10 Movies Featuring Prince Songs

Prince Rogers Nelson passed away last week and it’s an understatement to say the music legend is gone too soon. He leaves behind a legacy of incredible music but also made a splash on the big screen. This week’s “10 Things” features 10 movies with Prince songs in them:

1. Purple Rain
   Purple Rain was the first film that Prince appeared in. Prince played The Kid and the movie was recognized for it’s music. Rolling Stone ranked the soundtrack 76th on their 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time and in 2008, Entertainment Weekly named it the best album of the last 25 years. Prince also won an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score. Here is Prince accepting his Academy Award in 1985:
   
2. Batman
   Prince did the entire soundtrack to the Tim Burton directed Batman. Due to ownership issues (Prince had to sign the rights to the songs over to Warner Bros.), none of the songs from Batman are able to appear on his hits compilations. Of all the songs on the soundtrack, “Batdance” has to be the most unique and at the end of the 80s music videos accompanied most hit songs. Here is the music video for “Batdance” because how can you go wrong with a Batman/Joker dance-off?:
   
3. Under the Cherry Moon
   Prince’s directorial début came in 1986. The film won the Razzie for Worst Picture (actually, it shared it with Howard the Duck) and Prince won for Worst Actor and Worst Original Song (“Love or Money”). Despite it’s poor reception, the soundtrack for the film did feature “Kiss” and it’s hard to knock it’s uniqueness. Here’s one of the many unusual scenes from the musical drama that has become a cult classic:
   
4. Graffiti Bridge
   The sequel to Purple Rain did much better as a soundtrack than a movie. Almost all of the songs were written by Prince although a few were performed by other artists. Here’s the original trailer:
   
5. Girl 6
   Most of the Girl 6 soundtrack features previously released Prince songs but there were a few original songs made specifically for the movie. The Spike Lee directed film was poorly received and the album isn’t one of Prince’s more recognized works.
6. Happy Feet
   Prince won a Golden Globe for “The Song of the Heart” in 2006. The original song was almost never part of the film as Prince would not allow “Kiss” to appear in the animated film helmed by George Miller (yes, the same George Miller who made Mad Max: Fury Road) without seeing the movie first. Miller had the movie screened for Prince at his Paisley Park Studio and the rest was history. Here is “Kiss” in the opening scene of the movie:
   
7. Delirious
   Also used in the 1983 Cheech & Chong film Still Smokin’, the 1982 song returned to the big screen at the opening of the 1991 John Candy comedy and in the trailer:
   
8. Rush Hour 3
   The third installment of the Jackie Chan/Chris Tucker buddy cop comedy opens with Tucker singing along with Prince while directing traffic:
   
9. Summer Lovers
   The 1982 film was the first to feature a song by Prince and actually featured two although neither made it to the movie’s soundtrack. The movie featured tons of nudity and was unable to be shown in some areas and the movie’s soundtrack has still yet to be released on CD. Although Prince’s “Sexy Dancer” or “Sexuality” did not make the soundtrack and you couldn’t get it on CD even if you wanted to, it’s important to note since it was the first time a Prince song appeared on the big screen.
10. The Equalizer
    The last film to feature a Prince song before his death was The Equalizer in 2014. Technically, it is a Janelle Monae song but prominently features Prince’s background vocals and guitar. Prince was a mentor to Monae and the two together on this song which also appears on her 2013 album sound fantastic: