thebanishedone said:

Beautifully written, my friend.

I read the whole thread up until yours, and I won't go any further.

Schöne Gruß!!!

SenseOfDoubt said:

Chronological order has a purpose!!!

I'm sorry you had to experience it this way!

Schöne Gruß

ufoclub said:

I definately remember me picking up the needle after "Starfish & Coffee" and putting it down on "Hot Thing"

Schöne Gruß

I like The Rainbow Children waaay better than SOTT.

Novabreaker said:

I've always wanted to comment on your avatar, Novabreaker.

It's an obvious dig at WB enslaving it's "artists," yes?

so, in leu (sp?) of that, this album could've been a four disc compilation at that time!!!

...and what would've THAT been like, we wonder???

It's definately my favorite, too, I must say. (TRC is #2)

But, 'Sign 'O' The Times' had the classic 12" Singles with great b-sides.

I miss that, more than anything!!!

Schöne Grüße

jacktheimprovident said:

It's wrong to reach, and your really reaching. Stop it. Please.

'Sign' is a great album. <-Period

The Beatles and Mr. Wonder made great albums, too.
So did Jimi, Zep, JB, Parliment/Funkadelic, RHCP, Ween, Beastie Boys, Jane's...right? No? Then, that's your opinion. That was mine.

Schöne Gruß

mozfonky said:

But, a great single cover!
Dontcha think?

I agree that "Strange Relationship" would've made a badass (extended version)

I'm sure it's still hidden in the vaults.

Dammit!!!

Schöne Grüße

Aerogram said:

Aero, you've been here a LOOOOOng time. Therefor, I respect almost everything you say. But, this time, you are absolutely right (to my ears and eyes). I can't say that i was ever looking forward to any other album as musch as 'SOTT'
I knew the R&B/Dance (1999)
I knew the Rock/Pop (PR)
I knew the con-fusion (ATWIAD)
I knew the black 'n' white (Parade)

But, that single with Cat on the cover lookin' like the little purple midget kept me double-takin' once again. Sick, right?

Schöne Gruß

nayroo2002 said:

I never said Sign O' the Times wasn't a great album. I'm just saying I think people have had a little too much purple kool-aid when they start saying it's more eclectic than the white album. Mind you "eclectic" isn't the same as "good" either, I'm just saying that there at least a few other albums that are as or more diverse than Sign O' Times and likewise there are at least a few other artists who've mastered as many styles as prince (and may I point out to skywalker that it's very subjective as to whether or not prince "embraces genres fully" more than stevie, the beatles etc...one could just as easily call what he does "dabbling")

jacktheimprovident said:

Let's just keep it in the purple realm.

'Sign 'O' The Times' was definitely a high point in his career.

What you think are great albums from other groups and/or artists don't matter in this thread. I won't compare Filter's 'Title Of Record' to any other record, but I think it's great from beginning to end. So what?

'Sign' will always be the #1 Prince album for me. Not just cuz I first bought it on vinyl and I was there for every release as they were made available, but cuz it was a monster to be experienced at the time.

If you first heard it years later, I understand. I still wish I could go back in time to get the latest James Brown single with part two on the b-side. I missed the whole Frank Zappa deal. I won't compare them to other musicians, though. Be cool, man.

Schöne Gruß
[Edited 9/24/05 17:41pm]

nayroo2002 said:

Not at all, as it was designed to confuse. I know I wasn't 100% sure until I read in RS that it was Cat. It was a great sleeve, one of his best.

Aerogram said:

One of a great sum of reasons whay 'SOTT' is the #1 Prince album.

Other reasons:

Sick-ass B-sides--

-La,la,la,he,he,hee(Highly Explosive)
-Shockadelica (Extended Version)

Extended versions--

-U Got The Look (Long Look)
-Housequake (7 Minutes Mo'Quake)
-Hot Thing (Extended Remix)

A released concert film!

And on a small note: great graphics, allround, seriously.

Schöne Grüße

I dont have time to read the whole thread, but Sign Of The Times overrated? Im watching the movie video right now, the song rocks! "Hurricane Annie ripped the ceiling off a church and killed everyone inside, every story on the news is tellin you somebody died", dated?

"I never said Sign O' the Times wasn't a great album. I'm just saying I think people have had a little too much purple kool-aid when they start saying it's more eclectic than the white album. Mind you "eclectic" isn't the same as "good" either, I'm just saying that there at least a few other albums that are as or more diverse than Sign O' Times and likewise there are at least a few other artists who've mastered as many styles as prince (and may I point out to skywalker that it's very subjective as to whether or not prince "embraces genres fully" more than stevie, the beatles etc...one could just as easily call what he does "dabbling")"

You say Purple Kool-aid. I and other people (not just Prince fans) rate Sign O' the Times as being right up there with "the White album" and some of Stevie's stuff as far as how diverse the music is. So my opinion is not led by blind devotion to Prince as you keep telling people. Bottom line-- one could easily make the argument that " Sign O' the Times" is the most eclectic album ever. I said it was exactly that and some hardcore Beatles fans got their panties in a twist because of it.

