Prince: Sign O’ the Times (1987)

Prince’s Sign o’ the Times (1987) is a sprawling, fearless, genre-melting double LP from a man at the height of his creative power, it remains one of the most electrifying documents of musical imagination ever pressed to vinyl. If Purple Rain made Prince a superstar, Sign o’ the Times is the proof that he never needed the spotlight to shine — he generated his own light.

The album bursts open with the title track, a stark, drum-machine-driven bulletin from a world teetering on collapse. Prince lays out violence, drugs, AIDS, injustice, and spiritual drift with the calm accuracy of a street-corner prophet. It’s minimal, unsettling, and utterly gripping — a reminder that beneath the sequins and showmanship was one of pop’s sharpest social commentators.

But the miracle of Sign o’ the Times is how quickly it pivots. From that grim opener, Prince detonates into the aerodynamic funk of “Play in the Sunshine,” the sugar-rush pop of “Housequake,” and the hypnotic swirl of “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker,” a dreamlike slice of jazz-funk surrealism that feels like you’re tumbling through someone else’s consciousness at 3 a.m. The sequencing is audacious, yet completely logical in the mind of Prince — a man for whom boundaries were just suggestions.

The breadth of Sign o’ the Times is staggering. Funk, rock, gospel, early hip-hop textures, chamber pop, electro-soul — it’s all here, yet the album never feels scattered. Prince’s fingerprints are everywhere: every drum hit, every synth squiggle, every guitar flare, every whispered aside. He’s not just writing and performing; he’s world-building.

What elevates the record to the realm of the untouchable is its emotional sweep. Prince moves from global anxiety to erotic mischief, from spiritual yearning to total absurdity, from wounded vulnerability to volcanic joy. It’s life — messy, loud, strange, sensual, frightening, beautiful — compressed into two LPs.

Nearly four decades on, Sign o’ the Times still feels daring, fresh, and impossibly modern. Many albums aspire to be masterpieces; this is one of the rare few that truly earns the title. In 1987, Prince didn’t just push the boundaries of pop — he redrew the map.

Sign o’ the Times isn’t just Prince’s greatest achievement; it’s one of the greatest albums ever made, full stop.