Whilst browsing online, I chanced upon these AMAZING reviews by lovers of the SOTT album.
Although a truly great album, it isnt my personal fave - however, these fan-(and non-fan-alike) written reviews just blew me away, and I thought they deserved somewhere fitting 2 reside and bask in their warming glow...





The '80s fall apart, and are crammed onto two pieces of shiny plastic (May 08 '03)

Pros:
Classic

Cons:
Prince has become a punchline.

The Bottom Line:
Anger, love, devotion, sex, lust, heat, need, togetherness, collapse. On two discs for your convenience.

Full Review:
People get nostalgic about America in the '80s, and I have trouble imagining why. For every wonderful college radio track, there were nine hundred insipid ballads and coke-fueled Aquanet rockstars crowding out the airwaves. For all the open-minded attitudes about sex, there was the discovery of AIDS. People were divorcing at higher and higher rates. Reaganomics made sure the rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and that the economy would soon collapse into recession. And let's face it, under the cold, sober light of two decades, shows like the Smurfs, comics like Garfield and ad hucksters like Max Headroom seem pretty dated, irrelevant, and annoying.

Oh there were major advances in technology, cute John Hughes movies, influential television shows, Bloom County, and Michael Jackson records that actually mattered, yes, but on the whole, the society was a wasteland of yuppies, arms race hysteria, idiotic fads (Swatch?! C'MON!) and Just Say No ads.

It didn't feel like entertainment, going to a movie like E.T. or Indiana Jones or Return of the Jedi. It felt like a distraction from some horrifying, oncoming apocalypse building up just outside the walls of the theater. If you think America is xenophobic now, go back and brush up on all the '80s movies that featured Russians as villains. Then go look up "xenophobic."

Now Prince Rogers Nelson, for his part, decided if he was going to die in a nuclear blast, he would have the best gdmnd party in the world to host his annihilation. He would dance and strut and crow to the world through his throaty croons, high pitched yelps, plaintive falsetto and mastery of 20-plus instruments, that he was not afraid of dying, as "life is just a party and parties aren't meant to last."

And he would take all that paranoia and partytime vibe, mix it together, and pump out some of the most human sounding odes to sex as salvation from a world gone wrong onto four sides of vinyl. Those four sides would make up an album called 1999, released in the year 1982. This is not a review of that album.

Rather, we're going to jump five years later, to 1987, and his OTHER major double album (yes, Prince is that sort of guy), Sign O' The Times. Prince had just dissolved his relationship with his first major backup band, The Revolution. They show up for one live track on this album, but otherwise, this album is Prince all by his lonesome namesake. Just like the early days of albums like For You, Dirty Mind and Controversy. Only, this is so much more than those albums were, eclipsing everything in Prince's catalog as a singular, peerless achievement. No imitator ever had the hope of learning enough instruments and styles to copy Prince's methods, much less understand them.

He tries genres on this album that don't even exist. In fact, if labels were ever needless and arbitrary, they are even less useful for this album. Quite simply, there is nothing in the world that sounds like it. You might think I'm engaging in hyperbole, but I ask you. Have you heard this thing?

It opens quietly, with a melodic, percussive element like a robotic heartbeat turned strangely organic, before Prince yells "Oh yeah!" and a thick bass-synth gives the percussion some meat, joined later by a guitar which hits all the right notes and leaves spaces where spaces should be, making you feel as though you're hearing this song within a large architectural space. Perhaps a church? The song is propulsive and guarantees to get your feet tapping. You might be tapping too hard to hear Prince sing about AIDS, gang violence, drug addiction, the Challenger explosion, a hurricane and Reagan's Star Wars missile defense program. Prince keeps things angry, but also keeps his hope, ending with the coy line that he wants to "get married, have a baby -- we'll call him Nate..." "If it's a boy," he adds as the drums become more synthetic and pounding, until the track settles back and closes on the same quiet percussion that opened the track.

If you think this sort of punk-lyric dance-fusion meld is going to permeate the record, you will be proven wrong as Play in the Sunshine comes in on a swirl of psychedelia and warped funk, and playful, thin harmonies. "Play in the Sunshine!" he and his backup band intonates again and again. The track slides into whimsy when the band commands "Play!" and Prince shouts "NO!" The band says it again. Play! Prince responds No! Play! No! Play! No! Play! Yeeeah! followed by a weird little interlude about a drummer doin' his thing, though the beat hasn't changed at all.

This leads into a garbled voice pitched high saying "Shut up already, damn!" Bringing in Prince's fascination with mixing his own voice at high and low speeds (which releases absurdist levels in the Black Album track "Bob George"). There is a bit of a story behind this, but for brevity's sake (as I am reviewing a double album here), let's just say that Prince called his high-pitched alter ego Camille. Also, originally Sign o' the Times was going to be a three-disc album called Crystal Ball, but the record company balked. Crystal Ball, once finally released, was a series of outtakes from Sign o' the Times and other albums, as well as a bonus album available only on that collection.

