Prince "Sign 'O' The Times" Paisley Park ?WX 88 UK 1st press 2XLP + inners 1987

	£		15
	$		20

Prince ? "Sign "O" The Times"   Paisley Park ?WX 88  UK 1st press. 2 × Vinyl, LPs, housed in printed inner sleeves and released in 1987.
Both LPs appear to have been lightly played and are in great condition. They played through beautifully on my elderly stereo - no hop, stick or jump. The LPs are housed in their original printed inner sleeves, which both show some signs of wear but which are in generally good condition with no rips or writing. The sleeve itself has a couple of inks to the corners but is generally in good condition, with no rips or writing. The spine is intact and completely legible. Matrix/Runout Side 1 : R/S Alsdorf 925577-1-A2 1-25577-C-INTL- S-2 [ARC logo] ? 15865 1-1 Matrix/Runout Side 2 : R/S Alsdorf 925577-1-B2 1-25577-B-INTL. S-2 [ARC logo] ? 15866-X 1-1 Matrix/Runout Side 3 : R/S Alsdorf 925577-1-C 1-25577-C-INTL- S-1 [ARC logo] ? 15866 1-1 Matrix Runout Side 4 : R/S Alsdorf 925577-1-D 1-25577-D-INTL. S-1 [ARC logo] ?15866-X 1-1
"Sign o' the Times" is Prince's ninth studio album, released on March 30, 1987, by Paisley Park Records and Warner Bros. Records. The album is the follow-up to "Parade" (1986) and is Prince's first album following his disbanding of the Revolution. The songs were largely recorded during 1986 to 1987 in sessions for albums Prince ultimately aborted: "Dream Factory", the pseudonymous "Camille", and finally the triple album "Crystal Ball". Prince eventually compromised with label executives and shortened the length of the release to a double album.
The album's music encompasses a varied range of styles, including funk, soul, psychedelic pop, electro, and rock. Its release was supported by several singles, among them the socially conscious title track and "If I Was Your Girlfriend"; in addition to a well-received concert film of the same name. "Sign o' the Times" was Prince's most acclaimed record, being voted 1987's best album in the Pazz & Jop critics poll and since being ranked as one of the greatest albums ever by several publications.
Prior to the disbanding of The Revolution, Prince was working on two separate projects: The Revolution album "Dream Factory" and a pseudonymous solo effort, Camille. Unlike the three previous band albums, "Dream Factory" included input from the band members and lead vocals by Wendy & Lisa. The "Camille" project saw Prince create an androgynous persona primarily singing in a sped-up, female-sounding voice. With the dismissal of The Revolution, Prince consolidated material from both shelved albums, along with some new songs, into a three-LP album to be titled "Crystal Ball". Warner Bros. balked at the idea of trying to sell a three-LP album and forced Prince to trim it down to a double album.
As with many of Prince's early 1980s albums, this album features extensive use of the Linn LM-1 drum machine on most songs. In addition, many songs on the album (such as "If I Was Your Girlfriend") feature minimal instrumentation, and use of the Fairlight CMI, a then state-of-the-art digital sampler. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Prince used the stock sounds of the Fairlight to create the title track. Four of the album's standout songs, "Housequake", "Strange Relationship", "U Got the Look" with Sheena Easton, and "If I Was Your Girlfriend" offer sped-up vocals, ostensibly the voice of "Camille", Prince's alter ego of this era. Of the album's diverse and varied collection of styles, AllMusic stated that "Prince shows nearly all of his cards here, from bare-bones electro-funk and smooth soul to pseudo-psychedelic pop and crunching hard rock, touching on gospel, blues, and folk along the way."
"Sign o' the Times" produced three top-ten hit singles, the most from a Prince album since "Purple Rain" in 1984, and, although it sold modestly, it was his most critically acclaimed record. Bart Bull, writing for Spin magazine in 1987, said that Prince's loosely organized songs are "genius" rather than indulgent and that, although there is no song as groundbreaking as "Girls & Boys", "nobody else's outtakes would sound so strong, rock so hard, swing so free." Robert Christgau of The Village Voice said that the album is not a "formal breakthrough", but rather "the most gifted pop musician of his generation proving what a motherfucker he is for two discs start to finish." He particularly praised Prince's "one-man band tricks" and multi-tracked vocals, which he said "make Stevie Wonder sound like a struggling ventriloquist" and express real emotions: "The objects of his desire are also objects of interest, affection, and respect. Some of them he may not even fuck." "Sign o' the Times" was voted as the best album of 1987 in The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics' poll. According to Christgau, the poll's creator, the album was "easily the biggest winner" in the poll's history and "established Prince as the greatest rock and roll musician of the era—as singer-guitarist-hooksmith-beatmaster, he has no peer." The title track "Sign o' the Times" was named the best single of 1987 in the poll, while "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" and "U Got the Look" were also voted within the top 10.
In a retrospective review, Keith Harris of Blender called "Sign o' the Times" a "masterpiece" and comments that "never has [Prince's] curiosity about women strayed into so many unpredictable corners." Simon Price deemed it Prince's best album, as did Michaelangelo Matos, who wrote in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004) that it was "the most complete example of his artistry's breadth, and arguably the finest album of the 1980s". Matos also believed it was "the last classic R&B album prior to hip-hop's takeover of black music and the final four-sided blockbuster of the vinyl era". Music editor Mark Brown called it "the greatest album of all time.  Slant Magazine's Eric Henderson deemed it a "double-disc blowout of sweat, funk, and raw, concentrated talent".
In 1989, Time Out magazine ranked it as the greatest album of all time. In December 1989, Robert Smith of The Cure cited "Sign o' the Times" amongst the best things about the eighties. The album was ranked number 16 on the New Musical Express list of the All Time Top 100 Albums, 3rd in Hot Press magazine's list of the 100 Best Albums of All Time, and number 35 on VH1's 100 Greatest Albums. The album was also placed 8th on Nieuwe Revu's Top 100 Albums of All Time. The Times listed "Sign o' the Times" as the 29th greatest album of all time. In 2003, the album was ranked number 93 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In 2006, Q magazine placed the album at number 12 in its list of "40 Best Albums of the '80s". In 2012, Slant Magazine listed the album at number 11 on its list of "Best Albums of the 1980s", calling it "Prince's most varied album and his most self-consciously auteurish".