jacktheimprovident said:

Excellent Post!

Everyone has their own tastes and opinions but I have never understood why everyone thinks it is the best album Prince ever made. It's a good album but I don't consider it Prince's best by no means. I consider it one of his best late 1980s albums but it can't touch anything from the early 1980s.

i was going to school & living in Israel for the entire '86 - '87 school year...and i simply could not wait for the new Prince release. I was able to get my hands on a UK import 12" of "Sign 'O The Times/ La La La He He He" early in the spring of '87 -- and luckily, a friend was travelling back to the states for few weeks when the full album would be released. She came back to Israel with the cassettes of SIGN 'O THE TIMES...and it. was. brilliant. I simply could not get enough of it. All the different sounds & styles -- all rolled into one release. I LOVED IT. and still do.

Probably one of my favorite albums of all time...by ANY artist...particularly "side 3"...

Thanks for all your replies.
ive only really been into prince over the past couple of years.
my dad had his greatest hits on video so i thought i would check it out.
i didnt like most of the songs on it because they all sounded very different to what ive heard before from other artists.
i kept listening to the one song(diamonds and pearls), i thought it was one of the best love songs id ever heard. through that, i started on other songs and they started to grow on me(especially peach).
i wanted to hear more, so i asked people on here and other places which albums theyd recommend. somebody said start from the beginning, another said get diamonds and pearls but i kept hearing about this album sott which everybody kept raving about. so i bought it a couple of months a go from virgin, i thought it was going to blow me away but it left me feeling confused. i liked a couple of songs like housequake but the songs with the camille voice left me feeling a bit strange.

i will give it another try, i just dont know why im not so keen on it, i like all the other stuff ive heard. am i not a prince fan????

i think my reply was too long, just check out the last few lines

In my opinion SOTT is not only the best Prince album of all time, but I can't think of another album by anyone that is better.


I just know i'll be listening to that when i'm an old man. There's not much you can say that about these days.


Morello cherry, sugar plum, tonight my flower we'll have some fun

j

Oh and Icecool, just because your not sure if you really like SOTT doesn't mean your not a prince fan.

Keep trying though, i'm sure you'll grow to love it



j

1st time I listened to SOTT I was blown away. The title track alone is a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y briljant. Bass guitar, percussion and some sparingly used synths and the man's voice. Notice the rythm of his words mixing in with the hypnotic drums, that bass line (try playing it...). And that is only the first song! There are many highlights on the album, but what made this album his creative best was the live interpretation. Simply Incredible, I saw it 5 times. Go watch the movie...If "SOTT" (oh my G, that guitar), "ICNTTPOYM" (oh my G, that guitar), "Hot Thing" (watch the man move) or "4ever In My Live" (hear the man scream) doesn't blow you away then this album is just not your taste. No harm done though, to each it's own

icecool2k19 said:

Nah, it doesn't mean that. Some music just doesn't hit people immediately, sometimes it has to grow on you. You may not end up liking it, or you may end up liking it. Even if you don't, it doesn't mean you're not a fan.

[quote][quote]

icecool2k19 said:

Prince has been making albums almost every year for 26 years. He has covered almost every genre of music over these years such as funk, rock, house, hip hop, jazz, acoustical, and even classical. During these 26 years, he has gained fans from every race, class, continent, and age so naturally everyone has their favorite era or version of Prince.

Prince started out well known in the R&B world as an R&B/funk artist with a rock edge progressing with each album becoming more futuristic until 1984. A lot of these fans will always remember and love him as the "old Prince"

From the mid to late 1980s, he made a drastic change and started sounding more psycadelic and retro funk. A lot of his new found pop fans that remained through the style change and some of his remaining R&B fans love the "late 80s Prince" the best.

During the 1990s, he started bringing more current trends at the time into his music such as hip hop and house. He gained a lot of younger fans beginning with "Diamonds and Pearls". A lot of his younger fans prefer the "90s Prince" the best.

From the year 2000 to the present, he seems to have become more religious. Some of his fans prefer the "Jehovah's Witness" Prince.

With so many albums and styles over such a long period of time, you need to decide which "Prince" you like the best and buy those albums first. After that, buy the rest of them and judge them for yourself because everyone has their own taste.

Then you can "fight" with the best of us.

Actually , for me , almost every Prince has to be played more than once
(or twice) before i can truly , fully appreciate it

"Prince has been making albums almost every year for 26 years. He has covered almost every genre of music over these years such as funk, rock, house, hip hop, jazz, acoustical, and even classical. During these 26 years, he has gained fans from every race, class, continent, and age so naturally everyone has their favorite era or version of Prince.

Prince started out well known in the R&B world as an R&B/funk artist with a rock edge progressing with each album becoming more futuristic until 1984. A lot of these fans will always remember and love him as the "old Prince"

From the mid to late 1980s, he made a drastic change and started sounding more psycadelic and retro funk. A lot of his new found pop fans that remained through the style change and some of his remaining R&B fans love the "late 80s Prince" the best.

During the 1990s, he started bringing more current trends at the time into his music such as hip hop and house. He gained a lot of younger fans beginning with "Diamonds and Pearls". A lot of his younger fans prefer the "90s Prince" the best.

From the year 2000 to the present, he seems to have become more religious. Some of his fans prefer the "Jehovah's Witness" Prince.

With so many albums and styles over such a long period of time, you need to decide which "Prince" you like the best and buy those albums first. After that, buy the rest of them and judge them for yourself because everyone has their own taste.

