"I've never done anything harder than Batman," reflects Danny Elfman on the 1989 Tim Burton blockbuster he scored. A lot was riding on the film as the first big-budget superhero franchise since Superman. And it's hard to believe now he's one of the most celebrated film composers around but Elfman was relatively new and untested in the frequently brutal Hollywood machine at the time, but the former Oingo Boingo founder had already worked on the Scrooged and Beetlejuice soundtracks by this point.
There really was no superhero music – there was just Superman
