What’s the Song in ‘The Batman’ Trailer?
If you’re watching The Batman trailer over and over on an endless loop you might start to wonder: What is that song I’ve got stuck in my head? Is it a sad cover of a pop song? Movie trailers love to do that these days.
No, in fact this is a sad original version of a song. It’s Nirvana’s “Something In the Way,” the final track from the band’s 1991 album Nevermind.
The lyrics describe someone living “underneath a bridge” where a “tarp has sprung a leak” and “all the animals I’ve trapped have become my pets.” While I’m not sure we’re supposed to take the words quite so literally, we can see a little of The Batman’s story in there. Bats love to live under bridges. The tarp springing a leak could refer to whatever secret history of Gotham City supposedly inspires the murder mystery at the core of the film that begins to leak out as these killings become more and more public. And the “pets” likely refers to the characters in the film who use animals as the inspirations for their costumed identities, from Catwoman, to Penguin, and maybe even Batman himself.
Some Nirvana fans believe “Something In the Way” refers to a period when Kurt Cobain may have been homeless and slept under a bridge himself. Cobain claimed in an interview that it wasn’t autobiographical, and was written “like if I was living under the bridge and I was dying of AIDS, if I was sick and I couldn't move and I was a total street person." Either way, its mood of bleak isolation definitely suits Bruce Wayne as played by Robert Pattinson.
Here’s The Batman trailer one more time:
The Batman opens in theaters on October 2, 2021.
Gallery — More Images From The Batman: