Sign o' the Times

Prince

album cover

Many Signs, All Pointing Up

Beginning in 1980, with the risqué Dirty Mind, Prince went on an exceptional decade-long tear, issuing a series of albums that regularly sent everybody else in pop and R&B back to school. The year 1981 brought Controversy followed by the rousing 1982 double album 1999. Then in 1984 came his commercial break-through Purple Rain (see previous page), followed in '85 by the psychedelic Around the World in a Day. The next year brought Parade, the seriously underrated soundtrack to his second film, Under the Cherry Moon. This album came next, in the middle of 1987, and it was followed a few months later by the lascivious, intended-for-fans-only Black Album. After that came the ornate Lovesexy, in 1988. The Batman soundtrack, released in 1989, was the decade's first sign that Prince might be mortal after all.

Compare this track record to that of anyone else making music at the time, and Prince emerges as not just one prolific hombre, but the only artist whose ideas went right from his own records into wide circulation. The long arm of Prince is evident in the big Janet Jackson singles of the '80s, the new jack swing of Teddy Riley, the rock leanings of Terence Trent D'Arby, and the list goes on. And so does the influence: Just about every Outkast album has at least one Prince moment.

On this record, Prince taunts those who would copy him, with rhythmically intricate songs that are so willfully idiosyncratic, gymnastic in their vocal contortions, and musically dense that they elude easy classification. Disc one is notable for its beat-box manglings—in particular "Housequake" and the title track. Disc two opens with a ballistic rocker ("U Got the Look") and stays hot the rest of the way—first with the oversexed meditation on gender roles, "If I Was Your Girlfriend," featuring a sped-up voice he calls "Camille," and then with the live "Gonna Be a Beautiful Night." This instant party shows just how deep Prince goes: It puts snazzy Ellington horns and James Brown rhythm guitar in the service of a timeline-defying jam that's as irreverent as the best Funkadelic. He and the band destroy that groove so thoroughly on that track, it's a surprise when a slow ballad, "Adore," rises up out of the applause. Don't turn it off: It finds Prince screaming like Jim Morrison and twittering in his falsetto range like jazz diva Sarah Vaughan. As with just about everything here, it's amazing. And impossible to imitate.

Genre: R&B, Rock
Released: 1987, Warner Bros.
Key Tracks: "U Got the Look," "Housequake," "If I Was Your Girlfriend," "Adore"
Catalog Choice: Parade; 3121
Next Stop: Anywhere you go after this is going to seem tepid.
Book Pages: 613–614

Buy this Recording