I will tell you this again- "The White Album" IS NOT as diverse or eclectic as "Sign O' The Times". That's my opinion , of course, but I have a strong argument. No one here, who has been championing "The White Album", has put up any decent support to disprove my opinion.

I will agree that "the white album" is extremely eclectic in how it was produced and it's instrumentation. However, as far as covering all sorts of musical genres (more than SOTT)-it doesn't. It's basically the Beatles sound of the time mixed with a surprising and unusual inclusion of instruments through out the album. If you want, we can start digging up reviews and articles of both "SOTT" and "The White Album" just so you can see that I have, not an overdose of Purple Kool-Aid, but a damn good point.

By the way, in my experience, Beatles Fans are way more biased that any other music fan base in the world. Meaning, their love for The Beatles (which is well deserved) taints all of their arguments big time. Way more so that followers of almost any artist besides maybe Bruce, MJ, and U2.
[Edited 9/25/05 0:08am]

skywalker said:

I apologize in advance for the length of this. Protracted, pointless debate is a hobby of mine .

No offense, but I'm not seeing the "strong argument". Not to say that you don't have one, but I'm just not seeing it presented. To me it seems as though all the actual arguing has been about the white album, the beatles, stevie etc. and defending or impugning what songs represent what styles on The white album/SITKOL. You say we haven't backed up our position? I say I haven't seen an affirmative argument made on your side. It's like you're asking us/me to prove a negative when you haven't specifically made a case. Nowhere has the attention actually been on what genres/styles are covered on Sign O' The Times. So far it's just been statements that I think are unsupported generalizations like "the white album just plain doesn't have as many styles on it" or "sign o' the times covers more styles in it's first disc than the whole white album"

You say the white album's distinguishing trait is in the variety of instrumentation and production and not styles. I, and many music reviewers would argue the reverse, that the emphasis on the white album was more on styles and distancing themselves from production/instrumentation gimmicks of previous albums. By saying that, it almost sounds as though you've heard a completely different album, because the instrumentation on the white album, and not just to my ears either, is much more "normal" than it was on Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour etc.; the quotients of mellotron, sitars, orchestration etc. is greatly reduced. And honestly, I think it's rather silly to say that it isn't an incredibly stylistically diverse album: a quick run through and you have hard rock(birthday, helter skelter, while my guitar gently weeps), blues rock (yer blues), beach boys/chuck berry style 50s rock(Back In the UssR), folk (blackbird, mother nature's son), country (rocky raccoon), do-wop/acid-rock mishash (happiness is a warm gun), english folk music(long long long), musique concrete (revolution 9), 30s jazz-pop(martha my dear., honey pie), broadway style ballad/s (Good night), weird jangly, almost tribal weirdness (wild honey pie), campfire/children songs (bungalo bill), reggae/reggae-ish pop (obladi oblada) and lots of others that aren't so easily categorized (dear prudence, Why don't we do it in the road, Cry Baby Cry). Yes I know I already "ran through" those, and you can dispute how properly these categories fit all you want, or how WELL each style they try is executed, but I've not seen anyone attempt to dilineate exactly how many different styles are represented on Sign O' the Times. Just to be devil's advocate, one could argue that most of the songs on SOTT are just different types of Funk/R&B, and there's far fewer song to chose from.

Again, nothing personal, I just think that this little debate is a little one-sided. People have argued that the White Album or Songs in the key of life or London Calling or whatever is as or more eclectic, others say "prove it", they try to and then their categorizations are disputed. No one's actually made an affirmative argument for Sign O' The Times as the most eclectic album.

Last thing, I agree whole-heartedly about Beatles fans being biased and would add on top of that that the music critical community in general is very biased towards the Beatles. To me, The Beatles are just a peronal favorite and I wouldn't bother in claiming whether they're unequivocally the greatest this or that. Prince also happens to be one of my favorite artists as well, I just happen to think Sign O' The Times is pretty far from the most stylistically diverse album ever made (or at least has a lot of competition for that title), and that the white album is probably the most obvious/proper choice (which once again has nothing to do with which one is the "greater" album).
[Edited 9/25/05 3:42am]
[Edited 9/25/05 3:43am]

4nowneway said:

They're talking about the whole album.

I agree that there are some not-so-strong songs there...but as a whole the album is brilliant. The demo-sounding production is cool....it features some of the best lyrics Prince ever did, no embarassing moments, a killer album cover...great moment!

