Tim Burton’s initial reaction to the Prince ‘Batman’ soundtrack: “It completely lost me”
Prince has never been a stranger to the big screen. The Purple One’s larger-than-life persona came to life on the stage, so it was natural to cross over into the film world. While Purple Rain became one of the biggest smashes of the early 1980s, Prince wasn’t equipped to go into every cinematic direction he thought.
After making a healthy payday with Rain, Prince planned to initially do it all over again, making the album Parade as a soundtrack to one of his upcoming films, Under a Cherry Moon. Though the LP gave fans some of his best material to date on songs like ‘Kiss’, the film was poorly received, struggling to much of its money back, and audiences did not take to the film noir tone that the film was going for.
None of that mattered to Prince, though, as he made one unique project after another. However, towards the end of the decade, the big screen came calling again when Warner Bros thought Prince would blend perfectly with the tone of Tim Burton’s reimagining of Batman.
At first, Burton was entirely on board with working with Prince, telling Rolling Stone in 1992: “here is a guy, Prince, who was one of my favourites. I had just gone to see two of his concerts in London, and I felt they were like the best concerts I’d ever seen”. Although Burton didn’t see how he would fit into The Caped Crusader’s gothic world, the label had other plans when generating PR exercises.
From Burton’s perspective, Warner Bros would do everything in its power to get Prince in the movie, including putting a soundtrack album together which would go along with the film. Although Burton didn’t like the idea they originally pitched to him, the label won out, appearing in several shots in the movie.
Since this was designed to be the darker take on Batman than the Adam West version, Burton had a lacklustre reaction to hearing Prince’s music play out over his action scenes. While he was thrilled to listen to some of the man’s music, Burton was not happy to hear it knowing what went on behind the scenes, later recalling, “It completely lost me. And it tainted something that I don’t want to taint, which is how you feel about an artist. And actually, I liked his album. I wish I could listen to it without the feel of what had happened”.
Towards the end of the ‘80s, Prince was starting to have problems with his label as well, continuing to write the word ‘slave’ on his cheek because of how mistreated he felt and eventually changing his name to ‘The Love Symbol’ so his name wouldn’t be put onto projects he didn’t like. Despite Burton’s wishes, Prince’s music does play prominently in two iconic scenes, with ‘Partyman’ appearing in Joker’s scene defiling a museum and again when ‘Trust’ plays over ‘The Clown Prince of Crime’’s parade.
While Batman may have given Burton free reign to get a bit darker with the follow-up Batman Returns, the experience spoiled his relationship with Prince’s music. Although having new Prince music in the world is rarely bad, it tends to sting when made for the wrong reasons.
