It’s as much a physical reaction as it as a deeply emotional one, with the colours and spectacle overwhelming your senses while your left foot taps in time to the beat.
It’s cosplay on acid as Prince tears through the iconography of DC Comics most famous heroes and villains, dancing like a maniac and only pausing momentarily to shout “POWER!” uncomfortably at the viewer.
Yes, it’s batshit insane. It’s also peak Prince.
Prince was tapped by the film’s producers in late 1988 to begin working on a handful of songs that could accompany the blockbuster as the official commercial tracks for the film.
His first offering was a dark, heaving song – perhaps more reflective of the Batman character – titled Dance With The Devil that was cut at the last minute by Prince himself and remains unreleased.
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The hitmaker thought the song too bleak to fit with the tone of Burton’s Batman, replacing the track with Batdance instead.
The song itself was a biopolar audio experience, mixing the classic sixties Batman theme by Neal Hefti with dialogue clips from the film, an electrical dance beat and groove undertones while Prince purs lines that only occasionally have anything to do with Batman.
“I wanna bust that body, oooh yeah ooooh yeah,” he croons at one point, which – to be fair – is totally something Batman would say to a villain in the context of busting in their face in the name of justice.
Batdance was released with the B-side 200 Balloons, which had originally been rejected by Burton for use in the movie.
Yet much like bacon and eggs, you couldn’t have one without the other when it came to Batdance the song and Batdance the seminal seven minute video clip.
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Directed by Prince’s go-to guy Albert Magnoli (Purple Rain, Tango & Cash), the camera lovingly lingers on every detail – every dip of the hips – making sure that the viewer feels like they can see where every cent of the multi-million dollar shoot was spent.
It’s like a living, breathing, gyrating piece of pop art that itself is wonderous but for those who look a lil deeper – for the fanboys and girls amongst us – it’s a geeky treat packed full of subtle and overt references featuring everything from Adam West to Frank Miller’s The Dark Night Returns.
A movie theme song like no other, nothing before or since quite reached the bonkers heights of Batdance.
(Vicki) Vale Prince.
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