you know, just us guys. You wanna come over?" And I'm like, "no." Okay. You've got a guy sucking your dick, even is he's dressed like a beautiful woman, even if he's got the best breast implants you've ever seen, even if you're saying, "Suck it, bitch, I knowyou like it, you slut, you whore," that's gay.

And conversely, if a woman straps on a dildo, and you'redressed like a woman and you're sucking her cock and she's saying, "you like it, don't you, you like sucking my dick you fucking faggot," and then she rolls you over and fucks you in the ass and says, "you love it, you little pussy-boy, you love getting fucked in the ass, I bet you wish I was a man, I bet you wish this was a real cock, you fucking faggot!" And you're getting off on this like you've never gotten off before, that's still straight.

But then, if you go off to the bar and discuss this, or any other sexual activities with another guy, that's gay.

And here's the most interesting one. Sucking a guy's cock, can, under certain rare circumstances, be straight. Let's say you've gotten into a betting game with a woman and the bet is whoever loses has to be the other one's sex slave for the night, the kind of thing that happens in Penthouse forum all the time, and you lose. And the woman makes you have sex with another guy, that's not gay.

I don't know exactly why, but it's not.

And I think you think to much about the straight/gay divide. You need to just relax, roll over, and let me slide this big cock in that manhole of yours. Yeah, baby...

can't think of anyone else doing that.

it was all hype anyway. muchlike the film.

atention show-offs ! now's the point where you say
"i thought 200 balloons was better than anything off the album anyway"

also agreed about "Partyman". take it (okay, and maybe "Vikki Waiting" too) out and this album is nigh on perfect.

it's still fucking absurd.

fucking absurdly great, you mean.

it wasn't as bad as i remembered it to be, but as i mentioned above, it sure as fuck sounds way too much like "daddy pop".

"Hey Ducky, let me stick the 7-inch
In the computer
HA, HA, HA
Hey, we got the power
Oh, we got the soul
Hey, we got to sho'nuff get off
2 make the devil go, go

"This town needs an enema!"

"I'm gonna kill U"
POWER
"I'm not gonna kill U"
SOUL
"I'm gonna kill U"
POWER
"I'm not gonna kill U"
SOUL
Let's do it
"I'm BATMAN"
BATMAN
Don't stop dancin'
"I'm BATMAN"
BATMAN
Don't stop dancin'
Do it, do it, do it, do it
BATMAN, BATMAN, BATMAN
Don't stop, don't stop
Let's do it
Don't stop dancin'
Let's do it, BATMAN
Let's do it, BATMAN
Don't stop dancin'
Don't stop dancin'
No, damn it! Turn the music back up!
You son of a bitch!

"Have you ever heard of the healing power of laughter?"

Who's gonna stop 200 balloons?
Nobody!
Batman
Stop!"

same difference

Anyway, classic, if only for "Lemon Crush" -- a sublime example of the tossed-off insta-funk that your boy could seemingly do in his sleep back then. Lotsa other good ones, too.

It's not that technology and sounds changed. Classic Prince didn't much sound like contemporary pop and R&B -- those genres adapted to him.

What changed was Prince's waning curiosity in finding new sounds.

it would be interesting to hear an engineer's take on how his gear changed - samplers, drum patches, synths, etc. I think his interest in new sounds continued but the range of stuff available to him (as far as what was "new"/cutting edge) changed, and his eagerness to defy convention sonically also deteriorated. It was perfectly natural for him to not want to just use a LinnDrum forever, but what he replaced the LinnDrum with sounded like garbage.

Michael B was a solid drummer if no Sheila E. I didn't blame Prince for wanting a live drum sound again.

he wasn't a bad drummer, but Sheila's drums *sounded* better, they were tuned, mic'd, compressed, etc. differently. Prince still occasionally got decent drum sounds ("Get Off" is pretty banging) but in general that big booming 90s arena-rock drumkit sound was shit imo.

I'd rank the '90s stuff:

The Gold Experience
Come
Love Symbol
Emancipation
Chaos and Disorder
Graffiti Bridge
Diamonds and Pearls
Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic

Makes a lot more sense to rank his '90s singles than his albums tbh.

The drums started to get very New Jack Swing-y after Batman... I sometimes wonder if Prince was ever worried that Jam & Lewis might eclipse him in some way.

with Janet? of course he did

during an Emancipation promo interview he specifically mentioned that he hoped the album would compete with J&L.

Apparently 'Space' was so close to being on The Gold Experience that it even had an NPG Ooperator segue recorded for it ("you have accessed the Space experience" etc.)

there's a lot of crossover between "come" and "the gold experience" - i think "endorphinmachine" was on an early lineup of "come"

both records suffer i think by being recorded at the height of his self-sabotage (also why "lovesexy" often gets consigned to "post-peak", which it obviously isn't). they're fine records of amazing songs put across in a self-consciously off-putting way.

I don't hear the self-sabotage in Lovesexy... a lot has been made of the Black Album but I really think that whole situation was as simple as Prince cancelling a project because it wasn't up to standard and replacing it with something superior. It's not like Prince hadn't done that before, just that Black Album got as far as being pressed and the other projects didn't.

yeah the drums sound is important in my dislike of his 90s output. also the lack of killer synth !
Listening to Batman I tried to imagine what it would sound like with his 90s sound and I think some of the tracks are not that far from the following albums.
As others have said : I wonder what made him change his sound so drastically circa 90-92.
Cos' Batman still sounds like a lot of his 80s output.

