Songfacts®:

• This instrumental is the main theme to the 1989 movie Batman, the first of the modern Batman movies that got away from the campy feel of the comic and explored the pathos turned Bruce Wayne into the Dark Knight. The theme is suitably dramatic and became very well known. It helped audiences buy into this reworking of Batman and take the movie seriously. The film, directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael Keaton as Batman and Jack Nicholson as the Joker, was a blockbuster and spawned two more films in the series: Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997). It also ushered in a wave of superhero movies that explored the psyches of the characters and did big business at the box office. Among them: Spider-Man (2002), Iron Man (2008) and Wonder Woman (2017).
• Along with the rest of the movie's score, this was written by Danny Elfman, who had worked on Tim Burton's films Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) and Beetlejuice (1988). It was a milestone for Elfman - his first blockbuster. He and Burton kept their partnership going through films like Edward Scissorhands (1990), Big Fish (2003) and Alice in Wonderland (2010). Elfman's other film scores include Dick Tracy (1990), Men In Black (1997) and Silver Linings Playbook (2012).
• Danny Elfman famously wrote The Simpson's theme in his head while driving back from a meeting with show creator Matt Groening. Music is always running through his head, but he'll lose it if he can't record it right away, or if other music seeps in. Inspiration for "The Batman Theme" came when he was on a trans-Atlantic flight, which was a problem because he didn't want to sing the melodies into his microcassette recorder, because it would surely annoy the other passengers. So he went into the bathroom to record an idea. Then again when another idea came. He kept going into the bathroom; the flight attendants thought there was something wrong with him.
  
  When the plane landed, they played music, which wiped away the ideas in his head, so all he had was his tape recordings. "I turn on the tape recorder, and I have about 30 minutes of notes on there, and all I'm hearing is loud engine noise," he told the A/V Club. "I finally heard little bits of myself coming through it, and I could catch a little bit of a 'bum bum-bum-bum bum' and I'd go, 'There's a bit of the rhythm, okay, I got that.' And finally it all came back to me and I was able to write it down. But I was really relieved, because it almost is the exact main title to Batman."
• Elfman earned his first and only Grammy Award when "The Batman Theme" won for Best Instrumental Composition. It was his first nomination; he had over a dozen more but didn't get any more wins.
• "The Batman Theme" is kind of a confusing title, especially after the 2022 movie The Batman, which also has a theme. And then there's the theme song to the '60s TV series Batman, which is by the composer Neal Hefti and was a hit, reaching #17 in 1966. That one bears no resemblance to the movie theme.
• If you're thinking, "Didn't Prince have something to do with this movie?" you're right - he did the soundtrack album, not to be confused with Elfman's orchestral film score. Elfman's music was released on an album called Batman (Original Motion Picture Score); Prince's soundtrack album is simply called Batman.
  
  Six of those Prince songs were used in the film, but not "Batdance," a song he pieced together from bits of dialogue from the movie. That song was a #1 hit, which shows you how big a deal the Batman movie was in the cultural landscape - it's not a song you're likely to hear again.