Unreleased (1989)
Possibly the darkest spell in Prince’s grimoire. Dance With the Devil is a downtempo spinetingler, created for Batman but replaced on the album by the much chipper Batdance. Maybe it was too out there to fit in, or possibly it spooked Prince into burying it like the Black Album – either way the film loses out as it’s much more in keeping with Tim Burton’s gothic world than anything else recorded for it. Gregorian chants, Faustian lyrics and cinematic screams all paint a bleak picture and the horror gets ramped up when the synths go all Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. This is what it sounds like when doves cry on ketamine.
It’s one of the weirdest ones. Hell, it’s almost too dark for Burton, who was always more into cartoon-gothic aesthetic.
That kinda makes me dream about the improbable outcome of Prince composing the soundtrack for Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” … Another cartoon gothic soap opera that I love dearly.