Prince can do everything and shows everything – with crazy harmony changes, roles and poses.
With the majority of experts’ opinion that the double LP SIGN O’ THE TIMES is one of the best albums of the 80s and perhaps also the most impressive work of His Majesty Prince, a lot can be said.
But don’t believe anyone who says this record is perfect! Double albums are never perfect. Not this one either.
It falls into pieces and lacks a larger, at best divine, dramaturgy. And in the end it even frays between Christian blues rock, a live session with extra length and the not exactly compact, but still quite delicious falsetto schmonzette “Adore”.
All varieties of pop, jazz, hip hop, rock and funk
But the world has never seen how Prince here, well, fails at the great, probably unsolvable task of rock: he can do everything and shows everything. Pop and jazz and hip hop and rock and funk and soul including all sub- and secondary varieties.
And what he composes and how he arranges his music, intersperses it with crazy harmony changes, jumps backwards or pirouettes into other, unusual forms of representation, roles and poses, without being anything other than pop for a moment – that is still… well, at least not perfect.
Just those 80s synth sounds – pah!
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