Some people hate long thread discussions....but I learned something from this one, and I am curious to listen to the White album because of it.

GustavoRibas said:

Oh no doubt--go get "The White album" if you don't have it. It's my favorite as far as The BEatles go.
[Edited 9/25/05 20:15pm]

GustavoRibas said:

Me too. I don't own any Beatles albums but this was always one that peaked my interest.

skywalker said:

Only it doesn't.

Cloudbuster said:

Um, no it does. Basically ignoring the soul/R&B/funk genres of music makes the White Album less diverse than "SOTT".

skywalker said:

Um not really. first of all, "Funk" was only in its embryonic stages when The white Album came out, James and Sly were just about the only people making music that could be considered "funk" in the strictest sense, and Funk is a very narrow category of music, it being an outgrowth/subcategory of Soul, which is itself a subgenre of R&R/R&B. Secondly, I think it's debatable whether or not there's no Soul/R&B on the White Album. Do-wop, after all, is a style of R&B, and that's represented in part by happiness is a warm gun, and there are few groove-driven borderline funk numbers like why don't we do it in the road, savoy truffle. The White album has songs that are completely off the Rock/R&B radar as well, which certainly isn't true of SOTT. Here's the way I categorize the songs on SOTT

Sign O' The Times-Funk
Play In The Sunshine-pop rock, with elements of funk, rockabilly, hard rock
Housequake-Dance Funk
The Ballad of Dorothy Parker-Jazzy Funk noir (not actually jazz-funk/fusion though)
It-Sort of a dark, acid-rock
Starfish And Coffee-Psychedelic pop
Slow Love-Soul
Hot Thing-Heavy Funk
U Got the Look-Funky Rock
If I Was your girlfriend-funky soul
Strange Relationship-indian/psychedelic pop
I could never take the place of your man-pop rock, somewhat jazzy breakdown
The Cross-Rock Power Ballad
It's gonna be a beautiful night-Big Band Funk
Adore-Soul

again, this is a great range, but it's significantly narrower thant the white album.

8up said:

AMEN TO THAT

No I don't agree, Sign of the Times is my favourite Album. None of the songs are fillers, you want filler listen 2 the wildly overrated Graffiti Bridge or Symbol and all of Come and Chaos and Disorder is a filler 2 me.
OK, Some of the songs are average to Fair like the Ballad of Dorothy Parker, and [b]Slow Love. [/b]But they are Not Elephants and Flowers or Melody Cool!!
On the other hand, the Title Track, Housequake, Starfish and Coffee, Strange Relationship, The Cross and Adore are the finest songs one could hear. They are beyond anyone elses ability!
Forget the opinions just listen and enjoy. Any song I 4got 2 mention I would rate as good to excellent.

Sign is his best album...and that is all that needs to be said. It's THE album that contains not only great songs but also his diversity and experimental sides as well. He does all this AND manages to make an album where there is not one tune where I am racing to skip. Yeah its very 80's sounding...but hey Cream is very 60's sounding and Bee Gees are very disco sounding but they both are still brilliant...I hate it when people complain about things sounding dated.

Aerogram said:

Amem dude!

"Sign O' The Times-Funk
Play In The Sunshine-pop rock, with elements of funk, rockabilly, hard rock
Housequake-Dance Funk
The Ballad of Dorothy Parker-Jazzy Funk noir (not actually jazz-funk/fusion though)
It-Sort of a dark, acid-rock
Starfish And Coffee-Psychedelic pop
Slow Love-Soul
Hot Thing-Heavy Funk
U Got the Look-Funky Rock
If I Was your girlfriend-funky soul
Strange Relationship-indian/psychedelic pop
I could never take the place of your man-pop rock, somewhat jazzy breakdown
The Cross-Rock Power Ballad
It's gonna be a beautiful night-Big Band Funk
Adore-Soul

again, this is a great range, but it's significantly narrower thant the white album."


Jack- this is simply an example of you categorizing songs as you see fit (just like you did with "the White album").You are just shoving things into the boxes that are convenient to your argument. You still haven't answered as to how "The White Album" can be considered more diverse than "SOTT" when it basically has no funk,soul, or R&B, on it. The BEatles do pop/rock. Prince straddles what used to be (and sometimes still are)racially tagged music lines and always has. Again, look at the audience that come to a McCartney Concert and Compare it to a Prince show. The audiences are a perfect reflection of the diversity and eclecticism in music. As I said before, The Beatles had less "soul" than The Stones, and they sure had less than Prince-"the White album" included. If you flip the coin, Prince is often a legitimate, straight up, rock artist when he wants to be. The Beatles could have never run with James Brown. Prince could have run with both and he demonstrated that perfectly on "SOTT". More eclectic. I'm done.
[Edited 9/26/05 19:32pm]
[Edited 9/27/05 6:30am]