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

idk if the comics are really relevant tbh - he's by and large correct about what he does discuss

"* Prince really was extremely enthusiastic about Batman, and constructed his own elaborate mythology around the character inspired by not just the Black Album, but Camille and Spooky Electric. "

Please PLEASE direct me to further reading on this?

it might be truer to say that reading hasn't really shown up *outside* of the comics? nicholson's joker is lascivious, but in an omnisexual kinda way

maybe not explicitly, but Joker's always been an essentially camp figure, and I think that includes the usual pansexual connotations

Cesar Romero was gay after all

jon not jon the liner notes/lyric sheet for batman kinda demonstrated it, songs were in character, the whole album kinda played like a rock opera. that the batman soundtrack is basically a sequel to the black album is something i wouldn't have picked up on at the time but seems super apparent. it was interesting to learn why 'partyman' and 'batdance' haven't been on any of his comps. all his comps have left off something so it didn't seem too odd, that one of his number one hits wouldn't be on a greatest hits comps was more of a marker of how many hits prince had than anything else (though obv that #1 hit would definitely be 'batdance', it's been at least 25 years since i heard it on the radio).

batman '89 is still my favourite superhero movie, it has this jagged tangle of sensibilities that marvel and DC would never really permit again

joker sparing the francis bacon painting, jack palance acting like a reptile that put on your dad's skin, the long metropolis tribute near the end...

I didn't know the reasons for their omissions until I read the Wiki last night

xpost

Xpost yeah I have imbibed the internal evidence (though I haven't read the liner notes since purchasing the cassette in 89) I just thought for a sec there might be some prince interview where he talked about it.

OTM that batman plays like a black album sequel. They even have similar arcs (killer a-side, b-side peters out a little)

idk if the comics are really relevant tbh - he's by and large correct about what he does discuss

Not that it's super-relevant to the album, but saying things like there was no precedent for the darkness of the movie and Burton had to build his own antithesis of the '66 TV show, whimsically speculating what the characters might have been if they'd existed in the '40s - rhetorical asides that clunked specifically due to by-and-large non-correctness

Agree that the album is good and the Scandalous Sex Suite is ridiculous obv

lemon crush is the best thing on here, though i like the whole album, even if it could be a bit less rushed sounding in places. i want to hear the 9 minute version of batdance.

sex is one of his great b sides.

lemon crush and vicki waiting.

electric chair is fantastic but a bit throwaway sounding.

Is the Batdance video really "long suppressed"? Easily accessible via Google. Though maybe not commercially available. Anyway, I showed it to my kids not long ago, they didn't know what to make of it.

Also, I reviewed the album when it came out for my college paper: "as bizarre and carefree as anything he's ever done, though not as stunning as his best work." More otm than most of my 19-year-old opinions.

i dont remember the mark moore or orbit mixes of the singles, but always felt after the future, and maybe loveleft loveright from graffiti bridge, that i wished prince let more house/techno producers remix his songs. or that he went down that route rather than hip-hop. though who knows if it would have turned out as badly.

He's had housey/ravey moments on several of his post-Batman albums, most notably "Loose" on Come and "The Human Body" on Emancipation (I'm pretending Joy Un2 the Rave Fantastic doesn't exist)

The "Batdance" video was an extra on a "Batman" DVD I rented a long time ago. Maybe they got rid of it since then but I think at least first run DVDs have it.

i try to pretend loose and human body dont really exist. sleep around was house-ish too.

I started a thread on this subject a while ago:

Prince and house

Whoops, sorry, here's the correct link:

Prince and house

best bit of Batdance; "Hey Ducky"!

Otm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTkglWrB5xE

Love Prince's hand moves at 1:00 in here.

Classic dig at Bubbles the chimp ~4:40 yo MJ

http://en.musicplayon.com/play?v=478997

Best version of Batdance I could find.

just listened to that song for the first time in about 15 years. wish the drums on parts 1 and 3 were a bit less rigid. but the 2nd part has to be one of the funkiest things hes ever put on record. need to find that vicki vale mix on the 12" i used to have.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5667047/prince_the_future_remix/

this remix is obv a tad dated but good.

'hollywood conjures images of the past'

prince could see the 00s.