How full of brevity I am.

So Camille struts, um, her stuff on the track Housequake, which is there to make you dance like a maniac. And it does. Using basically two interlocking rhythm beds and a little bit of horns, Prince concocts the perfect tune to stomp to.

The drums are slowed down to the level that they feel like they're breathing on The Ballad of Dorothy Parker. A slow, gauzy jam about a "dishwater blonde waitress on the promenade" with barely there instrumentation that sounds exotic, erotic and sweaty, even when the lyrics are pitched into the level of insularity. One of the sexiest songs in Prince's canon, and that, my friends, is saying a lot. It's also funny, if you can follow the story, which ends up with Prince deciding he won't be cheating on his girl if he takes a bubble bath or two with Dorothy as long as he keeps his pants on.

Prince beats trip-hop fiend Tricky at the game a thousand years before him on the track IT, which, simply enough, is about taking off your clothes and rutting like a maniac with your girl. If you think Prince saying "I wanna do IT baby all the time" is too subtle, he eventually reveals that he has "f_cking on his mind." You might think this a little over the top, but if you'd made it through to the end of this song without feeling certain urges, you shouldn't be listening to Prince to begin with. And if you can't recognize the genius in the sparse, bass and drum arrangement, layered over with vocals like some revved-up and sweaty-eyed version of the track Kiss, why do you listen to music?

Starfish and Coffee comes in on a school bell, followed by a drum pattern that sweeps from one speaker to another, again giving you the feeling of space. A gentle song about a girl named Cynthia Rose who has a lunchbox full of "starfish and coffee, maple syrup and jam, butterscotch clouds, tangerine and a side order of ham." That's all you need to know about this song, to understand this mixture of playfulness with the mundane. Like childhood itself.

Prince goes from the child-like and impish to the passionate and devoted in Slow Love, a burning torch song of love and lust if ever there were one. High on R&B horns and the smell of candles, Prince sings in his falsetto plaintively and despairingly, begging for his lover to take it slow. I would say "one of the highlights" on any other album of songs, but on Sign 'o' the Times, every song is a highlight.

Hot Thing looks at the sex that is IT and decides, "Hey, let's do this again." Only this time, you're not with your girl, but some girl "barely 21." It's just sex...right? The bass isn't buried, but a hot and very spritely beast. And Prince lets off some of the most despairing cries of sexual bliss as he physically pains out "Hot hot hot thing!" until it lands itself into an erotic scream flashback of every encounter ever had. And it feels dark, and ugly. Wanton lust just barely keeping at bay the chaos of the world.

Forever in my Life is bouncy in its melody, and yet tackles real, adult decisions on commitment and need. It also melds the sexual with the spiritual, which Prince had done before, and would obsessively detail for the rest of his career in one way or another. You can hear how fun and sly he sounds playing melodies off each other verses before they're actually sung, (which, it turns out, was an engineering mistake) and yet also realizing that if changes don't happen soon, the end will soon fall.

Sheena Easton comes out, comes out, wherever she is to sing the '80s staple U Got the Look. You have to know this song, if you know anything about '80s dance! Freakily, this top hit for Prince was done solely in his Camille sped-up voice. He admitted later that he worked hard on the arrangement and melody of this song in order to make it a hit, just to prove to a female friend that he could do it. He did it, and it is a strange, warped little tale which talks of "boys meets girl in the world series of love" before dropping coyness altogether and inviting lovers who know "if love is good ... let's get to rammin'!" The song's in my head right now, actually. That melody is impossible to shed.

Camille sticks around for another track, and it is the darkest, strangest thing that Prince ever wrote. It opens with the first few notes of the Wedding March on organ, before someone says "check out the bargains here ladies" and the song proceeds into a stuttering piece of musical atmosphere that is more sensation than explanation. If I Was Your Girlfriend is Prince wondering this exact thing after a major fight. Camille wishes to pick out her lovers' clothes, "swallow every last drop," "dance a ballet naked," and, in the song's final lines, in afterglow, wants to lie back and "imagine what the silence looks like." Before you can catch your breath or catch all the double meanings and hidden hopes and needs, the song is over. And the genius of this song reveals itself when you play it back, to try and decode. You are swept up again in the words and worlds portrayed, and end up at the same breathless confusion. Every time.

We launch from the Camille-damaged to the Prince-damaged as he admits in Strange Relationship that "Baby I just can't stand to see you happy -- more than that I hate to see you sad" and never comes to a satisfying conclusion as to why he's in this relationship to begin with, only offering up "I didn't like the way you were, so I had to make you mine." The track features hard percussion and soft instrumentation, further contradicting matters.

