Batman (1989) / Scandalous Sex Suite (1989)
In the pantheon of Prince ballads Scandalous would be the Mercurial trickster god. As a pre-existing song it used Tim Burton’s Batman as a host, worming its way into the end credits and sections of Danny Elfman’s score, before ditching its Batman / Vicki Vale allusions and fleeing with its lead actress, to became the last Prince release of the eighties and the first of his run of maxi-singles – a 19 minute soft-porn tête-à-tête with Kim Basinger called Scandalous Sex Suite. Which, according to legend, was a recording session that got so out of hand that the engineer decided to leave them to it after a jar of honey got introduced. Not shy of cliche, the suite (consisting of three tracks called The Crime, The Passion and The Rapture, but all faithful variations of Scandalous) starts with a doorbell and Prince beckoning Kim in, and then plays out slow-motion like an underwater dream sequence. The cold space between the sparse Linn drum filled with enticing string vespers and late-night movie sax. The blue movie dialogue subsides for The Rapture, replaced with guitar (Prince) and groans (Kim), and after the climax, worried that the subtle innuendo may be lost, Prince follows it up with a song entitled simply Sex. The end result, besides a sticky mixing desk and a groan that would be sampled and looped on 1993’s Peach, was an exquisite, cinematic suite of audio erotica, a couple of age classifications removed from Batman’s PG-13.
Category: Uncategorized
390: Let’s Work
Controversy (1981)
Understandably for somebody who’s carved a career out of their passion, in Prince’s world ‘work’ means the same thing as ‘play’ – and they both mean sex. Let’s Work is a dutiful funk soldier, drilled to exude effortless dancefloor pull. Bass guitar flexing on pure muscle memory. Released as the album’s second single, the 12″ edit shows off its stamina, extending the locked groove and for the first time features samples from other songs from the Prince stable. A subliminal Controversy album sampler slipped in towards the end. I’ve already mentioned on these pages the influence of Michael Jackson’s Working Day and Night and the lyrics here at times again remind me of what I consider to be MJ’s finest song, but that probably says more about me than Let’s Work, and if it had been released under its original title of Let’s Rock, I may be comparing this song to the all-night pleas of Rock With You instead.
391: Baby, You’re a Trip
Unreleased (1982) / Jill Jones (1987)
Written in another moment, in another mindset, these thoughts on the closing track from Jill Jones’ self-titled album would be a jaunt through hyperbolic praise, musing on the 1999 callbacks, orchestral flair and lyrics which conceivably describe a chronic celebrity crush. But today my mosquito net is torn by the dark winds outside and my utensils are unsterilised. A pestilent cloud infests my critical faculties like black smoke from a burning, hurting world and this pop ode to unrequited love becomes a duvet exoskeleton. An upholstered tortoiseshell in which to retreat from the circling hawks of radicalised ignorance and co-opted fear, turning and turning in Yeats’ widening gyre. Music can be escapism or heightened revelry in the now. Today Baby, You’re a Trip is the former. Solace in the Apollonian. Tomorrow the mosquito net will be repaired and further posts will again be coloured only by the climate of temperament, instead of the weather of emotion.
392: Glam Slam
Lovesexy (1988)
The second single from Lovesexy features a child-like melody backed by an elaborate composition and has filthier lyrics than first impressions suggest. Do what a butterfly? It didn’t make huge waves on release, nor later when it was left off his 1993 Hits collection (it was however included on 2016’s 4ever comp but neglectedly mis-labelled by Amazon on the pre-order as Grand Slam). Glam Slam is the weakest song on Lovesexy but that’s like having the title of poorest billionaire. It’s still a breathtaking whirl of textures that does funny things to my disposition and without the pattycake chorus would rank a hundred, two hundred places higher. The last two minutes are a vamp of nymph-like synths and an outro to cleanse the palate before the acid-sharp intensity of Anna Stesia is unleashed. The fuzz before the epiphany. Wear as cloud armour and run towards fire.
393: The Flow
0(+> (1992)
You’re not left bemoaning the shortness of Arrogance for long because immediately after you’re thrust feet-first into this gangster rap parody, again attacking gutter journalism and the intrusion of the press. The soil it grew out of was a rap Tony M would add to the end of the Batman song The Future during the Nude tour, and an early version was originally pencilled to appear on Diamonds and Pearls. This later, released version is a much trimmed affair and after a verse apiece from Prince and Tony, the horns take the weight and see it out to its early conclusion. Arrogance and The Flow are brothers in arms. Two half-tracks keeping you on your toes and injecting a shot of testosterone into the heart of the album. Febrile and attack-minded, it ostensibly wears the LA Raiders mask of gangsta rap with Tony being told to “shoot that piece of sh-” and later embracing his inner mafioso with mentions of putting fools to sleep, but at heart it’s a boast track about how funky the music and their rap flow is. Another stylistic string to the album’s weighty bow and a contribution towards its hectic, epic and schizophrenic nature.