Then you can "fight" with the best of us"


Some of this post is accuarate- some of it heavily distorts what Prince is and how his fans respond to him.

vainandy said:

I AGREE 110%

Sign O’ The Times captures everything about Prince which makes up his brilliance better than any other album he’s created...
the variety of styles and influences, each filtered thru Prince’s musical prism, making them each his own...the strong, infectious melodies...
the rhythms, the textures...his vocals--mg, his vocals!...So soulful and earnest on the title track, the sped up weirdness his voice
throws down on “Housequake”...an improbable mixture of the two on “If I Was Your Girlfriend”...jazzy vocal inflections on
“Ballad Of Dorothy Parker”, his lust-filled delivery on “It” (listen to how he sings “With U, I swear, I’m a maniac...alright!”)...
the list goes on and on. His slow jams are romantic and sexy as hell, his rockers burn electric, his funk numbers are deep, hard
and nasty, his quirkier moments deliver the goods...he doesn't miss a step.

On SOTT, Prince seems to be at the peak of his one-man-band powers and, as one music critic said at the time, showing what a
motherfucker he is over the span of two discs.

"PLEA-EE-EE-ESE" from If I Was Ur Girlfriend - 'nuff said

i wish i could go back in time and hear it the first time it came out. i have it and it sounds like something that was released last tuesday. that's what i LOVE about Prince. he is so way ahead of his time. listen how fresh Starfish and Coffee sounds. that sounds like something that could be on the radio today. first time i heard the c.d. i thought it had just came out. i didn't know it came out in the 80's i'm truly astonished. i think that this and Lovesexy are his two best albums. i mean, i love PR and 1999, but those two make me feel the man.

I can't really make a reasonably sized and coherent post explaining why this album is so great to me, so I'll borrow some else's words.

Fearless, eclectic, and defiantly messy, Prince's Sign 'o' the Times 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. 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. This was the first album Prince recorded without the Revolution since 1982's 1999 (the band does appear on the in-concert rave-up, "It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night"), and 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. Many songs are left over from the aborted triple album Crystal Ball and the abandoned Camille project, a Prince alter ego personified by scarily sped-up tapes on "If I Was Your Girlfriend," the most disarming and bleak psycho-sexual song Prince ever wrote, as well as the equally chilling "Strange Relationship." These fraying relationships echo in the social chaos Prince writes about throughout the album. 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. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

Awh. It must be just the picture with cat's head covered by that aluminum heart-shaped plate that got everybody going. Nevermind the music, that picture does it for everybody. Does this explain it all to you?

For me, there's just no easier way to say it than this...

At the time that Sign O The Times Came out, nothing in the world sounded fresher, more inventive, more clever or creative. In short, nothing was better. It's hardwired into the brains of those of us who were old enough to get on board in 1987.

I honestly think that anyone who got into Prince during his early to mid 90s work is less likely to think of SOTT as the masterpiece that those of us who lived through it as it was happening did. I can't even come CLOSE to believing that anything since has been as good...not just from Prince, but practically anyone.

You know when you make that list of the ten albums you would take on a desert island with you, and none of them can be greatest hits or burned collections? I'm picking SOTT FIRST!

Keith/Kacey

vainandy said:

I TOTALLY AGREE. I bought SOTT the day it was released and do enjoy it more than I did then. But it is not his best work (although the greatest song ever written, Adore, is on there). I would take Dirty Mind, Controversy, 1999, and Purple Rain, all before SOTT. For a double album, I never found the instrumentation in SOTT very complex, which took away from it IMO.

Kacey725 said:

I've heard something up to 4,000 albums in my life and nothing still sounds better to my ears.

I know exactly what you mean. I bought it on the day of release also. I remember when I first bought it, I wanted to sling it across the room. I was almost to the point of his ex-fans, this was his third strike and I was ready to count him out. I said "Dammitt! Another weird ass album with old sounding shit on it!" It took music as a whole changing for the worst in the 1990s to make me appreciate Prince's late 1980s work.



Definately the four best Prince albums of all time.
[Edited 11/12/04 0:08am]

I only liked a few songs off the SOTT album (It,Adore,U Got The Look,Hot Thang, and I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man and Housequake). I personally like SOTT live. I didn't go to the SOTT tour,but I downloaded mp3 from the concert live, and I think it's way better than the album. I then liked a few more tracks from the album when it was performed live.

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

hey orgers, i listened to sott over the weekend, some of the songs are growing on me like hot thang, adore, it and strange relationship but i cant seem to sit back and absorb the whole album.
i like to think while listening to music, but while listening to sott my thoughts are going all over the place as all the songs are different.
sott seems to have a kind of moody tone to it which im not really used to.
does anybody get what im saying, or do you think im talking shite??

be nice

Hey Icecool2k19,
I'm glad you are giving SOTT a chance. I was 8 when it came out and I remembered thinking how weird it was yet there was something about it that mademe just listen to it over and over again. It wasn't until I brought it in CD form when I was 19 when it hit me how brilliant it is. It's now in my top 3 favorite Prince albums ever. It showed how incredibly brilliant Prince was/is. I love it way more now than I ever did. I admit it isn't number 1 for me but like I said it's in the top 3. Keep on listening.

icecool2k19 said:

icecool

Listen go out & get the concert on VHS...believe me, you will not get enough!


I was there..enough said(smile) I LOVE THIS SITE!!!

icecool2k19 said:

SOTT rules!!!!!

SOTT was the first double album that didn't consist of just "long versions" of songs. It was eclectic and diverse. It sounds like a "greatest hits" for lesser artists in my humble opinion. For P it was "Hey everybody, here's what I have been working on since The Revolution broke up".

Like a few members have stated thus far, if you can't get into the album fully, then rush out and watch the "Sign 'O' the Times" concert video on VHS. I believe it's still on Black STARZ! for the rest of this month.

Fri, Nov. 26th - 11:50 PM ET
Tue, Nov. 30th - 6:30 PM ET