Prince: Sign O' the Times (2LP, 2020 remaster) [PAISLEY PARK / WARNER]

Why you'll love it

This 2020 edition is the album's first remaster, pressed on 180g vinyl with lyric sheets and replica inner sleeves. It was voted best album of 1987 in the Pazz & Jop critics' poll, was nominated for the Album of the Year Grammy and joined the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2017.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Remastered for the first time
• 180g vinyl
• Lyric sheets included
• Replica inner sleeves
• Stereo mix
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

Prince had just broken up the Revolution and had three albums' worth of songs on the go: Dream Factory, the pitch-shifted alter-ego project Camille, and a triple set called Crystal Ball. Warner Bros. asked him to trim, and the compromise was this double album, which somehow fits all of those ideas into four sides.

Much of it is Prince alone with a Linn LM-1 drum machine and a Fairlight synthesizer. The title track is a stark, sparse look at the headlines of 1987, "U Got The Look" with Sheena Easton is a glossy rock-funk duet, and "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man" is pure power pop; all three went top ten. "If I Was Your Girlfriend" puts the Camille voice front and centre, "Housequake" is a party, "The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker" is a gorgeous oddity, and "Adore" closes it with one of the great slow jams.

A concert film of the same name followed, and the album returned to the Billboard 200 at No. 20 after his death in 2016. This is, by the way, what Prince considered the shortened version.

Also at Kops: more Prince on vinyl · browse 70s Soul On Up

Tracklist

Listen

On Paisley Park / Warner Records / NPG (cat# R1 25577), a reissue of the 1987 album.