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

guhhhh otm

so ugly

movie is legit fascinating in a shitshow way, but having to look at that hairdo for 90 minutes oy

haha yeah we watched it shortly after his death and it's just one design monstrosity after another, we found ourselves marveling at, like, the shitty lighting and his weird facial hair and the totally fake "outdoor" sets etc

Graffiti Bridge is technically half of a worthy successor to Purple Rain and half not even remotely in the same ballpark.

i actually love the aggressively false outdoor environments in GP a lot

just hanging out in this crappy abandoned department store display case https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftrashfilmguru.files.wordpress.com%2F2016%2F04%2Fgraffiti-bridge.jpg&f=1

love that thing

also she later married david sylvian, right? this was not known to me until recently.

the other day at CVS I heard a familiar-not-familiar Prince track, a gospel-inflected ballad.

It had been years since I last heard "Still Would Stand All Time."

It's probably been said about a million times before, but one thing I like about this record is that Prince couldn't help himself and ended up taking the Batman characters and made a Prince-style concept album that can easily exist as its own thing apart from the movie.

otm

i wish someone would make a batman movie that attempts to incarnate what the burton movie would have been had it used the prince records as its bible

Jack Nicholson as Vicki Vale.

It's funny, because all of these songs are sung "in character", and 'Scandalous' is meant to be "sung" by "Batman", and you watch the movie and you just can't reconcile the song with the character as played on-screen by Michael Keaton. It's like Prince has decided to cast himself as Batman on the record and then just ran with it.

also she later married david sylvian, right? this was not known to me until recently.

still married !

She also had two daughters, Ameera and Isobel, with English singer and musician David Sylvian, whom she married in 1992 and divorced twelve years later.

oh my bad heh

http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/21303846/sn/1538020043/name/n_a

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udVFCpg5OnU

I really don't understand why Prince fans hate 'The Arms of Orion' so much, I think it's a really beautiful song - really well-written, gorgeous melody and highly memorable. They can't all be funk jams! I still disagree with Tuomas and think 'Scandalous' is one of the highlights of the record, as good as anything he did in the '80s and one of my favourite Prince slow jams.

graffiti bridge? oh yes please prince take a bunch of killer outtakes from '86-'88 and rerecord most of them to sound way shittier and then release those versions, thanks

(of course he didn't rerecord "joy in repetition", oh hey "joy in repetition" is the best song on the album, what a shocker)

yeah, I don't really get the hate for "Orion". It's a nice Prince slowjam - on the cheezy side of Prince, sure, but it's part of his work from the start ! - and certainly not the worst song on the album.
"Scandalous" is clearly upthere with his best stuff. It could have been on any album since 1999 and not be out of place.

Have you hear the new "single" available on spotify for the remastered "Purple Rain" ?
It's called "Father's song".

I'm looking back through the Prince artist poll we had on here, and it's crazy that none of the highlights of this album placed.

I was on hiatus or something when that poll happened. I think I'd need "Electric Chair" on my ballot

Maybe it would be worth giving it its own poll...

Listened to both Lovesexy and this back-to-back tonight and man, Prince was still on fire in 1988-1989. I know the common line is that he started to go downhill after Sign o' the Times, but I genuinely put both Lovesexy and Batman up there with his finest work.

When I listen to Graffiti Bridge or Diamonds and Pearls I wonder what the fuck happened. While there's no denying the talents in the NPG, and Prince never truly lost his ability to write great songs, it feels like he seemingly lost his good judgement and ability to make consistently great decisions. His sense of quality control just seemed to go all to hell and the productions just aren't as interesting.

I relistened to this last week too. Tho I still think "Batdance" is no "The Line," the rest of the album has tons of greatness.

The bit where Prince is all like "ooh yeah ooh yeah I wanna bust that body" on 'Batdance' still tickles me. I quite like the fact that Prince took full advantage of the situation he was in and created this bizarre Batman concept album that had dick-all to do with the plot of the movie.

I mean, an artist can't just go ahead and create a bizarre concept album about Batman without, I'd guess, running into all sorts of legal problems - so it's quite something that Prince was in a position where he was allowed to make a record like Batman by presenting it as the soundtrack to the movie. Which it was, but in far more ways it wasn't.

The "Batdance" breakdown is an eternal jam that I will treasure until the day I die.

I agree that Lovesexy and Batman Sdtk are all peak-Prince afaic. There's no real drop-off in quality til he hits Graffiti Bridge, a strange mishmash of leftovers and guest spots and yeah his production ear and quality control instincts seem to go completely out the window. He subsequently occasionally still hit on decent singles and ideas here and there but everything just got so much sloppier. It's hard to say what really happened and why. Part of it is probably changing technology + R&B landscape and trying to figure out how to adapt to those and still be "Prince", and part of it is obviously the fight with Warner Brothers... maybe that all just drained him, idk.

I see I said all this a few months ago

I was about to type a rebuttal. See what I too said a few months ago.

Say what you will about the rest of the album. Anyone who hears anything other than top-tier Prince in either "Joy in Repetition" or "The Question of U" is a person whose ears I don't trust in Princely matters.

His production ear was still intact. "Joy in Repetition" and "We Can Funk" popped up on The Dream Factory and Crystal Ball in rather different forms.

"Joy in Repetition" is the one he didn't re-record (as noted upthread, I think?) and yeah it's great. "We Can Funk" is good too.

"Graffiti Bridge" is the point where he transitions to a hit-or-miss artist from unstoppable-genius artist

'Joy in Repetition' is a great one, yeah!

I reckon I could easily put together a couple of compilations of '90s Prince stuff that would be wall-to-wall excellent songwriting and well played by the musicians that feature, but the productions wouldn't be as interesting, and he put out a fair amount of filler in the '90s.

Even considering that he put out a couple of double albums in the '80s, his albums started to become overlong post-Batman (with the exception of the uncharacteristically short Chaos and Disorder) ... I can't help but think Love Symbol and even The Gold Experience could have done with tightening up a bit - this is before we get to Emancipation ...

xp It's an album earlier for me, but hey, we're within a calendar year on where the line falls.

Yeah, I'm with Shakey on this one, I'm afraid. Almost everything up until and including Batman is essential Prince, IMO. After that, I start cherry picking from the albums up until and including Emancipation, but then I fall off/lose interest etc.

There's good stuff on Musicology and 2131

Black Sweat song/video is incredible

there's even a couple decent songs on Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic iirc but it's been awhile

That album (Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic) was a bit of a depressing listen for me, because it felt like the work of an immense talent that just didn't know what the fuck to do with himself anymore.

thing is - he has a ton of bangers on his last few albums. they work in a really loud club setting rather than an intimate listening situation.. you haven't lived until you've heard clouds or gold standard from "art official age" super loud in a club with a bunch of people dancing . they dont work so well in a car though.

Art official age is just soooo thin sounding though, I can't imagine feeling it bodily at any volume

yah i duno you're wrong heh

there's always at least one worthwhile song hiding out on any arbitrary non-instrumental prince release, e.g. "chelsea rodgers" on planet earth

and "Lion in Judah"!