Ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?

Many years ago, in about 1990 I think, I had an argument with a friend of mine about Batman and the soundtrack album that Prince produced for the movie return to the franchise. At the time I was a huge Prince fan and I was convinced that no other artist could have captured the insanity of the joker and the darkness of Gotham City in one album so well. Mike, I was right then, and I'm still right now. For instance, the other contender to do the soundtrack album was INXS iirc. Now, much as I liked INXS - especially early INXS (yikes! all my skeletons are coming out now) - there is no way they could have produced an album with the relevance and sense of fun that Prince did. Jack Nicholson's Joker was the star of Batman and Prince was his musical alter ego. Just as INXS couldn't have produced an album of Prince's quality, so the alternative to Nicholson, Robin Williams, wouldn't have been able to reach the former's heights. In fact Nicholson seems to have been in two minds (haha) about taking the role until Williams was approached.

For the latest incarnation of the Batman films, The Dark Knight (2008), Heath Ledger is cast to play the Joker. Now, I can kind of see this  facially, but I'm just not sure he has the maniacal chaos inside him to be able to carry this off. Sure he's a great actor, Monster's Ball being one of my favourite films of recent times, but The Joker? In Batman? can't see it somehow. Robin Williams wanted it again, but always the bridesmaid, eh?

So who could do the soundtrack to The Dark Knight? Is a collection of songs from different artists the right way to go, or should we go back to Batman, and get one artist to do a whole concept album? I'd love to see a concept album, maybe by the Flaming Lips or even the Polyphonic Spree (where are they?). You see where I'm going with this, don't you? We need some chaos, some life, some energy, some fun. But we also need some darkness, sadness and grit. I'm pretty sure the Flaming Lips could do an awesome job.

mp3: Partyman   
mp3: Vikki Waiting

Buy the CD/DVD