Prince's 'Batman' Soundtrack Set the Tone for Current Movie Marketing
By Marky Mark
Batman was a big deal when it dropped in 1989, but Prince doing the soundtrack helped make it into an event. Warner Bros. felt they needed a marketing hook and a way to sell Batman to the masses because there was once a time where the idea of a Batman movie was a sketchy prospect. Rather than look outside of their ranks, they realized they had one of the biggest musicians on the planet right under their noses, so Batman not only functions as companion piece to Tim Burton’s film, but his eleventh album. We may be inundated with marketing campaigns of blockbuster films now, so much so that the trailers and trailers for trailers have become white noise, but Prince’s Batman started it all.
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The nine-track LP starts with “The Future” and ends with “Batdance,” and as you may have guessed, not every song says “Batman.” Hell, not even “Batdance” fits the Batman mold, but the few songs that were chosen to be in the movie fit it like a weird, beautifully decorated, purple glove. “The Future,” “Trust,” and “Partyman!” all function as diegetic music in the movie: One comes out of a car radio before a family is mugged, one is played by the Joker right before he gasses an entire population, and the other may as well be a Jack Nicholson music video in a museum. Yeah, it was shameless cross-promotion, but they managed to make it feel organic. If the Joker listens to anything, why wouldn’t it be “Partyman”?
The “Batdance” video might be the most shameless product placement in history, as Prince dressed up as both Batman and the Joker, dubbing himself “Gemini.” You get a new Prince song, you get a cameo by Kim Basinger as Vicki Vale, and you get to see both of the film’s main characters, split right down the middle. It’s silly, but Prince is the one person on the planet who could make you believe the artistry in it and go with it. There was nothing fake about the man and, because of that, it made it easier for a group of people care about the movie when they may have otherwise not thought twice about it.
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Batman is still one of Prince’s biggest albums and it’ll probably be rediscovered over the next few days and weeks. When you listen, just remember that this was a man’s record company telling him to just go with the program, and he managed to make them happy while also not losing sight of who he was as a person and as an artist. Also, “Scandalous” is a beautiful song, soundtrack or no soundtrack.