I always thought this album was too claustrophobic due to his reliance on samplers. Samples all over the place: voices, guitar chords, film dialogue. It's almost too much at times. This sound carried over somewhat into "Graffiti Bridge" but with much more space.
I love some of the weirdness but it's nowhere as weird as "The Black Album".

black albums weirdness has also been overstated somewhat over the years. it was better when it was a 5th generation bootleg to hearing it as it was meant to be released.

Side b of black album is boring as fuck, that's the other problem with black album

boring? Really? I think it's far from his best but it's still odd, funky and pisses from a great height on most of his subsequent 90s releases. And I'm familiar ( and own) it as a "5th generation" boot as well as the sonically spiffy Warners release.

Ok I was exaggerating a little

The boot I got in Ibiza was pretty decent, sound quality wise. 1991 or thereabouts

prince was right to kill "black album" and replace it with "lovesexy", imo. now, banding the whole cd as one track was maybe not a super-smart idea, but the album itself is super fantastic.

after ATWIAD Lovesexy is his worst record between 1979-1989, but I'd read a robust defense.

I am shocked to see myself typing this but after atwiad, controversy is his weakest record 1979-89 imo. By dint of those being the two records in that span which I never feel like listening to all the way through. But I love both of them anyway; there's no other hot streak as hot and long as this one (unless u count nightfly as a SD album) (well maybe the fall 79-89 or miles second quintet through electric epics)

my big issue with the black album is that with the exception of "when 2 r in love" and "rockhard in a funky place", none of the songs are as good as the songs cut from "crystal ball" the previous year. oh yeah, sure, "bob george" and "le grind" are _weird_ songs, maybe even weird songs by the standards of prince, but that's not enough to make them good songs, and with something like "scandalous", the weirdness is enough to make them good. "the future/electric chair" is a more potent one-two punch than "le grind/cindy c", "arms of orion" and "dead on it" are about equally bad, "partyman" trumps "superfunkycalifragisexy", "batdance" crushes "2 nigs united 4 west compton" from a great height, the dirty joke on "vicki waiting" is just enough to make it marginally better than "rockhard in a funky place", "when 2 r in love", great as that song is, just can't hold its own against "scandalous". i'm not going to bother comparing "bob george" and "trust".

If you've never listened to them all the way thru, then they're worse than Controversy.

xpost

batman is like the black album in that most of it sounds like it was done really quickly. a lot of prince albums fall under that category, lovesexy too.

probably worth pointing out that many of the Prince tracks on Graffiti Bridge (Can't Stop, We Can Funk, Joy In Repetition etc) had mostly been sat around on very-available bootlegs for the previous couple of years and that some of the cuts sounded almost identical once on the album. much of it was written way before The Black Album.

my bootleg copy of The Dream Factory has "We Can Funk."

tossed-off Prince in that era > most things

probably worth pointing out that many of the Prince tracks on Graffiti Bridge (Can't Stop, We Can Funk, Joy In Repetition etc) had mostly been sat around on very-available bootlegs for the previous couple of years and that some of the cuts sounded almost identical once on the album. much of it was written way before The Black Album.

"Initial tracking for Prince's original solo version took place on 31 December, 1983 at Sunset Sound, Hollywood, CA, USA, as We Can Fuck (the day after Erotic City and She's Always In My Hair), with additional work the following day, 1 January, 1984. Prince later toned down the title and lyrics of the song, and re-recorded the track on 17 June, 1986 at the Washington Avenue Warehouse, Eden Prairie, MN, USA (in sequence after Data Bank and Can't Stop This Feeling I Got, the day before recording Girl O' My Dreams)."

Holy shit @ "Electric Chair!"

For me, probably his first less than very good album. It has its moments, though.

Better than Lovesexy and D&P.

It's been cute seeing people defend "Batdance" over the last couple days, but I never really liked it. I'll rep for the rest of the Batman album, though. "Electric Chair" prob in my Top 5 Prince songs.

contentious opinion there !

(i genuinely love all three so, i aint siding with any of them here)

xpost.

I like batman and love sexy about even (aka a lot)

the prince batman soundtrack makes me smile a lot.

i never did catch his cameo in the film.