Batman (1989)
1. The Future
2. Electric Chair
3. The Arms of Orion
4. Partyman
5. Vicki Waiting
6. Trust
7. Lemon Crush
8. Scandalous
9. Batdance
If you were anywhere near a television, a movie theater, or a shopping mall in the summer of 1989, you were probably within arm’s reach of Batman. The film was everywhere. A huge media event that swallowed up just about everything in its path. Unlike the candy-colored, tongue-in-cheek television show of the 1960s, this reboot tried to play it darker, moodier, and a bit more in line with the comic books. Warner Bros. spared no expense promoting the thing, and smack dab in the center of all the hype was a full-blown soundtrack from none other than Prince. A match made in marketing heaven. Prince, after all, had always seemed part myth, part superhero himself—so pairing him with Gotham’s caped crusader made a certain kind of sense.
Too bad the music didn’t live up to the poster.
Batman (the soundtrack) is easily one of the most ordinary releases in Prince’s otherwise dazzling 1980s catalog. If it had been a one-off—maybe a couple of original tracks, padded out with orchestral score and some throwaway instrumentals—it might have gone down a bit easier. But that’s not what Prince gave us. He delivered a full album of new material, designed to tie into the movie’s themes and characters. Unfortunately, the result feels more like homework than inspiration.
The beats are there. The synths are certainly there—this is 1989, after all—but very little of the album breaks out of the mold. It feels rushed, limited, and far too tethered to the film’s demands to breathe freely on its own. At best, it’s passable. At worst, it’s just forgettable.
There are a few moments that threaten to rise above the mediocrity. The Arms of Orion, a gentle duet with Sheena Easton, is pleasant enough in a soft, Hallmark-card kind of way. Vicki Waiting is probably the catchiest of the bunch, and at least hints at some of Prince’s usual melodic flair. Other tracks flirt with the idea of being good—like they’re just a few production decisions away from really popping—but it’s as if everyone involved decided “good enough” was good enough. Maybe the deadline was looming. Maybe the label just wanted the thing out the door before the premiere.
Still, there’s one song that genuinely holds up, and that’s Scandalous. Here, Prince leans fully into his seductive falsetto for six smooth, slow-burning minutes, and the result is mesmerizing. It’s sensual, sultry, and the only track on the album that feels like it came from the same creative well as his best work. I don’t remember exactly where it lands in the film, but it’s not hard to imagine it soundtracking some foggy love scene between Bruce Wayne and whoever his love interest was supposed to be.
Then there’s Batdance.
Oof.
Officially the lead single—and inexplicably a chart-topping hit—Batdance is a six-minute Frankenstein of a track, stitched together from multiple half-songs, movie dialogue, guitar stabs, electronic noise, and general chaos. It was played nonstop that summer, and to this day, I have no idea why. It’s not catchy, it’s not clever, and it doesn’t hold up even as a novelty. It’s the kind of song that makes you ask not just “Why was this a hit?” but “How did this even get made?” Prince’s clout was so massive at that point, he probably could have released a song made entirely out of fax machine noises and still gone platinum. Come to think of it, he kind of did.
In the end, Batman the soundtrack became a product of its time—hugely successful at the moment, but quickly dated and largely dismissed in retrospect. Like the film itself, it may have looked sleek and powerful when it first arrived, but time hasn’t been kind. Today, it feels more like a souvenir from a marketing campaign than a proper Prince album. And that might be the most disappointing thing of all: the music didn’t need to wear a mask, but here, it’s all costume and very little underneath.
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