Monday, March 30, 1987

Prince released Sign ‘☮’ the Times

Sign ‘☮’ the Times

Prince

Released: March 30, 1987

Peak: 6 US, 4 UK, 27 CN, 20 AU, 7 DF

Sales (in millions): 2.25 US, 0.3 UK, 4.03 world (includes US and UK)

Genre: R&B/funk

Tracks, Disc 1:

Song Title [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts.

  1. Sign ‘O’ the Times [5:02] (2/18/87, 3 BB, 4 CB, 4 GR, 6 RR, 1 RB, 10 UK, 5 CN, 29 AU, 3 DF)
  2. Play in the Sunshine [5:05] (39 DF)
  3. Housequake [4:38] (7/14/87, 31 DF)
  4. The Ballad of Dorothy Parker [4:04] (30 DF)
  5. It [5:10]
  6. Starfish and Coffee [2:51] (31 DF)
  7. Slow Love [4:18] (37 DF)
  8. Hot Thing [5:39] (11/14/87, 63 BB, 10a RB, 30 DF)
  9. Forever in My Life [3:38]

Tracks, Disc 2:

  1. U Got the Look (with Sheena Easton) [3:58] (7/14/87, 2 BB, 3 CB, 4 GR, 3 RR, 11 RB, 11 UK, 22 CN, 90 AU, 7 DF)
  2. If I Was Your Girlfriend [4:54] (5/6/87, 67 BB, 78 CB, 9a RB, 20 UK, 15 DF)
  3. Strange Relationship [4:04] (37 DF)
  4. I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man [6:31] (11/3/87, 10 BB, 10 CB, 7 GR, 9 RR, 29 UK, 33 CN, 1 DF)
  5. The Cross [4:46] (16 DF)
  6. It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night [8:59] (37 DF)
  7. Adore [6:29]

Total Running Time: 80:06

Rating:

4.603 out of 5.00 (average of 28 ratings)

Quotable:

“The best album of the ‘80s.” – Josh Tyrangiel and Alan Light, Time magazine

Awards:

(Click on award to learn more).

The Best of the ‘80s?

“Beginning in 1980, with the risqué Dirty Mind, Prince went on an exceptional decade-long tear, issuing a series of albums that regularly sent everybody else in pop and R&B back to school.” TM The Purple One was “anointing himself a successor to Jimi Hendrix with Purple Rain and mastering funk with 1999.” CM Those “were gemstones that redefined the 1980s.” PM On Sign o’ the Times, Prince ”returned to the dancefloor” CM and delivered “a masterpiece that redefined music.” PM

“Soul, sex, excess: everything U listen 2 Prince 4.” BL This double album “silenced people…wondering whether superstardom had made Prince lose his touch,” DBW reminding the world he was “merely the most gifted pop musician of his generation.” RC It even “topped [Purple Rain] artistically.” BL

This was “the most expansive R&B record of the Eighties” 500 and, by some accounts, “the best album of the ‘80s.” TL This was “the last great R&B album before hip-hop became black American pop’s dominant form.” MM-116 “The long arm of Prince is evident in the big Janet Jackson singles of the ‘80s, the new jack swing of Teddy Riley, [and] the rock leanings of Terence Trent D’Arby. Just about every Outkast album has at least one Prince moment.” TM

Prince Revitalized

This shows Prince pushing “his own boundaries on a sprawling rock-soul soundscape dotted by searing messages and wild mood swings.” UT “Fearless, eclectic, and defiantly messy,” AM “this kinky double disc” BL “falls into the tradition of tremendous, chaotic double albums like The Beatles, Exile on Main St., and London Calling – albums that are fantastic because of their overreach, their great sprawl.” AM

“A good deal of the songs…don’t sound like hits. They don’t even sound like they’re trying to be hits, which for Prince is really unusual.” MM-23 Sign “doesn’t show off its wares the way the earlier albums do; it meanders, ducks in and out of corners, substitutes feigns and jabs for the clean one-two punches of yore.” MM-23 It “has no business being anything but a career-sinking mess,” TL but Prince “achieved epic musical sprawl without sacrificing intimacy.” BL

