A slow six minutes after the Batdance noise
Scandalous was tracked on a day off. On 17 October 1988 Prince was between Lovesexy tour stops in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Philadelphia. He used the gap at Paisley Park Studios in Chanhassen. He sang the lead and played the instruments, including a Roland D-50 and a LinnDrum. Sounds of Blackness took part in the session. Their contribution did not remain on the finished track. The music credit is shared with his father, John L. Nelson. What Nelson actually wrote or played is not documented. On the album the vocal is billed as if the character Batman is the one singing.
Warner Bros. and Paisley Park placed the song on Batman, Prince’s eleventh album, released on 20 June 1989 and sold as the motion picture soundtrack to Tim Burton’s film. It is track eight and it runs 6:15, a slow groove after Batdance, Partyman and Trust. The lyric does not name the Joker, Vicki Vale or Gotham. The sleeve still carried the film logo, and the album spent six weeks at number 1 on the Billboard 200. The official discography later put worldwide sales above 11 million, behind Purple Rain in his catalogue. Burton had asked about using 1999 and Baby, I’m a Star. Prince came back with a full album instead of two old singles.
The single followed as Scandalous!, exclamation mark added, on 28 November 1989, with a maxi-single on 1 December under the title The Scandalous Sex Suite. The 7-inch edit runs 4:12. The B-side is When 2 R In Love, taken from Lovesexy. It did not enter the Billboard Hot 100. It reached number 5 on the Hot Black Singles chart and stayed 15 weeks, from an entry dated 2 December 1989. Austria took it to 17. The Netherlands took it to 21. The official video shows him in a red sleeveless outfit, working a microphone stand, and it ends with both arms raised.
As a child, the very first song he learned on the piano was the theme song for the late ’60s television series Batman.
(Prince official discography)
On 1 October 1989, back at Paisley Park, he reworked the track into three parts: The Crime, The Passion and The Rapture. Kim Basinger, who played Vicki Vale and was seeing him then, added vocals on The Crime and The Rapture. Eric Leeds played saxophone on those same parts. The suite runs about 19 minutes and sits on the maxi-single with a non-album track, Sex. The 7-inch sleeve dropped the Batman logo and used a still from the video.
Scandalous is the Batman song that does not need film dialogue to stand up. Batdance was built from samples of the movie and went to number 1. This one is a slow Paisley Park ballad with a drum machine and his father’s name on the writing credit, and it did its business on the R&B chart instead of the Hot 100. The suite with Basinger is the later document. The track that counts is the one from the day off in October 1988.
