Prince: Sign O' the Times (aka Me and Prince)

Track of the Week - 24 April 2016

It won't have escaped your attention that pop superstar Prince died this week. If you read this blog occasionally you'd think I wouldn't have had much time for him - well, you'd be wrong.

I was a little late to the Prince party. I have this feeling that I bought a double pack of the singles Let's Go Crazy and When Doves Cry for an old schoolfriend's (Paul Francome) birthday. I said they were far more to his disco-based taste then mine. He said I should listen to them. I did, and pretty soon bought them for myself. (This might be entirely wrong as the dates of the releases don't quite fit. It also might be that he already had them and I took them home. It was 30 years ago, give me a break.)

That started a run of album (well, cassette) purchases through the eighties and early nineties. The patchy, Sergeant Pepper-inspired Around the World in a Day,  the start-to-finish brilliance of Parade, the iffy Sign O' The Times and I also asked a friend in America to get me a bootleg copy of the Black Album long before its official release. Then it was the mostly not very good Lovesexy. I stopped for a bit but was back in for The Love Symbol album but that was that.

A bit like the late, great David Bowie I felt his best work was behind him but there was a slight hope he'd do something incredible and get back on my listening list. What song to choose to say 'thanks Prince'? I got it down to a shortlist:

Let's Go Crazy - The track that got me interested
Under the Cherry Moon - a beautiful ballad from Parade including the line 'Maybe I'll die young, like heroes die'*
Sometimes it Snows in April - another ballad from Parade with a now appropriate title (In fact, just go and buy Parade)
My Name is Prince - a bombastic, call-to-arms mission statement (I once introduced myself in a meeting as 'My name is Prince, and I am funky)

In the end I chose Sign O' the Times. A 1987 single, Prince reels through world problems such as AIDS, drugs, gang warfare and more besides plus events like the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster over a sparse, synthesized backing track. I was astonished by the video the first time I saw it. Effectively it's just the lyrics on a screen but superbly crafted.




* There's no such things as signs - unless you're looking for them.