Sign o’ the Times grew out of about three different albums that Prince started and stopped for various reasons. It might have been a wayward way to get there, but the final destination was simply thrilling.
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Out of 16 songs stretched across four sides of music, we tasked ourselves to choose the five best. Here’s what we decided, with some choices pretty obvious, and others that might surprise you.
5. “Slow Love”
Carole Davis is a model/singer/actress whose path crossed Prince’s long enough in the 1980s for them to write this song together. Many people will point to the closing track “Adore” as the ultimate slow jam on Sign o’ the Times. But for our money, this old-school jam gets the job done just a little bit better. The horns are deployed at just the right times for maximum impact. And Prince is masterful here in the different ways he modulates his vocals, giving his falsetto to the verses and then keeping it guttural in the refrains. A wonderful update on Quiet Storm classics from the ’70s.
4. “U Got the Look”
While it wasn’t the best song on the album, “U Got the Look” played an important role on Sign o’ the Times in that it was the accessible single that brought people into what was an ambitious, sprawling album. Sheena Easton does a great job playing the straight role here, forced to react to Prince’s preening and prowling (in his high-pitched altered voice) all around her. In other words, there’s just enough idiosyncrasy to make it represent the album very well. But the hooks are also massive, so that even casual passersby are bound to get drawn into this World Series of Love showdown.
3. “Starfish and Coffee”
Prince’s interest in psychedelic pop apparently hadn’t quite been satiated with the release of Around the World in a Day in 1985. In fact, “Starfish and Coffee” would have been a welcome addition to that unjustly maligned record, but it fits nonetheless within the crazy-quilt approach of Sign o’ the Times. The song emanated from a story about a childhood friend of Prince’s then-girlfriend, Susannah Melvoin, who received a co-writing credit. Prince found in this character great whimsy and fascination, and he molded a recording well-suited to bring those qualities to listeners.
2. “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man”
In typical Prince fashion, he had this absolute gem lying around in his vaults since the late ’70s. He repurposed here it with a thrilling power-pop arrangement. You have to give him credit for finding different ways of tackling relationship dynamics than what was often heard on pop radio. In the case of “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man,” the narrator takes a somewhat noble position in that he refuses a one-night stand with a girl reeling from a recent breakup. But he also knows that she’s too alluring for one night to satisfy him, so he has no choice but to pull back.
1. “Sign o’ the Times”
Nobody looked at Prince and thought much about his social consciousness as he was churning through the hits on 1999 and Purple Rain, even though there was a clear indication on much of the material from that time that he was by no means in a bubble separated from the world’s problems. Still, the way it all came pouring forth on the title track of this record was stunning. You could give Fairlight synthesizers away to every musician in the world, and it’s likely no one could induce shivers like Prince does with this arrangement. It’s the perfect backdrop for the heartfelt angst he displays in the lyrics.
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