Sign ☮︎ The Times – Prince

March 1987 double album after The Revolution split

Prince released Sign “☮” the Times on 30 March 1987 in the UK and a day later in the United States and France, on Paisley Park and Warner Bros. It is a double album of sixteen tracks, nearly eighty minutes, cut down from a flood of 1986-87 sessions. Plans had run through the full-band Dream Factory with The Revolution, the pitched-voice Camille project, and the shelved triple set Crystal Ball. After The Revolution broke up in October 1986, Warner pushed him to trim the triple into a double. What shipped still changes style inside single songs. Spare funk sits next to gospel guitar, then dance-floor bounce, rock hooks, and long ballads. The title cut opens on a dry LinnDrum, thin keys, and news-report lyrics about AIDS, street drugs, and the bomb. The funk stays dry, with no orchestra under it.

Sessions spanned Kiowa Trail and Galpin Boulevard home studios in Chanhassen, Sunset Sound and Ocean Way in Hollywood, plus a live stretch taped outside Le Zénith in Paris for It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night. Prince wrote, produced, and played most instruments himself. Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman still appear on several cuts from the Revolution period; Sheila E. drums on U Got the Look; Sheena Easton shares that duet; Eric Leeds and Atlanta Bliss add horns; Dr. Fink’s keys surface where needed. Singles kept radio in the picture: the title track reached number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, U Got the Look number 2, and I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man number 10. If I Was Your Girlfriend kept the Camille vocal experiment in plain sight; Housequake brought pitched-voice party funk; The Cross and Adore closed the set with rough gospel and quiet-storm soul.

Commercially the double LP peaked at number 6 on the Billboard 200 and number 4 on the R&B albums chart, went platinum within months, and sat in the Top 10 across several European territories and at number 1 in Switzerland. Many writers called it the peak of his Warner years. He had outrun the industry’s release calendar and still shipped a long album that holds together. The accompanying tour and the Sign o’ the Times concert film locked the songs to a live band again after the studio solitude of the edit.