394: Make it Through the Storm
Unreleased (1976)
The thing I love most about Prince’s music is that his tendrils delve into all genres and styles, subverting and recreating along the way and pushing things in interesting and never before heard directions. The variety is what makes a list like this possible. No sane person could ever write a 500 or even a 100 Greatest Ramones Songs for example. Sometimes though, especially early on, Prince would create just a perfect pop song with no peculiar features, boundary pushing or experimentation. Unchallenging, expertly crafted, Vaseline-lensed, radio-friendly pop. Make it Through the Storm is such a song. One of his earliest but sung in a lower voice than his usual For You falsetto. The lyrics tread familiar water – the protagonist pleading a deserting love to stay, because, you know, warmth! They weren’t even written by Prince but obviously made an impression as the imagery would repeatedly echo over his career. The Max and Grafitti Bridge also describe a “cold, cold world” and the phrase “a world so cold” is found in both When Doves Cry and The Holy River. The storm regularly crops up too, but in The Cross and Thunder the love that now sees him through the “black day, stormy night” is one for Jesus. Prince must be the only person that has ever made Christian Rock seem cool.
395: Animal Kingdom
The Truth (1998)
A PETA-approved response to a Spike Lee Got Milk? ad, from a newly-converted vegan Prince. Co-written by Rhonda Smith, who also contributed bass, the lyrics are as preachy as The Artist gets but because they’re sung in a distorted, inhuman voice it tempers the hectoring finger-wag and makes them sound instead like a sermon being transmitted by the entire biomass of the ocean. It even features a verse sung in what sounds like Dolphinese. Your reaction to this song may depend on whether you agree with the sentiment or not. I eat meat but I also do truly believe that vegetarianism is the next rung on our evolutionary ladder, that better people than myself are already scaling. Veganism however is a different kettle of tofu. Who in their right mind would voluntarily give up that “funky, funky blue cheese”?
396: I’ll Do Anything
Unreleased (1992)
This sprightly tap-dance number was written for the movie of the same name and was elegantly crafted to appear weightless like an Ottoman mosque. Unfortunately it suffered the same fate as the rest of the songs Prince penned for the film, dumped after test audiences reacted against the movie being a musical production. Some of the tracks resurfaced on later albums but I’ll Do Anything got relegated to the Vault to fester – a harsh destiny for such a fleet-footed slice of nimble pop. The lyrics are similar to A Tribe Called Quest’s What? which was released the previous year and two of the three things that Prince lists he would do for you are falling off the Eiffel Tower and painting a beard on the Mona Lisa. I haven’t seen the film so I don’t know if this French connection is apt but maybe he was going through another Francophile Parade phase in 1992. In the same year he wrote Paris 1798430 for Tevin Campbell and wanted you to imagine starring with him “in a movie called ‘Amour'” in The Continental, so c’est possible. It’s a shame this song never made it to Hollywood but it’s probably for the best – when I close my eyes I imagine the winged messenger of the gods dancing an intricate ballet with an entourage of Lionel Messis and the ghost of Phife Dawg. What I don’t imagine is Nick bloody Nolte.
397: New Power Soul
Exodus (1995)
Despite the title, New Power Soul is a solid slab of old-school jazz funk – a genre I have a low tolerance for after overdosing on it in my twenties, but this song could be extended to Herbie Hancock length proportions and I’d still call out for a rewind. There’s an extended version in circulation but at a paltry five minutes it’s still unsatisfyingly short. Featuring no discernible hook apart from the same chant as 1998’s otherwise unrelated Newpower Soul, the Exodus track doses up on background chatter à la Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On? or Got To Give It Up and ends with Mr Hayes’ drunken shouting at the band. This all contributes to the music sounding like a steady dreadnaught riding a choppy sea of bar-room rowdiness. The background soundtrack to a hundred narratives intersecting on a Saturday night, played with soul and heart from the dependable house band. Happy hour foreplay to keep the night bubbling, before it’s time for the crowd to Get Wild.