“The way the more wildly arranged songs’ busy playfulness…works against the others’ leanness begins to make a specific kind of sense.” MM-25 Prince manages to “acknowledge all his musical influences while remaining uniquely his” DBW own. “Prince shows nearly all of his cards here, from bare-bones electro-funk and smooth soul to pseudo-psychedelic pop and crunching hard rock, touching on gospel, blues, and folk along the way.” AM It “almost sounds like jazz in some parts.” MM-21Also, “more than on any other Prince album before it, the purple guy’s model is…James Brown.” MM-79

No More Revolution

In April 1986, Prince put together a track listing for an album called Dream Factory, which underwent a couple of revisions through that summer, but included his backing band The Revolution. By late 1986, he had another possible project, Camille, in which “he sang like a gender-bending James Brown, pitching up his own vocals so he could be ‘Camille,’ his alter-ego” PM in which he “electronically gender-bent his vocals.” BL

Then Prince merged the two projects into a proposed triple album, Crystal Ball. The record company nixed that idea, agreeing only to a double album. Prince also did some nixing of his own when he dropped the Revolution, who had backed him since 1982’s 1999. He “opted to produce and perform virtually every note of Sign ‘O’ the Times himself, with the exception of the occasional horn part or female backing vocal.” TB Nonetheless, “it sounds like it took an entire army to deliver these grooves.” PM

As a result, “he sounds liberated, diving into territory merely suggested on Around the World in a Day and Parade. While the music overflows with generous spirit, these are among the most cryptic, insular songs he’s ever written.” AM

A New Level of Genius?

“Most of this is attributable to genius; Prince flips back and forth between R&B and rock like a kid popping wheelies” TL delivering “a late-1980s update of Sly & the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On in terms of its socially aware lyrics and all-encompassing musical themes.” TB “The album is sexual, provocative, funky, tender and full of fear – and the survival Prince endures…is magnified by his own unwavering confidence in the face of uncertain heartache.” PM

In Prince’s world “heady musical experimentation and frank, funny expressions of lust are what mattered the most.” JG Here, though, “the lyrics show Prince in a rare state of maturity. Usually his lines range from overt sexual come-ons to garbled references to God, but here Prince actually has something to say.” RV “The vivid carnality of Prince’s early records is offset here by an appreciation of the strange places desire and love take you.” CM

There are even “examinations of life as lived with one’s clothes on.” JD “This is where his demons took him furthest.” EW’93 “Apocalyptic imagery of drugs, bombs, empty sex, abandoned babies and mothers, and AIDS pop up again and again, yet he balances the despair with hope, whether it’s God, love, or just having a good time. In its own roundabout way, Sign ‘O’ the Times is the sound of the late ‘80s – it’s the sound of the good times collapsing and how all that doubt and fear can be ignored if you just dance those problems away.” AM

The Songs

“The record features some of Prince’s greatest songs ever—including ‘U Got the Look,’ ‘I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man’ and ‘Housequake.’… But it’s songs like ‘If I Was Your Girlfriend’ and ‘The Ballad of Dorothy Parker’ and ‘Hot Thing’ and ‘Starfish and Coffee’ that add unbelievable dimension to Prince’s alien bravado.” PM

Here are insights into individual songs from the album.

“Sign ‘O’ the Times”
Prince decries “the world’s decay through blistering social commentary” CM on “the apocalyptic title track,” 500 a protest song in which he shares “his alternating visions of hope and despair.” RV This “ruminative, angry” MM-88 “downbeat electro-blues” MM-63 features “cracking drum programming and an insta-catchy low-slung bass riff, a kind of streamlined version of Sly & the Family Stone’s ‘Thank You (Felettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).’” MM-88

The song’s “sharp drum-machine-and-guitar coda are what really set the tone for the sixteen-track set.” JG Well, at least musically. Lyrically, though, “what follows is a resurrection delivered through the contemplation of sexual pleasure and personal freedom.” CM

“Play in the Sunshine”
This is a “busy, bustling” MM-83 “kicky rock number” MM-63 with “an exuberant groove.” CM “Drums crack, keyboards flourish and guitars flare up in the background; it’s as if Little Richard got his hands on Paisley Park and went to town.” CM This song “is closer than any other track here to sounding like Sign ‘O’ the Times in miniature.” MM-85

