The main focus for an established star is to never stay stagnant. Most every superstar found a way to change up their styles midway through their careers.
For instance, a lot of hard rock acts brought that level of "hard" down to where all people could enjoy the music. Same goes for country music stars doing more bluesy and pop-ladened songs after establishing themselves. R&B stars find their roots in old-time music, but then blend in a little of the "new school" and grow the fan base.
That was such the case or Prince. His funky style of bad-ass soul made him a star thanks to sexually charged songs like "I Wanna Be Your Lover," "Little Red Corvette" and "Kiss."
But at the age of 28 and a superstar many times over, most notably for his movie Purple Rain and the subsequent soundtrack that spent 24 weeks at No. 1 in 1984-85, Prince was looking to re-invent himself. In his case, he decided to make things simpler with his next project.
That was the double album/CD called "Sign 'O' The Times," his first concept album, creating a package straight out of the mold one of pop and R&B's greatest albums ever made, Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On."
The album addressed many topics: In "It" and "U Got The Look," there was that same sexual tension that tore through many a Prince record before. In "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man," being the "next" boyfriend is addressed. In "If I Was Your Girlfriend," Prince speaks to questioning sexual preference and androgyny. And in "The Cross," there's a celebration of spiritual enlightenment.
But no song took on so much in such a short amount of time as the title track. And Prince just laid it out for everyone to hear in the very first line of the song: "In France, a skinny man died of a big disease with a little name. By chance his girlfriend came upon a needle and soon she did the same."
Yup. The hottest topic out there at the time in the spring of 1987 -- AIDS and getting the HIV virus. Though the support to fight this hideous disease was out there by the music stars of the day, no one was willing to put themselves out there to address the subject, even in a couple of lines in a song until Prince did so in "Sign 'O' The Times."
But Prince didn't stop there. The next line went: "At home, there are 17-year-old boys and their idea of fun is being in a gang called 'The Disciples,' high on crack and totin' a machine gun."
You're four lines into the song and already Prince had sledgehammered his listening audience with two problems of that day's society -- AIDS and youngsters being in gangs.
Oh, but wait, there's still more!
"Hurricane Annie ripped a ceiling off a church and killed everybody 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."
Not your typical, average, bright, sunny Top 40 hit, huh? It was as if Prince was serving you up and over-sized submarine sandwich with the problems of the world as the meat and a very simplistic synthesizer riff as the bread its served in between.
And it worked -- because this was not the prototypical back-beat laden song filled with Prince's screaming guitars and layers upon layers of synthesizers that could drown out the lyrics. As a matter of face, it was as if Prince meant to keep the musical tone down to a monotone feel because he needed to send his message to the masses.
As the first single to come from the album/CD of the same name, "Sign 'O' The Times" debuted at No. 35 on March 14, 1987, then became the biggest Top 40 mover the next week when it jumped 11 places to No. 24. On March 28, 1987, it was the biggest Top 40 mover of the week for the second straight week, leaping up 10 places from No. 24 to No. 14. Two weeks later, this over-the-top topical song reached the Top 10 at No. 7. One week later, it was in the Top 5 at No. 4. The next week, April 25, 1987, it moved up another notch to No. 3. But one week after that on May 2, the song dropped back to No. 5, kept away from No. 1 by Aretha Franklin & George Michael's duet "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" at No. 1 and Crowded House's "Don't Dream It's Over" at No. 2.
Still, a number of periodicals and online music services have heaped high praise on "Sign 'O' The Times" over the years with Rolling Stone ranking the song No. 304 on its list of the 500 greatest songs of all-time. And in 1987, New Musical Express and Village Voice's Pazz & Jop named "Sign 'O' The Times" the best song of the year.
Prince didn't solve all the problems he laid out on the table in the song, but he at least he put those problems out on the table for the listeners to take notice. It is still considered one of his greatest songs ever.
"Sign 'O' The Times" was the song that showed Prince could change musical pattern in midstream.
And while he was one of the hottest musical artists on the planet.
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