Tunesday 4.15.25 - Batman the Animated Series OST by Shirley Walker

Music to Brood By

As a child of the 90s, I have fond memories of watching Batman: the Animated Series re-runs with my siblings. So when we finished watching through Avatar: The Last Airbender with the kiddo for family tv nights, and needed something new to start, I was excited that a friend recommended the good ol’ 90s Batman, which I hadn’t thought about in several years.

One thing I didn’t realize as a kid in the 90s was how great the soundtrack to the show was. And part of the joy of the rewatch has been getting to appreciate Shirley Walker’s excellent score.

What is the music from?

Batman: the Animated Series originally ran on Fox Kids from 1992 to 1995. And while The Dark Knight is no stranger to dark storylines and serious themes, most children’s tv at the time was. The show didn’t shy away from mental illness or loss, and it had several interesting, complicated villains with realistic and understandable motivations, long before the morally gray character and misunderstood villain tropes were cool.

More impressively, it does so while maintaining strong distinctions between good and evil. Many of the villains suffer from trauma or mental illness or other things that have distorted their sense of right and wrong, and while viewers are given reason to sympathize with what has brought them to where they are, there’s no attempt to excuse immoral behavior in the process.

Even more impressively, it toes the line of dark-superhero-adventures in a way that still fits solidly in that PG rating.

Another thing I also learned about the show during this viewing of it was a neat bit of trivia about how they they achieved the dark visual aesthetic of the animation. Apparently they chose to start with black paper and add lighter color for the animation, rather than starting with white paper and layering on darker colors.

Screenshot compilation from https://www.artofthetitle.com/

I found this to also be an interesting visual metaphor, considering the “default” of Gotham as a dark, crime-ridden city with troubled heroes stepping in to add hints of brightness through justice and mercy. This stands in a thought-provoking contrast to an “all people are inherently good” viewpoint, where full darkness is almost impossible to achieve by layering in evil.

Moral musings aside…

What is the music like?

As anyone would expect from a Batman adventure, the music is dramatic and action-packed. The opening fanfare (though the main theme is by Danny Elfman, rather than Shirley Walker) is distinct and majestic, and I’m pretty sure I could play it anywhere in the house and have my son come running over to poke his head into the doorway to make sure no one’s watching the show without him.

Walker’s soundtrack for the show carries Elfman’s drama and intensity through the series, and is full of appropriately dark, ominous passages that are an appropriate fit for our time with the criminal underbelly of Gotham. Even so, it holds the same contrasts within its character-and-episode-themes that the villains themselves do, periodically weaving in contrasting melodies that accentuate brief bright moments in Gotham life or aspects of the villains’ unique personalities, whether that be references to their tragic backstories, their rather colorful personas, or the loose grip some of them have on their sanity.

There are also six volumes available for your listening pleasure. For all your vigilante-crimefighting-theme-music needs.

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