Difference between revisions of "Batdance"

4Ever

• 30 April 1990, Rupert’s, Golden Valley, MN, USA
  
• 10 September 1990: Yokohama Stadium (横浜スタジアム), Yokohama, Japan

• Nude Tour

• 1990

Batdance is the ninth and final track on Prince’s eleventh album Batman (the motion picture soundtrack to the Tim Burton movie Batman), and, two weeks prior to the album’s release, Batdance was released as the album’s first single, becoming Prince’s fourth number one hit.

Basic tracking took place in mid-late March 1989 at Paisley Park Studios in Chanhassen, Minnesota, as the last song recorded for the album, replacing Dance With The Devil. The song contains samples from The Future, Electric Chair, 200 Balloons and We Got The Power (the latter was briefly considered for the album but left unreleased). Prince would later make regular use of mentioning or sampling tracks from an album within one of the album’s final tracks. Of Note, remixes of Batdance also contain samples from Rave Unto The Joy Fantastic (planned for the Batman album and replaced by Partyman, the song was only released in 1999).

The vocals on the album are credited to a character from the movie, as if Prince is singing on their behalf. The lines on Batdance are attributed to different characters from the movie and to Gemini, a character half-Batman, half-Joker created by Prince. The lines attributed to Gemini are actually shared by Prince and Matthew Larson. Larson discussed the recording of his parts in an article published in 2022 :
" He said, "You’re going to do something. I want you to scream it as loud as you can. " He threw me a yellow little pad of paper. And it wasn’t until we got into the cue that I got to see what it was. And that was for Batdance. "Get the fuck up!" was the original. And then the other one was, "Oh, damn it, don’t stop the music. Oh, son of a bitch. " Those were both done. I didn’t know what I was saying until he called on me to do it. But because it’s a Warner Bros. family film, I had to then go back in a week later, on a Sunday for about an hour and a half, trying to [change] "Get the fuck up!" to "Get the funk up!" ". The only line attributed to Prince is "Stop" at the very end of the song.

Perhaps because the track contains several samples from the movie Batman (which are covered by their own copyright permissions), and since the track can be seen as a promotional tie-in more than a song in any traditional sense, it had not been included on any of Prince’s compilation albums, despite its commercial success. After Prince’s passing it was however included on 4Ever.

• Prince - vocals and all instruments, except where noted
  
• Matthew Larson - vocals (credited for "special guest presence")
• Jack Nicholson - sampled vocals (as The Joker, sampled from Batman) (credited for "special guest presence")
• Michael Keaton - sampled vocals (as Batman, ampled from Batman) (credited for "special guest presence")
• Kim Basinger - sampled vocals (as Vicki Vale, sampled from Batman) (credited for "special guest presence")
• Mavis Staples – sampled vocals (uncredited)
• Sounds of Blackness - possible background vocals (sampled)

• Batman album
• Batdance single
• Batdance video

• This song uses the LinnDrum, the successor of the Linn LM-1 usually utilized by Prince, at least for the clap sound.
• The phrase "get your house in order" appears as a sample in 200 Balloons, possibly sung by Mavis Staples, and reduced to "house" on Batdance. Since these tracks were recorded in 1989, it is not clear if this was sampled from an earlier version of House In Order (only known to have been recorded in 1992) or not.

• The Vault: The Definitive Guide to the Musical World of Prince (2004)
  
• When Prince Did the Batdance by Alan Siegel (4 March 2022 theringer.com)