Friday, June 06, 2008

591. Prince - Sign O' The Times (1987)
















Track Listing

1. Sign 'O' the Times
2. Play in the Sunshine
3. Housequake
4. Ballad of Dorothy Parker
5. It
6. Starfish and Coffee
7. Slow Love
8. Hot Thing
9. Forever in My Life
10. U Got the Look
11. If I Was Your Girlfriend
12. Strange Relationship
13. I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man
14. Cross
15. It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night
16. Adore

Review

Prince seems to be one of those love him or hate him artists. And I have to say that I am in the first category, I really like this diminutive sex freak. And this is undoubtedly his best album on the list and probably of his whole career.

It doesn't really have that many hit singles, in fact it only has 2 recognisable songs, the title one and U Got The Look. But in spite of that it is the best collection of songs that he has ever produced, in fact there is not one weak link in the whole thing. This is a work of consummate genius.

The beat is particularly good throughout the album and the little funk/jazz elements that he includes more or self evidently in the tracks are equally amazing. Iti s actually hard to chose favourite songs in the album, it is so sprawling at over 80 minutes long and there is so much variety here that favourite tracks change from day to day. Something to be experienced, digested slowly and cherished.

Track Highlights

1. Housequake
2. Sign O' The Times
3. The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker
4. Starfish and Coffee

Final Grade


10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The bulk of the tracks originate from the final Revolution project known as Dream Factory and a later solo project called Camille. These projects, along with some other songs merged into a 22-track, 3-LP opus called Crystal Ball. Prince's record company, Warner Bros. Records, balked at the idea of a 3-LP album, considering the lukewarm performance of Parade, and Prince's second movie, Under the Cherry Moon, and forced Prince to trim the album down.

The result was Sign O' The Times, which quickly became widely regarded as Prince's magnum opus amongst fans and critics alike. In 1989, Time Out Magazine ranked it greatest album of all time. It was 16th in the New Musical Express list All Time Top 100 Albums and 3rd in Hot Press Magazine's list The 100 Best Albums of All Time. Rolling Stone ranked it number #93 on their list of greatest albums of all time. The album placed 8th on Nieuwe Revu's Top 100 Albums of All Time. Time Magazine placed Sign O' The Times as the greatest album of '80s, and 29th greatest album of all time.

Sign O' The Times... I wonder how long until Prince's people take this down:

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

How long before Prince's people take it down?

That would be about an hour later. Good work - nice to see these people are on the case.