398: Curious Child
Emancipation (1996)
If there was ever a Prince song that highlighted the disparity between being heard on headphones or not it would be Curious Child. Played through speakers it begins to grate, the harpsichord-sounding melody, quirky at first, soon becomes a steel comb raking my skin. Catherine of Aragon’s hold music. However, being beamed directly into my skull transforms it into an intricate musicbox of nuances, night air and bottom-lip-biting groans. The deflowering of Carroll’s Alice. Capulet capitulation. Ley lines of ancient, hallowed desire colliding between your ears. The old woman in the picture becomes the beautiful girl wearing a hat and turning sideways. Many people wonder who the song was written about. My only question was how can you justifiably rank such a chameleonic entity?
399: Circle of Amour
The Truth (1998)
After Prince, in his words, “emptied the gun” with the over-produced Emancipation album he went back to basics with The Truth, focusing more on songwriting chops than studio trickery. And in what appears to be a similar polar reaction, the previous album’s mature musings on marriage and babies gets abandoned for Circle of Amour‘s schoolboy fantasy of what four girls get up to behind locked doors. Saying this tale’s of a ménage à quatre would be lending it too much class – this in crude terms is (albeit imagined by a classmate) an all-female circle jerk, relayed through such a sweet melody and wordplay (“four hands in the place where the feet connect”) that you’d be forgiven for missing the NSFW content. It may sound refined and sylvan cool and you could even picture it being played at a wedding reception as canapés are brought out, but on an emotional level it’s Jack U Off in fine furs.
400: Stopthistrain
Plectrumelectrum (2014)
Although the lyrics describe a sleepless train ride, the sparkling yet soporific beat sways like a nomadic camel journey into the Land of Nod. A baby-monitor melody twinkles over the lulling effects of Hannah’s vocals and Ida’s bass, and the resulting feeling is one of all-enveloping, loving security – like when you’re six and going on holiday, being carried from your bed in the middle of the night towards the warmed-up, waiting car, briefly waking in your parent’s arms to see them beaming down through gentle shushes which drift you back off into blissful, womb-like sleep. A lumbering, slumbering two-man chariot of unconditional love. How many rock albums can you say give that feeling? Of course the lyrics describe the opposite. Heartbreak. Loss. Pain. But they just heighten the protective musical embrace. It can be a nasty and brutish Hobbesian world out there so lets surrender to these sheltering moments of comfort, letting the plaintive words fall close, like rain on tent fabric.
401: Call of the Wild
Unreleased (1985)
Ten days after Led Zeppelin’s much-anticipated reunion at Live Aid – a disapointing trainwreck of a performance that they wouldn’t let be included on the official DVD – Prince was inspired to go into the studio and record his version of a Zeppelin-style stadium rocker. Call of the Wild’s music is dark and menacing, evoking breached chain-link fences, searching spotlights and air-raid siren guitars alerting that someone has broken into, or out of, the compound. The drum, described as “pumping blood to your brain”, has a war-like beat and on every alternate bar there’s an amplified wind noise on the 3 and 4 that sounds like either your own exhausted panting or the guard dogs breathing down your neck. Ominously it slows down towards the end, telling you you’re cornered, options narrowing, but when it starts up again for the last thirty seconds you know somehow you’ve Steve McQueened it.
402: Soul Sanctuary
Emancipation (1996)
This gentle track on the second and best disc of Emancipation sounds refreshingly stonewashed and sun-bleached, offering a respite from the album’s more busy and brittle moments. It was adapted from a song written by Sandra St Victor and forms part of a triptych of meditative quietude in the middle of the CD, along with Curious Child and Dreamin’ About U, interrupted only by Emale‘s intrusion. Spike Lee in an interview with Prince told him that his love for Soul Sanctuary was so strong that he played it for two hours straight, annoying his wife in the process. This story awakened old memories of my own personal repeat button abuse, when my youthful enthusiasm for certain songs became so intense that a single track looping for hours couldn’t sate the thirst. It was a monomania that didn’t start with the arrival of the CD player either and I can’t have been the only one to have filled a cassette tape full of a single song repeated again and again. A D90 that had De La Soul’s Magic Number filling one side and 45 mins of Neneh Cherry’s Buffalo Stance on the other got particularly worn out I recall. Happy days. Soul Sanctuary wouldn’t be my first choice for this kind of endless repetition but having just sat through five rotations in writing this I’ve become an oasis of tender calm. A seventh dan master in equanimity “unbothered by the chaos swirling around outside”. Maybe Spike’s onto something.
