BoxerMJ's Full Review: Sign 'O' the Times by Prince
Prince is a true musical polymath. Besides all the usual accolades you hear about Prince (he plays 10,000 instruments, he writes/produces everything himself, he is an enigmatic and energetic live showman, etc.), Prince is like an aural melting pot of pop music styles. Not as much an inventor as a RE-inventor, he is a master of genre-absorption who takes his influences (mainly Jimi, JB, Sly, Joni, and John Paul George and Ringo) and throws them into his purple blender of paisley spirituality and raspberry sexuality.
Recorded throughout 1986, and culled from three recording projects that individually never saw the light of day, Sign O' The Times, released in 1987, is the ultimate testament to Prince's musical gifts and influences. Why this four-sided, double-disc over, say, monster-seller Purple Rain? Take a quick look: here we have five minutes of the rockabilly soul, xylophone solos and screeching guitars of the party raver "Play In The Sunshine," followed immediately by five more minutes of pure sweaty funk that is "Housequake," an entirely different sort of party jam that borrows from virtually every R&B style that came before it (and creates a few more in the process). Following this is the weird, virtually indescribable, mellowed-out Steely Dan jazz-rock of "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker," a song that makes reference to bubble baths, "violent rooms" and Joni Mitchell’s "Help Me." And that's just side one.
The whole album is a hodgepodge of musical styles and genres, and it's exuberantly creative. The deceptively simple "Forever In My Life" is an adept example of unique vocal arrangement and studio invention in which the backing vocals come in a full two measures ahead of the relative lead vocal. (I'm not sure I believe this, but supposedly it was a mistake, a mistake Prince's lightly-treading engineers were happy to discover Prince was quite fond of.) That song's sparse arrangement (just voice and drums) is also key to its excellence, and harks back to the minimalist approach that made "When Doves Cry" and "Kiss" such skeletal, ambient masterpieces; this less-is-more approach is employed on almost half of this album's 16 tracks.
Another recurring aural element on Sign O' The Times is the 60s-influenced psychedelia that Prince flirted with on his previous two efforts (1986's Parade and 1985's Around The World In A Day), albeit in more subtle approach than the often too consciously over-the-top acid-pop of those two albums. Tasty colors show up in the trippy, oriental-sounding keyboard line in the otherwise dance-funk of "Hot Thing"; sitars, tambourines and congas are effectively thrown into the mix of the funk-stomping shoulda-been-a-single "Strange Relationship"; and the backwards drum and guitar loops of the playful "Starfish And Coffee" earn the song the honor of being the best psychedelic kid's song since "Yellow Submarine," at least to these ears.
The rock-influenced sounds that won Prince a wide (white) audience and made him an international superstar a few years earlier certainly make appearances here, but not in the form of the bombastic arena-rock of Purple Rain's signature songs. Instead they continue to add to his growing repertoire, popping up in the breezy California rock of "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" (its first guitar solo sounds right out of the Lindsey Buckingham songbook), and the pre-grunge-era distortion 'n blues beauty of the heartfelt, Jesus-saves "The Cross." (Prince's spiritual and/or religious songs are often emotional highlights of his works; this song is an excellent example of that, and is perhaps this album's finest moment.) Even that stereotypically 80's-sounding, big beats n' Sheena Easton, goofball hit "U Got The Look" owes a nod to heavy metal.
But it's the soul music influences of Sign O' The Times that make the album so...er...soulful. The exquisite "Slow Love," with its bending, curving sax and vocal arrangements serve to exemplify the sweet 'n sensual lovemaking the singer craves in the song's lyrics. Album-closer "Adore," another fine soul ballad, is a testament to the Al Green school of romantic crooning, complete with phat Hammond organ and falsetto extraordinaire. The title track, another album highlight, has a rolling, bending bass line bouncing over a staunch, almost techno vibe pattern, a combination that echoes the lyric's co-existing visions of hope and despair (lyrics decrying social ills that, amazingly, still ring true today).
Speaking of lyrics, they have never been Prince's specialty, ranging, throughout his career, from pedantic sexual come-ons to (later) garbled references to God. But on this album Prince seems sort of "grown-up," as many songs express more mature attitudes towards sex and relationships. And in one case, he actually pulls a coup. "If I Was Your Girlfriend" is one of the most deft statements on hetero love relationships ever uttered from a male pop figure, Prince putting himself in the position of the emotive lover, yearning for the kind of female-bonding closeness his partner shares only with her best girlfriends. (So why, then, did TLC cover this song? Their version, because of its protagonist's gender, renders the song absolutely meaningless...perhaps that was their ironic intention.) Prince knows that good communication between lovers breeds good sex; three and a half minutes into the song, after Prince has pleaded his case, he gets dirty, talking (female) oral sex and naked ballet dances. As Prince's seduction gets more intense, the music backdrop crawls up from the depths into a tornado of eerie synths, culminating in the hallow thrust of the song's imaginative and sexy drum programming and a lyrical invitation to "imagine what silence looks like." Then with a sudden and quick drum trill it's all over, leaving the listener in silence, and with no choice but to consider that surreal invitation with absolute seriousness. (And what song follows this? "Strange Relationship." Indeed.) It's a brilliant moment.
The relatively mature themes of "If I Was Your Girlfriend" are echoed elsewhere: in "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man" Prince actually turns down a one-night stand for fear of contributing to an already breaking heart; there is a plea for lifelong commitment in both "Forever In My Life" and "Adore." In fact, part of what sets Sign O' The Times apart from other Prince efforts is the fact that the infamous Prince ego, the one that wanted to shag that little red Corvette (and presumably the one that caused him to change his name to a symbol as well as make other bullshitty career moves), is virtually absent. Only "Hot Thing" and "U Got The Look" recall the ego-obsessed sexual braggadocio of earlier Prince albums like 1999 and Dirty Mind. Not that we mind the subject of shagging, but when Prince infuses it with sweet sensuality in "Slow Love" and raw, unnerving passion in the thrust ‘n throbbing, flowing "It," it's more effective...arousing even.
The only bomb (and truly, there is ONLY ONE) is the live party jam "It's Gonna Be A Beautiful Night," a song cut on a previous tour with former bandmates the Revolution. Having split with the band in the previous year, Prince's sense of liberation was an obviously essential aspect to the playful studio innovation in abundance on the rest of Sign O' The Times. Perhaps this live track, lacking melody on an album otherwise chock full of it and stretching out to nine loooooong minutes, is here as a tribute to those former cohorts (two of whom, Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, contributed much to Prince growing repertoire of influences). But perhaps *this* is where the ego landed; maybe this song is Prince's way of saying "check out the rest...it's better, isn't it? Yeah, that's me, solo." Another example of Prince, once again, absorbing his influences...and outdoing them.
STANDOUT TRACKS: Sign O’ The Times, Housequake, The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker, Slow Love, If I Was Your Girlfriend, Strange Relationship, I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man, The Cross.
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