Sign “☮︎” the Times

The musical equivalent of a neck tattoo … YOU might think it’s cool, but there should have been more than a few people telling you not to do it and you should have listened to them. This is what happens when a great musician is given too much creative control and stops listening to the advice of others.

I thought of Purple Rain as good but slightly overrated, so I wonder whether this is overrated too. It sounds less dramatic and more rooted in classic funk than Purple Rain was, being more politically and socially charged. The sound is more stripped-down, with a focus on rhythm and lyrics rather than theatrical crescendos. The rhythms are fairly catchy, and the album's minimalist sound works somewhat in its favor. Prince's vocals, especially on tracks like "Housequake" can be annoying at times but are usually tolerable. The lyrics contain just the right amount of humor and political messaging to make them engaging yet palatable(though there are some weak spots). This is a pretty good album that, again, falls just short of masterpiece level.

It's great, but Prince gives into a lot of his hokier instincts on some of these songs. Then again, his hokey instincts gave us "Starfish and Coffee," so you do you Mr. Nelson.

The track ‘Sign O’ The Times’ is such a great track and is difficult to better as an album opener. However, my underlying issue with most Prince albums are the tracks that go too far across the line and are just loose jams. Enjoyable yes, but i dont need an album stacked with them.

Toward the end of ‘Play in the Sunshine’ the drums make me expect Bono to start singing’Sunday Bloody Sunday’

After this we enter the aforementioned jam tracks. It all feels like he needed someone to rein in the genius a bit and provide some more focus to it all.

On the last Prince album I was somewhat surprised to find I didn't really like it. It was really samey over the length of a full record, so I wasn't really looking forward to this. And then I looked at the running time and my enthusiasm dropped even further. Some stray thoughts:

- The title track is fine but doesn't really build to anything.
- Rhyming "lets jam" with "green eggs and ham" is a choice, but Housequake is very funky.
- this is extremely 80s.
- I liked The Ballad of Dorothy Parker backing vocals, but it was again very meandering.
- by the time I got to the song It, it became fully apparent that I wasn't really going to like the second Prince album on the list.
- the weird whooshing noise on Starfish and Coffee was **horrible** - I very nearly fast forwarded through it.
- how did Prince become such a massive star? These albums are so dull for 90% of the run time.
- U Got The Look just made me sad that I wasn't listening to The Look by Roxette.

Another artist the generator has taught me that I don't like, I just thought I did. A grudging:

2/5

it's fine. If this was put out by some random Britpop group or a random person in the 80s, this would easily be sub-3. But it's Prince so reviewers have inflated the rating.

I've never really listened to Prince, despite knowing lots of people love his music. This is funky and fun, but did sound like was mixed in the 80s. I'd probably enjoy it more with a heavier focus on the instruments.

They had to name it "The Minneapolis Sound" because even *they* knew that all Prince's stuff sounded the same. Why does everything have that clunky drum sound and a similar arrangement.
And the shreaking.
And be too long.

I bought the follow up to this, Lovesexy, in 1988 and really liked it. But that was before I grew tired of the thuddy drum machine, the synthetic band and the screeching. Sorry mate.

I like Prince a lot. Probably my third fave album of his after 1999 and Purple Rain

I didn't always love the songwriting on this album, but what I did love was it's unique energy — especially on the more upbeat tracks. Listening to some of these songs honestly feels like being pulled into an 80s house party where you can imagine Prince stomping around doing a one man band act like in some kind of corny feel-good movie. The guy was larger than life and this album is a monument to that. It's fun, it's funky, and it's even surprisingly thoughtful at times.

I wasn't a big fan of the slower, ballady songs though. It does feel like he was trying a little too hard to be Mr. Sensual Lover on some of those tracks, but maybe that's just my straight male ass being impervious to his charm. The other main issue I have with the album is that some of the songs seem to continue for a couple of minutes past the point where I feel like they were squeezed of all their juice. If I Was Your Girlfriend is guilty of both of these complaints of mine; I really wasn't a fan of that one.

Probably would have given this a 5 if it was just a little bit tighter of an experience.

Favourite Tracks: Housequake, U Got the Look, It

Het album start met de titel-track. Heel erg '80's. Maar ik krijg wel zin in het album. Het ligt erg makkelijk in het gehoor.

Luister ik verder dan is het album vooral niet zo interessant. Misschien is dat voor Prince wel goed. Want dat geschreeuw op Purple Rain hoef ik echt niet nog een keer te horen. Laten we het voor het album van vandaag maar positief duiden als meer balans. Maar met zo'n signatuur hoor je natuurlijk geen dubbelaar te leveren.

5 stars for The Cross alone.

I forget that some people can't listen to 80s production sounds until I read reviews on this site. I like how the 80s stands out on its own. Sometimes with certain genres it can feel like we have the 60s and 70s and then the 90s onwards looking back at those two decades. Most guitar music does that let's be honest. Prince took plenty from the 60s and 70s but made music in the 80s that was vital and utterly of its decade but also to my ears utterly timeless.

Probably my favorite Prince album. A bit more downbeat but that kind of carries it and makes it better to listen to

I think this is the first time I'm listening to this album start-to-finish, though there's a bunch of singles on here that I'm pretty familiar with.

This may not be my favorite Prince album, but it's still pretty darn good.

Great double album

The music is great here, and Prince is clearly at his creative peak, but double albums are almost always a mistake just because it's hard to maintain quality over such a long time span, and this record is no different. Cut the weakest 20 minutes and you have a 5 star album.

3.5/5.0: Very Good

man this is way too long. this is similar to the beatles white album. a bunch of incredible songs with a bunch of filler to hit the double album length. in both cases though filler songs from great musicians are still pretty good songs. i listened to this a few months ago and was between a four and a five. i enjoyed it more this go around.

The first track was great, capturing my attention to a greater extent than anything else I've ever heard from Prince. However, the immediate downturn that followed was a sharp one, and a firm reminder of why I absolutely cannot stand Prince. There was literally nothing else half-decent on Disc 1, which is all I managed to get through.

What an incredibly mediocre album.