Listening to Lovesexy now and it's incredible to think that merely three years later he'd have gone from this dizzying slice of batshit genius to playing it straight on 'Cream' ... a song I like but it's like day and night.

I'm sure I've said this before but Batman is not just a better album than The Black Album, it's also darker.

"Bob George" aside, The Black Album ain't all that dark.

I'm sure I've said this before but Batman is not just a better album than The Black Album, it's also darker.

― Gholdfish Killah (Turrican)

Just about every '90s album is.

"Bob George" aside, The Black Album ain't all that dark.

― iCloudius (cryptosicko), Wednesday, October 25, 2017 7:54 PM (forty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree. It has this reputation (put about by Prince himself) of being a dark record when it's not. Same as Batman has this reputation of being throwaway or "commercial" when it's really neither.

received wisdom about Lovesexy - that it represented a big shift, was inferior, etc. - also inaccurate imo

Yup. If anything, Lovesexy is one of his most focused!

The Black Album might be my favourite of the 3... hmmm nah, I think I like Lovesexy and Black Album equally but in a different way.
The former being more "poppy" and the latter more "funky".
A kinda of fight between Anna Stesia and Cindy C. !

The presence of 'Dead On It' on The Black Album pretty much ensures it's his worst album of the '80s for me.

I don't hear the self-sabotage in Lovesexy... a lot has been made of the Black Album but I really think that whole situation was as simple as Prince cancelling a project because it wasn't up to standard and replacing it with something superior. It's not like Prince hadn't done that before, just that Black Album got as far as being pressed and the other projects didn't.

― Gholdfish Killah (Turrican)

i was thinking of his insistence on indexing the entire cd as one track.

I'm sure I've said this before but Batman is not just a better album than The Black Album, it's also darker.

― Gholdfish Killah (Turrican)

...and that's _after_ he cut "dance with the devil" for being "too dark"!

But then you have "Le Grind" and "Cindy C." which are fantastic and pure fun !

Yeah, but then you have that 7 minute instrumental with that god-awful title which does very little and doesn't go anywhere during its entire runtime!

Keep bustin'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulOLYnOthIw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjY8HvpNu6o

This came up in the Graffiti Bridge thread the other day. I just put this on after listening to For You, and it really is a far more enjoyable album, so much that I have to say it's underrated. For You has so little of what made Prince PRINCE that if you remove the title track and "Soft and Wet," what's left is a competent R&B record that's so conventional it's kind of dull. Switched over to Batman and even as a cranked-out job-for-hire, it's loaded with Prince's personality. It may lack ambition, but it feels effortless in the best way.

(I should add that "The Arms of Orion" is a gaping hole of crap. Skip that shit or slot in "200 Balloons" instead.)

"The Future" slaps.

Not only ambition, it lacks craft. It sounds like he bashes it out in a few days. But yeah its enjoyable. Batdance is fun :) I'd prob have preferred it if Tim burton used 1999 and baby I'm a star like he planned before prince jumped on board. Dont imagine burton or Nicholson thought they got prince on his best day when they heard the soundtrack.

But yeah, it's a quickie throwaway like the black album. Which is cool, but dont pretend like it isn't :p I mean, half of love sexy sounds throwaway too!

I've seen posted elsewhere, but it's been said that The Black Album (and its replacement, Lovesexy) marked a shift where Prince became less interested in crafting tight, polished songs. So you definitely hear that continue with Batman. Anyway, it's never going to be a major work but it's on par with the Magical Mystery Tour double EP - a highly enjoyable trifle that's more fun than the movie it was made for.

Batman >> Lovesexy >>> Black Album

All of which >>> Diamonds and Pearls

Lemon crush is underrated.

xxpost Batman >> Lovesexy? Yikes!

id buy a super deluxe edition of the batman soundtrack.

I simply like more songs on Batman: "The Future," "Electric Chair," "Scandalous," for starters. And "Batdance" remains a glorius wtf moment, at once part of and adjacent to his catalog.

hey Jackie
let me put my 7 inch in the computer

id buy a longer version of the batdance vicki vale remix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5l4MW-yg_c

supposedly a remix with big daddy kane was comissioned too, but never released

Alfred - fair enough. I just think his songwriting and arranging struck some sort of weird, baroque vein on Lovesexy and it was dullsville, for the most part, from there.

Dullsville “afterwards”, I meant to write.

All his albums after SOTT until D&P were tossed off quickies. I'll take alphabet st, glam slam, Anna stesia and I wish u heaven over the best of batman though.

I love "Vicky Waiting" and "Electric Chair" is a great heavy funky track.

id buy a longer version of the batdance vicki vale remix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlBQxQkE-wE

200 balloons is a total, deliriously hammered out throwaway but fun.

Back in the day, I hated "Partyman" a lot. Today it sounds completely awesome. I think I just needed to get past the drums.

Ain't nothing but a muffin