Sign O' The Times

Publication: Los Angeles Times [US]
Date: March 29, 1987
Title: "Album Review; Prince: Back To His Senses"
Summary: Prince has finally come to his senses. On his new two-record set, he's gone back to the dance music turf he explored in 1982 in "1999," by far his best album. This one, too, is mostly very good.

Publication: The San Diego Union-Tribune [US]
Date: March 30, 1987
Title: "Prince's New Lp A Big Deal"
Summary: During his nine-year recording career, Prince has revealed these influences the way a gambler plucks cards from a deck, ever-ready with a draw that ups the ante. He has played stark funk on "Dirty Mind," and "Controversy," rock guitar and gospel on "Purple Rain," psychedelia on "Around the World in a Day," jazz fusion on "Parade" and '60s soul and blues balladry on individual songs such as "Why Don't U Call Me Anymore?" and "International Lover."

Publication: The Washington Post [US]
Date: April 2, 1987
Title: "Prince, Back On Track; 'Sign 'O' The Times': A Return To Roots"
Summary: With "Sign 'o' the Times" (Paisley Park/Warner Bros., double album, single cassette and CD), Prince returns to some familiar terrain -- the dance floor, the bedroom and, to a lesser degree, the hippie den. But much of this record seems like a payback to black radio, which has tended to remain loyal to Prince through his many changes -- the new wave funk of "1999," the pop-rock of "Purple Rain," the neopsychedelia of "Around the World in a Day," the chaotic montage of last year's "Parade" (a sort-of sound track to his sort-of-movie, "Under the Cherry Moon").

Publication: The Orange County Register [US]
Date: April 3, 1987
Title: "'Sign O The Times'; Prince's Double Set Is An Understated, Yet Adventurous Groove; Pop Albums"
Summary: Prince may have his share of bodyguards and personal quirks, but unlike Michael Jackson, the Purple One at least has been known to drive cars, eat food, cohabit some and show other signs of perhaps being human. And while Jackson may be the penultimate hit monster -- residing in a hyperbaric oxygen cylinder until he's needed to produce more hits -- Prince's music, even when on a flakey tangent, is infinitely more engaging, human and funky.

Publication: The San Diego Union-Tribune [US]
Date: April 10, 1987
Title: "LPs By Prince, Oingo Boingo, Smiths"
Summary: Like a good seduction, Prince can be sizzling and exciting. Like a bad seduction, however, Prince can also be dull and clumsy. Perhaps the fault with his new double album is its length. There's too much lyrical foreplay and too much small talk. Were Sign O' The Times half the size, it would be twice as interesting.

Publication: The New York Times [US]
Date: April 12, 1987
Title: "Recordings; Prince Brews Up A More Danceable Album"
Summary: ONLY PRINCE COULD LAND ''Sign o' the Times,'' a song about AIDS, drugs, sudden death and nuclear war, in the Top 10. And only Prince would conclude, after verses filled with deadpan alarmism, ''Let's fall in love, get married, have a baby.'' On his double album, ''Sign o' the Times'' (Paisley Park/Warner Bros. 25577, LP, cassette and CD), the one-man studio band from Minneapolis dispenses ambitious music, commercial know-how, calculated eccentricities and wacky obsessions, all thoroughly entangled.

Publication: St. Petersburg Times [US]
Date: April 12, 1987
Title: "Revolution's Over, But Prince Is Still Fighting"
Summary: The Revolution is over. Prince canned his band for his new double album Sign O' the Times (which is giving reviewers everywhere a headache because the "O" used in the title actually is a peace sign.) He went into the studio by himself, playing and singing most all the parts, which recalls the days circa 1999 (and before) when he became the world's most popular and enigmatic one-man band.

Publication: Time [US]
Date: April 27, 1987
Title: "Sign O' The Times; Prince"
Summary: Whatever else he is -- and that list could go on for eight or nine pages -- nobody could ever say old Princey is predictable. On this panoply double album, he is all things to all people, two or three times over.

Publication: Newsweek [US]
Date: May 4, 1987
Title: "Rock, Funk, Sex, Weird Stuff"
Summary: Sign 'O' The Times" defies classification, which is surely how Prince wants it. Is it a rock-and-roll record? Yes: the exhilarating "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" has drive enough to power a speedboat. Is it a funk record? Sure: "Housequake" is a rock-bottom challenge to dance, or else, RIGHT NOW. Are there hit singles on it? You bet. The title track is No. 5 this week. Is there weird stuff on the record? But yes: listen to the beat poem "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker," which sounds like a midnight meeting between Sly Stone and Joni Mitchell.

Publication: Playboy [US]
Date: July 1987
Title: "Sign 'O' The Times: Record Reviews"
Summary: Sign 'O' the Times (Paisley Park) is a sprawling, unfocused, ambitious attempt by Prince to get back to the supersuperstar status he carned with the film and the record Purple Rain. And it works. In this 16-song double album, the man from Minneapolis displays more ,musical ideas (and more ability to execute them) than most pop stars have in a lifetime. While several cuts suggest the experimental work of the post-Purple Rain epoch, Prince stresses lyrical and musical straightforwardness here.