Burying the same percussive tones of Sign O' The Times into the track I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man, Prince offers up humility (and one of his most charging, churning melodies of his since I Would Die 4 U on Purple Rain). Of course, this humility is in the form of "I may be qualified for a one-night stand, but baby, I could never take the place of your man." He also makes the adult decision of breaking it off with a former lover who wants to be friends, as he realizes neither he nor her with be satisfied. He brings pain and humanity to sleeping around. Only Prince could do this on a track that manages to sound sweet despite its dark edges and inner turmoil.

Prince hits hard with Eastern flourishes and a spiritual message (which would survive him to the songs Thieves in the Temple and 7) in The Cross, which is simply a stomping foot, acoustic guitar, his voice speaking of ghettos, flowers and "the promise of the cross" before the song comes back with full drum and electric guitar, making the spiritual an orgasm of sound, and an outrushing tide of hope in a land of ill plenty.

We now have the strange, long distraction that is It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night, which is Prince and the Revolution, rocking out live in Paris. Some might find this disco-sounding filler, but I think the point of this song is show Prince reaching out, and proving that there is a community out there larger than anything that one artist could write about or contain. There is a fear of exclusion here. The audience applauding, "soul clapping," and singing along sounds like some wonderful exorcism of fear and grief, and just living in the brief, exultant power of music and the temporary community that a concert brings. (Incidentally, there was a concert film released after this album, also bearing the name Sign o' the Times -- maybe this was a taster?)

Adore ends the album, and is, quite simply, the greatest love song to a woman that Prince ever wrote. Oh sure, he tried again, with the quite sentimental The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, but what that track lacked was the humor and the very real need to stay defined as an individual that Adore bursts with. Slow and beautiful, this song talks about being able to see his love, even if he were struck blind. Then goes on to say that when he and his girl make love, angels cry and pour tears onto their bodies. Sweet, right? Well, then Prince launches into a catalog of what he would do for his lover:

This condition I got is crucial, crucial baby
You could say that I'm a terminal case
You could burn up my clothes
Smash up my ride -- well maybe not the ride --
But I got to have your face
All up in the place
I'd like to think that I'm a man of exquisite taste
A hundred percent Italian silk imported Egyptian lace
But nothin' baby, I said nothin' baby could compare
to your lovely face
Do you know what I'm sayin' to ya this evening?
I'm just tryin' to say
I'm just tryin' to say
That until, until the end of time
I'll be there for you...

Adore this album. Learn it for your lover, for the love of your life, or, if you're really lucky, both will be the same person. Play it when you're up. Especially when you're down. Learn from it the power and special beauty of music that thinks equally of the groin, the mind and the soul, achieving some state of bliss unknown to music that sticks to only one of those concerns.

Hmm... I think I'm beginning to understand why the '80s weren't all bad...hey, It's gonna be a beautiful night.

Recommended?
Yes!



Special Installment - Sign 'O' The Times (Sep 26 '01)
Pros:
This is a Prince MasterWork, a perfect introduction to the artistry of Prince.

Cons:
This is a perfect Album/CD/Tape, take your pick, it's all good.

The Bottom Line:
This album is a MasterWork full of Timeless Hits that prove a perfect Primer for anyone unfamilier with the work of Prince.


Full Review:
In the course of human history there are events that help us define who we are as individuals or as a nation. It seems rather silly to think that a song or an album could assist in such an endeavor, but I submit to you that the things we remember are the things that endure. It's the songs, television shows, family trips and sometimes even tragedy. They all pass through our consciousness and tumble out leaving the memory of the moment, a memory that we can sometimes access at will, other times all it takes is the right song.

I know many Prince songs by heart, don't get me started, all I need is a little snippet of lyric and I'll sing the entire song. From Purple Rain, to 1999, to Sign 'O' The Times Prince remains an artist who cannot be marginalized, dismissed as crude or underestimated.

Sign 'O' The Times
Produced, Arranged, Composed, & Performed by Prince

Album I
Sign 'O' The Times
Play In The Sunshine
Housequake
The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker
It
Starfish And Coffee
Slow Love
Hot Thang
Forever In My Life

Album II
U Got The Look ( Duet With Sheena Easton)
If I Was Your Girlfriend
Strange Relationship
I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man
The Cross
It's Gonna Be A Beautiful Night
Adore

Success gives birth to acceptance, acceptance can be the pre-cursor to the demise of innovation, which brings us back to the time 1987 and the release of Sign 'O' The Times.