403: Fury
3121 (2006)
If this was a list of greatest live songs Fury would almost certainly be top 20. Blistering performances on Saturday Night Live and The Brit Awards excited fans and girded them for a snarling rock behemoth on the upcoming 3121 album but the studio version couldn’t quite live up to the incendiary hype. Its influences were too evident. Made from rubbing the flint vocal structure of Girls & Boys with the steel synth hook of 1999, the resulting guitar flames that lick at the track never quite reach the heights of his televised inferno but playing it ear-bleedingly loud goes some way to make up for it. The single release also featured some his best artwork to date, going for a psychedelic Hendrix vibe, but if you were thinking of trying to convert any Jimi lovers I’d play the b-side – the Brits performance with Wendy and Sheila E – where his guitar immolates the minor-key recycling of the aforementioned 1999 riff. Hell hath no fury like a Telecaster shredded.
404: Kiss Me Quick
Unreleased (1979?)
A revving motorbike kickstarts this vault song and sends Prince, decked out in Gucci leathers and seaside town merchandise, off down a dirt track of discotheque funk backed by a neon sunset. Differing sources date Kiss Me Quick from anytime between 1979 and 1981 but the simple, falsetto-sung lyrics indicate the earlier end of the timescale and as usual for that era are the weakest element. Full of “pretty baby”s and “honey”s the only interesting aspect is that they’re seemingly sung from a female perspective, meaning it was probably earmarked for one of his protégés. The music suffers from no such greenery though and the chugging bassline and driving synths are four cylinders of dance funk mastery. Echoing the abandonment issues of the subject matter the song fades out much too early, leaving us alone as Prince disappears over the disco horizon into the eighties where women, not girls, rule his world.
405: Goodbye
Crystal Ball (1998)
By coincidence or design there’s several titular pairings in Prince’s back catalogue. Come and Go. Time and Space. Now and The Future. The War and Peace. Solo and 2gether (or High if you’re going with the intended phonetic meaning). This Crystal Ball closing ballad follows 1985’s Hello but couldn’t sound more different. It’s an Emancipation off-cut, being replaced by The Holy River, and yet its luscious Fischer-arranged strings qualify it as one of the better tracks from the period. I guess the parting sentiment wasn’t in particular keeping with the newly-married, dewey-eyed vibe. Prince once described his song Vavoom as rock’n’roll dipped in cream and if that’s the case then Goodbye‘s vocals are cream dipped in cream. Compare them to his dry, throaty scream on the same disc’s Get Loose and I challenge you to find a sharper vocal contrast on any other release. It’s this contrast that elevates the song to classic ballad status whereas on Emancipation it would have blended far too easily into the background. A porcelain swan amongst plastic geese. The beat is minimal and basic, acting as mere scaffolding for the swooping strings and stirring vocals, with only the electronic finger snaps adding flavour. To reference another pairing, it’s neither music to Get On Up or Get Off to, but instead is a comforting salve when your heart’s been put through the wringer.
406: Like a Mack
HITnRUN Phase One (2015)
My guess is Joshua Welton, Like a Mack‘s co-producer, is a Nintendo Head because this track is addled with old-school console sound effects, power-ups and gold coins, making Prince sound like a pimped up Wreck-it Ralph. I can visualise him shrinking, Mario-style, with every pitchshifted “looking, looking, looking…” In the midst of this 8bit orchestra the horns seem lost and bewildered. The trumpets just do their thing, refusing to mingle, and the sax towards the end seems particularly downbeat but it’s a welcome return for the NPG Hornz nonetheless. Like a Mack is the third song on HITnRUN Phase One to mention the moon, and the second to rhyme it with June which makes me think of Yoko Ono’s diss on Paul McCartney that he only writes moon-June-spoon rhyming songs. But hey, if it’s good enough for Sign o’ the Times (and even John Lennon but don’t tell Yoko) then it’s good enough for The Curly Fries. I don’t know too much about this female duo but the sparring verses they deliver are pure fire. Overall it’s a spiked turtleshell of a pop song – a King Koopa club banger – and if released as a single I bet it would show that a fifty-something Prince could still run the bulls of the millennial charts. Plus it taught me what a THOT is, not that I’ll be using it in polite (or even impolite) company anytime soon.
