darealvelle
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All these nikkaz dying before the age of 60 too
Batman (1989) Soundtrack Appreciation
- Thread starter The_King_of_Everything
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Dr. Narcisse
Veteran
Rapmastermind
Superstar
"Batman 89" had more cultural impact than any Batman film released after it including "The Dark Knight". This soundtrack was one of the biggest reason why outside of the movie being Classic. If you were alive and aware in the Summer 89' than you know how big this soundtrack was. What's great is Prince actually fit Batman's world very well and wrote songs that went great with the movie. "Scandelous" was one of the first songs that popped in my head when I heard the news.
Oh Yeah, "Batdance" actually hit #1 on the Hot 100 so everyone was feeling this soundtrack
Oh Yeah, "Batdance" actually hit #1 on the Hot 100 so everyone was feeling this soundtrack
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is not in this world anymore
in memoriam
Kill Dat Noize
Banned
the prince song here is an odd choice. it helps it feel bizarre, but imo there's actually a lot more going on in this scene and it could have been a lot more dramatic if they had let elfman do his thing.
Dr. Narcisse
Veteran
On June 20, 1989, one of the most significant pieces of American pop culture criticism was published. It wasn’t in the form of a book or an essay, though — it was an album. Prince’s Batmansoundtrack stands to this day as much more than an underrated entry in a catalogue full of classic LPs. It’s also an essential commentary on not one but two of America’s greatest pop culture icons.
Since being created in 1939 by DC Comics’s Bob Kane and Bill Finger, Batman has gone through numerous costume changes and personality transplants: fun and campy as played by Adam West in the 1960s TV series, violent and emotionally unstable in Frank Miller’s 1986 comics miniseries The Dark Knight Returns, brooding and melancholy on the big screen in Christopher Nolan’s 2005Batman Begins. But none of those guys got Batman like Prince did. As an icon, Bats has been reinterpreted too many times for anyone but a man who’s done the same to truly understand him.
Before filming began on 1989’s Batman, Tim Burton reportedly listened to Prince classics like “1999” and “Baby I’m a Star” as he reimagined Jack Nicholson’s Joker. Prince returned the favor by creating an entire cycle of songs inspired by Burton’s vision of Batman as his 11th studio LP. Most of the songs didn’t make it into the film, but that doesn’t make them any less cinematic.
DEARLY BELOVED: AN MTV NEWS PODCAST SPECIAL CELEBRATING THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF PRINCE
The album begins with a sample of Michael Keaton’s voice as Batman, telling a Gotham criminal, “I’m not gonna kill you. I want you to do me a favor. I want you to tell all your friends about me.” The line doubles as a reintroduction and entreaty from Prince himself after the critical and commercial misstep of 1988’s Lovesexy. Dumping his usual flamboyant garb, he went moody and gothic with his look — or, at least, as gothic as Prince was ever able to get. The music felt darker, too, but it was still laced with funk; it still had love songs you wanted to fukk to, still had songs that made you get up and dance whenever you heard them.
Prince and Batman both took inspiration from a string of stunning, sexually dominant muses — women like Vanity, Apollonia, and Anna Fantastic in the real world, or like Vicki Vale, Batman’s love interest in the film. Prince sings about Vale on “The Arms of Orion,” a duet with Sheena Easton: Shielded by a mask, he’ll never be able to fully commit to her, but the arms of the constellation Orion are wide enough to keep them linked. I’d like to imagine Prince played that song for the many women who had his heart over the course of his career. He might love you, but his mask is the stage, his art, his performance. If he doesn’t have time for a civilian identity or a settled life, then, baby, just imagine that you and he are still linked when you look up at the stars at night. The album’s centerpiece, the chart-topping “Batdance,” features another ode to Vale in its extended breakdown. When you hear the repeated refrain of “Stop the press — who is that? / Vicki Vale,” you know you’re hearing an echo of conversations Prince must have had about the women he loved.
Batman allowed Prince to hold a mirror up to Batman and see himself. The world liked what he saw: The album became his first No. 1 since 1985’s Around the World in a Day, ending a four-year chart slump and opening up new horizons for his career in the 1990s. In later years, Prince seemed to position himself opposite pop culture’s cutting edge, laughably declaring “The Internet’s completely over” in 2010 and dispatching lawyers to ban his music, his videos, and his live performances from easy online consumption. But with Batman, he engaged with pop culture in strikingly modern fashion — remixing and reinventing a classic character exactly the way we do in 2016. If you saw Batman v Superman this month, you probably ran to Twitter to share everything you loved and related to or hated and scorned onscreen. In 1989, Prince did the same thing with the Batmanblockbuster of his day, giving us a wildly creative album that’s more relevant than ever.
The song fits the joker's personality like the scene at the art gallery
ZEB WALTON
ayo! - BEZ
No other scene in history is more swagges out than jack as joker dancing to prince fukkin up that museum and making all those works of art his
Kill Dat Noize
Banned
imagine what christopher nolan would have done with that scene.
picture heath ledger's joker parading around gotham city on a huge float, dispensing the mob's money like it was confetti. hordes of people groveling beneath him pushing and shoving just for the chance to get close. fights are breaking out, people are getting trampled. gotham city cops there to diffuse the situation are completely overtaken by a vast sea of savage rioters. joker conducts the madness from above like a deranged maestro, laughing and dancing the whole time as millions of dollars are raining down from the sky.
i just don't think he would have used a prince song.
the movie was made in 1989, it's a party going on, Joker even references the songs lyrics as he addresses the crowd lmao the song fit perfect with the imager, fukk you want some generic ass theme music like the Nolan films had in it lmao.
Christopher Nolan would never do anything like that scene, and his joker wasn't the joker just an arsonist with paint on his face. He didn't have the personality of the joker.
Kill Dat Noize
Banned
i know, i'm not saying nolan was better... i was just using him as an example.
that scene has a lot going on, and could have been better. the prince song definitely gives it a certain flavor though, but that could just be because i'm used to it.
It's a party, the song doesn't even last the long before it's interrupted by the batman theme when he shows up with the batwing showing the contracts between the characters
the scene is perfect, they don't even use music to tell the story in film's anymore like they use to.
Kill Dat Noize
Banned
it's not a party, the joker is exploiting the greed of the people to draw them in for a mass murder.
and they're falling for it.
The_King_of_Everything
Yeah.
Agreed.
Jefe Blanco
All Star
Burton's Batman and Nolan's Batman are polar opposites and I think this Prince song fits the vibe better than a score would.