Sign 'O' The Times:
In France, a skinny man died of a BIG disease with a little name
By chance his girlfriend came across a needle and soon she did the same
At home there are 17-year-old boys and their idea of fun
Is being in a gang called The Disciples
High on crack and totin' a machine gun
Confronted by his own demons of acceptance and success it's as though Prince wanted to prove he was still relevant and he did not have to show us his private parts to shock us and make us think. Even with all of that he still wanted us to dance and have a lot of fun, then he would show us his private parts. Sign 'O' The Times the first song on the album careens from the issues of AIDS, drug abuse, Hurricanes, child abuse and the Challenger explosion. That one song alone makes Sign 'O' The Times the most serious of Prince albums. The bass line and the rhythms of Sign 'O' The Times captivate and then the words spew forth a reality that covers you from head to toe. You sing along and when it's over you repeat it and repeat it until you can sing the words by heart, okay that was me, but I think it will have a similar affect on you.

Selected Song By Song Rant
Sign 'O' The Times is only the beginning, next there is the Jam Housequake, this is a dance song to beat all dance songs and if released today in a dance club it would prove to be timeless. Starfish and Coffee is a nice little pop ditty that simply proves that Prince is a master of his craft, it's a silly little song that I'm sure only Prince could make work. Hot Thang is a raunchy little rock song or that's how it sounded to me with all the guitar work. Album two just Rocks and Pops along from U Got The Look, to If I Was Your Girlfriend, Strange Relationship and finally I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man. Okay the other songs are good too and I can listen to the album from cut to cut, but these songs in my estimation are timeless examples of the artistry of Prince. Any greatest hits album could include these eight songs as a starting point and anything else would be an extra added bonus.

Sign 'O' The Times is as close to a Prince MasterWork as any of the albums before it. It is a double album that unlike the 1999 double album, Sign 'O' The Times is filled to the brim and satisfies from track one of side one through the last cut of side four of album two. For those who would categorize the music of Prince or seek to define him by the known styles of music this is for you. If you are looking for an artist who can glide smoothly from Rock 2 pop 2 funk 2 R&B 2 soulful ballads Prince is your man and it's all there on Sign 'O' The Times.

Sign 'O' The Times should be in any Prince collection and it could serve as a dividing line for Prince music - music before Sign 'O' The Times on one side and music after Sign 'O' The Times on the other. I believe that is the power of and the effect this album has had on his career. If you were to do a retrospective of the work of Prince it should start with Sign 'O' The Times and then work forward and backward based on personal preference.

Recommended?
Yes.

Great Music to Play While:
Hanging With Friends.
Ladies and Gentlemen, please be upstanding 4: SOTT:

[This message was edited Wed Nov 12 4:27:10 PST 2003 by bananacologne]

very cool -- i gotta get back here and read the WHOLE thing.

I gotta thank T-Bone 4 sowing the seed that became this thread really - He knows why!

I loooveee this album

,Forever in my Life is bouncy in its melody, and yet tackles real, adult decisions on commitment and need. It also melds the sexual with the spiritual, which Prince had done before, and would obsessively detail for the rest of his career in one way or another. You can hear how fun and sly he sounds playing melodies off each other verses before they're actually sung, (which, it turns out, was an engineering mistake) and yet also realizing that if changes don't happen soon, the end will soon fall.


no!! that amazing backing vocals was an engineering mistake!!! gutted! thats the reason i fucking love that song to death, the backing melodies are amazing!



were these reviews from ciao.co.uk?

what a great read, now I needs to go play it
thanks for posting it!

softandwet said:

Yeah, by all accounts, Prince had just laid down this perfect vocal take, and according 2 Susan Rogers came in2 the control room and asked her 2 play it back - but as she did so, she realised that the track it had been recorded on was all out of synch - but Prince dug it, and kept it.

This also happened with the 'Camille' voice - she had pressed the wrong button when recording, the tape was running through the machine 2 slow - so when it was played back at normal speed, it had speeded his voice up.

Thank God 4 mistakes I say.
[This message was edited Tue Nov 11 15:13:35 PST 2003 by bananacologne]

bananacologne said:

Awww

Cracking up at T-Bone! How did I get that nick again?

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

[This message was edited Tue Nov 11 15:36:18 PST 2003 by bananacologne]

bananacologne said:

bananacologne said:

Or thank God for Susan Rogers making mistakes. I'd like to see her get her hands back into the mix.

WOW! I'm speechless. Wonderful review of SOTT. Probably the best I've ever read. That's exactly how I feel about the album. It's just I couldn't put it as well as that.

SWEET!

Blue
"Come on out here Rhonda"

madartista said:

Amen 2 that - Ive been thinking that a lot recently

TheBluePrince said:

I second that emotion baby! Not every album do I love every single song or at least learn to love every single song but this one is just that. Beleive it or not it also happens to be the very first CD I ever owned, a gift from someone urging me to move from cassettes. I took it everywhere with me to play on other people's machines til I got one.