407: Same Page Different Book
Unreleased (2011)
It speaks volumes about the magnitude of Prince’s output that he can effectively throw away a quality song like this strutting anti-war sermon. Same Page Different Book never received an official release but was streamed on his 3rdEyeGirl YouTube channel for a brief period in 2013 before being deleted, never to be referenced again like a shamed uncle. The title reminds me of Edmund Wilson’s quote that “no two persons ever read the same book” but instead refers to there being “only one God, whatever name He took” and is a welcome, less dogmatic stance from Prince, embracing the commonality between what the Qur’an calls People of the Book. Shelby J delivers a third-verse rap, drawing snipes and sneers from grumbling sections of his fanbase who like their Prince unadulterated, but it works well and is a switch-up that gives the track another dimension. Not that it needs it, as the arrangement may be sparse but never monotonous. Prince expertly entwines his voice with the bass like a double helix of funk making up the DNA of “hell yeah!”
408: New Power Generation
Graffiti Bridge (1990)
This two-parter can be found at opposite ends of the Graffiti Bridge album and became its third single after the equally fresh Thieves in the Temple and Tevin Campbell’s Round and Round. It comes in two parts with the second half featuring a curtain call of the album’s guests to deliver what would later become a supernova of various spin-off songs, including My Tree, Oobey Doop, True Confessions and the fantastic Loveleft, Loveright. It also generated a Maxi CD’s worth of remixes and the title (taken from Prince’s first words on the Lovesexy album) spawned, amongst other things, several bands, a record label, website, members club and a shop franchise. Despite all this progeny, New Power Generation is a song Prince quickly abandoned after Graffiti Bridge, never performing it live. I think he outgrew the tone of voice as “NPG in the motherfuckin’ house” was much more in keeping with his next few albums’ image than the prissy “pardon us for caring, I didn’t know it was against the rules”. The track was written in his early 20s, then called Bold Generation, and the lyrics are full of a young excuse-me-for-existing petulance. A Times They Are A-Changin’ rallying call against the older generation with their “old fashioned music” and “old ideas”. Like his earlier Revolution, this is Prince wanting to spearhead a movement, raging against the status quo and fighting for “making love and music” (fifty per cent of the holy DMSR). Speaking of music, this self-described “big noise in the 90s” is not as timeless as his big noise in the 80s and includes what sounds like the “whoa whoa whoa” refrain from U Can’t Touch This, released earlier that year. Retribution I reckon for MC Hammer’s (admittedly sanctioned) sampling of When Doves Cry and Soft and Wet on his Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em album. Or maybe for his spelling of ‘you’? Regardless though of New Power Generation‘s crow’s feet, it still stands up well today as an energised Hadouken of righteous anger aimed at a backward-looking music industry. It ends with an angelic chord and the gentle sound of baptising waters. The NPG has been christened and The Kid is now Daddy Pop.
409: Starfish and Coffee
Sign o’ the Times (1987)
This popular song feels like the Yellow Submarine of Sign o’ the Times and is often described as Beatlesque. The Fab Four certainly weren’t shy of using backmasked tape loops and although the drum beat here seems reversed it must be layered as it sounds the same when you listen to it backwards. Incidentally it’s also not unlike the strange noise I kept hearing during a trip to Croatia a few years ago – a sound that turned out to be a spider that had crawled into my ear canal (I don’t have arachnophobia but knowing there’s one currently inside your head triggers a seventh-layer-of hell level of revulsion). The most obvious Beatles influence here though are the lyrics which are childlike and on-the-right-side-of-twee whimsical, yet that doesn’t stop people reading filth into them. It’s not like Mr Pocket Full Of Horses hasn’t got a reputation for innuendo and the word ‘starfish’ is as tainted as the word ‘taint’, but it takes some tenuous and unhealthy mental gymnastics to twist the song into a sex allegory. As a disclaimer I will admit I did used to think that the “mates” in her lunchbox were of the branded variety (a prophylactic reference for any non-Brits reading). The lyrics actually come from a sweet and innocent place and, according to ex-flame Susannah Melvoin who received a co-writing credit, were birthed from stories she used to tell Prince about a girl she went to school with. A lot of the song’s details are factual: the girl’s name was Cynthia Rose; her favourite number was twenty; she used to draw happy faces on the bus windows; the teacher was Miss Kathleen; Kevin and Lucy were real. One detail Prince did change was the title as, according to Susannah, Cynthia used to always say she had starfish and peepee for breakfast and I’d hate to hear the interpretations that combo would have generated. Starfish and Coffee is sweet and quirky and intriguing and may make other people think of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Or Dear Jessie. Or the Muppet Show. Or Autism. Or the freewheeling inventiveness of childhood imagination. Not me. I get flashbacks of spiders in the brain. I do recommend listening to it backwards though – it’s mesmerising.
