Sign 'O' The Times

Photo found on Google

Today I purchased the re-release of my favorite Prince release called Sign ‘O’ the Times.  I should have the re-release in less than two weeks.  The original had 16 songs on a double album.  The re-release has 8 CD’s, 1 DVD, a book with liner notes and never released photos of Prince.  The new collection has the original 16 songs plus an additional 76 songs!

So what makes Sign ‘O’ the Times my favorite?  His music spans so many eras and so many genres, but when this one hit the record stores, I was in my first year of college and the world was a scary place.  I was trying to figure out what I was going to be, and the world was a bit of turmoil.  There was AIDS, the Space Shuttle disaster, illegal drug usages was prevalent, poverty and gangs was very high in America, and here I was a 18-year-old going to college and trying to figure out the world and my life. As usual, Prince wrote these songs, addressing me.  I will not go into every song as this blog would be 100+ pages long, but I will highlight of a few of my favorites, but honestly I love them all.

My favorite is “It”.  This song is about sex, but what I love about the song is the hypnotic drums and synthesizer. The slight echo in his voice and background harmonies make this in my top 3 songs of all time from Prince.  Though the entire song is about sex, I hung on the lyric “I could be guilty for my honesty.”  Something I am still guilty of and piss people off today because of.  As a still 18-year-old man in my first school I attended that had women in it (after adolescence) I often identified with this line “I think about it baby all the time, all right. It feels so good it must be a crime, all right.”

The next one of my favorites is “Play in the Sunshine”.  The lyric that hit me the hardest was, “We want to play in the sunshine. We want to be free. Without the help of a margarita or ecstasy.”   As someone who didn’t and still does not drink alcohol, this was a validation that I made the right decision to refrain from alcohol and drugs.  That I could have a good time without the help of drugs or alcohol.  I have no chemical influences only the hypnotic lyrics of Prince and many others.

“Strange Relationship” was yet another song that hit home to me, but likely not the way Prince meant it to appear.  In the lyrics “I came and took your love, I took your body. I took all the self-respect you ever had. The more you love me, sugar, the more it makes me mad.”  For this song I saw my parents, especially my mother.  As documented often she controlled me.  Prince sang about taking love and self-respect, which is what I felt Mom took from me.  I felt in her own way the more she tried to love me, the more I got angrier and bitter.  Her love (control) caused our strange relationship.

During this period I drifted away from the Catholic Church and began exploring my relationship with God.  “The Cross” was a small part of that transition.  As I battled staying in the confines of the Catholic Church or strive to do my thing, I listened to this song and specifically the lyrics, “We all have our problems. Some big, some are small. Soon all of our problems. Will be taken by the cross.”  These simple lines helped me get through the difficulties I was experiencing at the time and reassured me that God will take anything I cannot handle.

Ironically, in 1987 when Prince released this double CD, his title track “Sign ‘O’ the Times” spoke of drug problems, gangs, deadly hurricanes and deadly diseases. So if you read these lyrics in from 1987 “In France, a skinny man died of a big disease with a little name. By chance his girlfriend came across a needle and soon she did the same. At home there are seventeen-year-old boys and their idea of fun. Is being in a gang called ‘The Disciples’. High on crack and totin’ a machine gun.  Hurricane Annie ripped the ceiling of a church and killed everyone inside. You turn on the telly and every other story is tellin’ you somebody died. A sister killed her baby ’cause she couldn’t afford to feed it. And yet we’re sending people to the moon. In September, my cousin tried reefer for the very first time. Now he’s doing horse, it’s June.” So if you replace AIDS with Covid-19 in the first few lines, gun carrying protesters or supporters on both sides of Black Lives Matter protests in the second part, the hurricanes that are still killing people (we have had more this year than any time in history) in the next part.  Next, the fact that television always shows negative stories about death and destruction, that there is still poverty in the richest land in the world, and drug usage is tenfold what it was in 1987.  The above lyrics could have been written today and still easily apply to our current situations. Tell me Prince was not a genius and even possibly a fortune teller.

I will end with a song lyrically was not deep for me but the song was and is outstanding.  “Housequake”.  As a white guy who is not very flexible and barely any rhythm, this song makes me even want to dance.  The drum beat, horns and light guitar make anyone with a pulse want to tap their feet.  With lyrics like “Come on you all, we got to jam. Before the police come. A groove this funky is on the run. Hey yeah! Shake your body until your neighbors stare atcha!”

My additional therapy will be here soon.  I am looking forward to hearing these unreleased songs, remakes and reading the book.

Until next time,

Tim