Sign O' The Times - Prince (CD 1987)

Too often, people label Sign O The Times as the brightest moment of Prince s career. Are they wrong? Well, that comes down to personal opinion, but really, it is hard to put any album against it, and have that album stand up against The Purple One s 1987 masterpiece. When you think about it, Sign O The Times (SOTT) was as much a curse as it was a blessing to the career of Prince. Ever since its release, every Prince album was met with at least some degree of disappointment, purely because it didn t match the incredibly high bar of expectations that SOTT set. Since then, Prince s material...

In the winter of 1987 I received, along with everything else I got that year, 3 albums for Christmas. I got Def Leppard's "Hysteria", Aerosmith's "Permanent Vacation" (on vinyl no less), and Prince's "Sign 'O' the Times". I couldn't begin to tell you how much that last one affected everything else from there on. It wasn't that I was particularly awed by his sense of musicianship or that the production quality was especially crisp. It was those lyrics, and those songs, and that production, and the whole package. SIGN "O" THE TIMES isn't a record, it's a masterpiece. It's Prince at his peak. It.

Everyone knows Prince is a genius, I assume. "Sign o the Times" is one of those albums that I like more each time I hear it, which is kinda difficult since it's already my favorite album of all time. For slightly under 80 minutes, Prince shows that he is a master of almost every vocal and musical style there is, in addition to an effective, affecting cinematic storyteller. This album opens with the spare title track. Set to nothing but a drum machine, an ominous synth, and a bass guitar, Prince runs down a list of social ills: drug addiction, AIDS, government apathy. What's amazing is that...

This condition I got it is crucial Prince, Adore Prince Roger Nelson is truly a mystery. Not like we didn t know what he s thinking of (most of the time, that is). But he s illogical. You could write a dozen generic articles, all starting with the words only Prince could , and you would most likely be saying the truth. Because only Prince could be the opposites of nearly any quality we can think of. Only Prince could be the single author of Come and Sometimes it Snows in April . Only Prince could have willfully ruined his career and still receive a warm welcome ten years later, when suddenly..