“Housequake”
This is “a funny dance song in which Prince sounds like he’s singing through his nose.” MM-21 It uses “an odd, sped-up vocal that turned his voice into an androgynous twitter.” MM-62 This was the catalyst for the aforementioned aborted Camille album. MM-62 Housequake “is, in content, the most direct J.B. [James Brown] homage had recorded to that point” MM-81 while also serving as a “proto-hip-hop party.” CM

“The Ballad of Dorothy Parker”
The unusual sound of the “truly eccentric The Ballad of Dorothy Parker” CM “was due to a blackout caused by a snowstorm: the power failure had disabled the tape machine, causing it to run at half-speed…Prince liked the results and left the song alone.” MM-67 The “drum part sounds through-composed rather than programmed; it keeps twisting around, upending and then righting itself, keeping a constant groove without subordinating itself to a monolithic beat.” MM-104

“There’s a brittle instability…that’s close to derangement, and the lyrics – with their nod to [the Beatles’] ‘Norwegian Wood,’ another song about the singer’s infidelity that dances around its actual topic – match it. Prince’s singing…is beautifully controlled; despite the fantasia aspect of the lyrics, the way he sings them – in a relaxed, almost bluesy manner – becomes the song’s reality principle.” MM-105-6

This song first surfaced on the original April 1986 track listing for Dream Factory. It made the cut for the two revised versions of the album and Crystal Ball.

“It”
This song and “Hot Thing” showcase “Prince as funky erotomaniac, an obsessive cocksman exercisinghis libido the way a Berklee School of Music grad practices her scales.” MM-76 This one, however, is “more like a generic exercise that sums up and stand in for the genre.” MM-76

“Starfish and Coffee”
This is “unambiguously playful, almost a kids’ tune, with a song-song chorus.” MM-106 The song “depicts Prince as an elementary schoolkid who’s intrigued by his classmate, Cynthia Rose: She wears different colored socks and describes her daily lunch as ‘Starfish and coffee / Maple syrup and jam / Butterscotch clouds, a tangerine / And a side order of ham.’ Prince and his friend Lucy don’t believe her, so they sneak a look, and what do you know – she wasn’t lying.” MM-107 “The moral is to open your mind because you never know what’s behind the magic curtain and/or in your schoolmate’s lunchbox.” MM-107

“Slow Love”
This “Stax revamp” 500 is “practically a duet between Prince and the horn charts.” MM-69 “The easy fluidity of Sign’s bulk might not necessarily by itself suggest jazz, but add” MM-69 this song with “Housequake,” “Hot Thing,” “It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night,” and “Adore” and “the album is colored differently.” MM-69 This is “a kind of parody of lounge singer smoooveness…Prince-as-seducer in a more old-fashioned guise than usual, crooning like he was Sinatra or Bennett.” MM-108 “You never doubt for a second that he wants you, he needs you, and if, as he puts it, ‘Love is 2 weak 2 define how much I adore you,’ he certainly craves you something fierce, and will crawl on his belly in order to get to you.” MM-110

“Hot Thing”
Prince also delivers , “heavy funk” DBW on Hot Thing. The song “is hardly new territory for Prince, which may be one reason it’s so good. He knows the terrain so well he can work new changes on it at will.” MM-76 His vocal “moves from cocksure monotone strut to overwhelmed craving.” MM-75

“Forever in My Life”
This is “a drum machine, multitracked background vocals that anticipate the lead, some acoustic guitar at the end, and nothing else.” MM-22 Like “Dorothy Parker,” this “came about by accident; Prince mistimed his background vocals, which came in ahead of the lead. As a result, they conveyed his thoughts for him, like they’re written all over his face before he even says a word.” MM-106

“U Got the Look”
This was a rare duet for Prince with “Sheena Easton playing Ginger Rogers to his libidinous Fred Astaire.” CM In the liner notes for The Hits/The B_Sides, Alan Leeds called this “a calculated exercise in commercial songwriting.” MM-65 “The electronic reggae downbeat…leads into an absurdly visceral groove whose distorto-guitar riff is pure pelvic thrust, somewhere between a Led Zeppelin riff or a hardcore-rave synth hook.” MM-97-8

This was the newest recording for the album. Everything else had originally been slated for proposed albums Dream Factory, Camille, or Crystal Ball.