410: Horny Toad
Delirious single (1983) / The Hits/The B Sides (1993)
Cut in the same mould as Delirious and Jack U Off, this lascivious rockabilly anthem is 120 seconds of jovial, jitterbug synths capped off with some downright nasty lyrics. A UV blacklight revealing the semen stains on early rock’n’roll dancing metaphors. The title is a play on ‘horned toad’ and immediately gives you a feeling of revulsion, much more than a Horny Pony would. It’s definitely not a song to run and tell your mother about but for two minutes you can channel Bill Haley’s inner Pan and pretend you’re a lusty amphibian. Try doing that with Rock Around the Clock!
411: Wouldn’t You Love to Love Me
Unreleased (1976/1978) / Taja Sevelle (1987)
One of Prince’s first demo tracks, written for protégé number one, Sue Ann Carwell, and released eleven years later by Taja Sevelle. Various versions are in circulation but the high water mark is the five minute home studio recording from 1978 which has an indelible bassline so perfect you’d want it as a tattoo. This iteration is gentle but insistent, like a cat nudging your leg for attention, and the rubber-soled beat is a lot more resilient than Prince’s hushed vocals, which may be low in the mix because they’re a guide track or possibly because they predate the time he learnt how to project. Prince’s pre-For You producer Chris Moon has a story where he describes how the teen’s singing voice was initially so soft that to coax anything audible out he had the singer lie down on the floor in a dark room with only a microphone placed in his mouth for company. Seemingly a far cry from Do Me Baby‘s histrionics, although maybe, just maybe, the “empty room” sung about in that song was because this vocal-enhancing safe space was still on his mind. I’m now looking at perennial sound-check favourite Empty Room in a new light too. Anyway, back on topic. In 1986 Michael Jackson wanted to shun his wholesome, nice-guy image and sent the song, Bad to Prince, asking if his frenemy wanted to duet on it. Prince took offence at the opening words “your butt is mine” and instead offered him Wouldn’t You Love to Love Me in return. Michael turned it down, unsurprisingly considering the effeminate lyrics and his loss was Taja Sevelle’s and obscurity’s gain.
412: Data Bank
Unreleased (1986) / Pandemonium (1990)
This was recorded by The Time for their fourth album but completely outshone by the unreleased Prince and the Revolution original. Data Bank (or Pretty Face as my Italian Chocolate Box bootleg mistitles it) is a jackhammer funk thumper, heavily influenced by Cameo’s I Just Want To Be and featuring a synth motif that sounds like a phone number being punched in. It inhabits the same world as Movie Star, another song penned that year with Morris Day in mind, and includes that title in the lyrics along with the same character’s mannerisms. Prince assuming the role of a playboy Don Quixote on a quest for phone numbers, constantly thwarted by the gap between his high-living delusions and impoverished reality. I love how it descends into chaos with him pretending to lose control of the band, screaming “I didn’t call the horns” and “I didn’t call that either”, before saying he quits and instructing his engineer to fade it out when the band doesn’t stop at his request. I don’t know what happened to it during it’s Time conversion but the playfulness got lost in translation, along with its comedic lesson in hubris. As Prince says in both Movie Star and Data Bank “Oh that’s dog!”
413: 200 Balloons
Batdance single (1989) / The Hits/The B Sides (1993)
Outnumbering Nena’s balloons by 101 and intended to be just as destructive, 200 Balloons was written for the parade scene in Tim Burton’s Batman where the float-riding Joker throws handfuls of cash to the Gotham crowd before the planned release of the poisonous gas filled orbs. As an aside, have you ever paid attention to the translated lyrics of 99 Red Balloons? They’re completely batshit crazy! This is no sane fish itself though and gave birth to the even more bonkers Batdance, which began life as a 200 Balloons remix but ended up usurping its place on the album. Relegated to B-side status, this buoyant pop song channels the Joker beautifully, with a maniacally upbeat attitude which gradually unravels into fragmented lunacy. Like Prince sings: his “funk is multilayered” and there’s samples of Mavis Staples singing “get your house in order” and Rave Unto The Joy Fantastic chants also thrown into the mix. Ultimately his Baby I’m a Star cheap knock-off Trust was used in the film instead, matching the director’s original vision but making the accompanying soundtrack album weaker as a result.