“If I Was Your Girlfriend”
Prince is at “his pop-soul best” TB on this “gender bending” DBW song which he sings in his Camille alter ego persona, created “by scarily sped-up tapes.” AM Originally, he intended an entire album released as Camille without anything identifying him as Prince. When the record company balked at the idea, he consolidated some of the tracks, including this one and “Housequake,” into the proposed three-disc Crystal TBall before he pared that project down to the two-disc Sign ‘O’ the Times.

The result is “the most disarming and bleak psycho-sexual song Prince ever wrote.” AM He boldly released it as the album’s second single, which nearly derailed the momentum fueled by the #3 title song, but was restored with the #2 hit “U Got the Look.” “The downtempo kitchen-sing production number” JG “was his way of pushing the boundaries of just what could be popular.” MM-102 While the “title signaled gender confusion” MM-102 this is “one of the most honest songs Prince or anyone else has written about the give-and-take of relationships.” MM-103

“Strange Relationship”
There’s also the “chilling Strange Relationship. These fraying relationships echo in the social chaos Prince writes about throughout the album.” AM Prince first attempted the song in 1982 and again in 1985. MM-71 He let Wendy and Lisa of the Revolution tackle it, giving it “a downcast, heavy psychedelic tinge.” MM-72 The version that finally appeared on Sign toned down their contributions, “refocusing the track on melody and rhythm rather than harmonic color.” MM-72

In addition, the vocal now feels somewhere between Prince’s normal voice and the Camille persona. MM-73 It makes “this creep attractive and charismatic; you can understand why someone might be drawn to this guy, despite his bad habits, because the melody is so bright, and Prince’s singing is so emotionally identifiable.” MM-74

This song is the only one on the album which survived through all the possible iterations of albums in 1986 and 1987. Prince included it in the original April 1986 track listing for Dream Factory, the two subsequent revised versions, Camille, and Crystal Ball.

“I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man”
This is the album’s “most straightforwardly guitar-heroic song.” MM-95 While Prince sings that he could never take the place of her man, critic Greil Marcus says, “No, but for the last minute he takes the place of Duane Allman.” MM-96 That solo of “anthemic rah-rah-ness…matches the song’s cheerleader melody and chorus.” MM-96 As in “Strange Relationship,” Prince “gets mileage out of the upbeat music/downcast lyrics incongruity.” MM-96

“The Cross”
The Cross is a “religious rock anthem to die for.” DBW “It’s a gospel song sung and played like a rock song;” MM-93 it sounds like the Staple Singers fronting the Velvet Underground. JG “It’s one of the most intensely committed things Prince has ever recorded.” MM-93 It possesses “the same kind of solemn gravity [as the title track], from lyric to vocal to arrangement; both use similar imagery, invoking ghettos, poverty, and desolation.” MM-93

“It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night”
The Revolution do make an appearance on It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night. “This instant party…puts snazzy Ellington horns and James Brown rhythm guitar in the service of a timeline-defying jam that’s as irreverent as the best Funkadelic.” TM It contains Prince’s “first flirtation with rap” DBW courtesy of Sheila E. reciting Edward Lear’s poem “The Table and the Chair” “in hip-hoppy cadence.” MM-84

“Adore”
This “drop-dead gorgeous” MM-63 Adore is a “lovely, complex ballad” DBW that “finds Prince screaming like Jim Morrison and twittering in his falsetto range like jazz diva Sarah Vaughan.” TM It “is a slow burn of utter devotion with Prince yowling before he pledges himself.” CM It features what is “perhaps his finest vocal performance.” DBW Paste magazine’s Matt Mitchell goes so far as to call it “the greatest closing track in the history of recorded music.” PM

Notes:

In 2020, a deluxe edition of the album was released with a third disc containing the singles, maxi-singles, and B-sides. A super deluxe edition contained six additional discs – three with previously unreleased studio tracks, two from a concert during the Sign ‘O’ the Times tour, and a DVD of a live New Year’s Eve show at Paisley Park.

Resources and Related Links:

Other Related DMDB Pages:

First posted 3/23/2008; last updated 8/21/2024.

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