Sign "☮︎" the Times

But anyway, carrying on.

Let's assume that there are Prince diehards that opted to spend $200 on the super deluxe edition of Sign of the Times, then decided not to listen to the three discs of unreleased vault recordings and full-life performances added to the box.

After all, it takes all kinds to make a world...

McMillan's worry that, quote, we don't just throw things out and sonically lose the generations of the future, end quote, suggests that he thinks the estate's previous big box is squandered valuable material.

But would any of that signed bonus material be viable as a contemporary commercial release? It's filled with alternate takes, off-kilter pop, synth jams, and other period artifacts, the kind of self-contained recordings that resist modernization.

Hearing an early version of I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man alongside signed outtakes, including a jam session with Miles Davis, offers insight into Prince's creative process and provides a cohesive listening experience.

As good, even great, as some of these cuts are, they're not strong enough to provide a foundation for a record as compelling as Sign of the Times.

Their value is in illuminating the depth and breadth of Prince's creative hot streak in the 80s, and that's why their brittle sonics are appealing.

Yeah, well, and then it continues on.

I mean, you get to Sign of the Times, and he has The Cross.

Oh,

yeah.

They were a little bit longer.

But there's so much stuff in there that you're like, oh, my gosh.

You know, the Sign of the Times, by the way, favorite for me.

The grill on the cover of Sign of the Times is hanging in this little area.

Side two was supposed to be Shockadelica, Good Love, If I Was Your Girlfriend, and Rock Hard in a Funky Place.

And as I've done episodes on each of these other Camille songs, either as part of the Sign of the Times album selections, or B-sides that I did for that era, either the B-side to If I Was Your Girlfriend, which was Shaka Delica, or the B-side to Party Man, which was Feel You Up.

Also, the Black Album, I covered Rock Hard in a Funky Place from the Black Album, and I just did the Rebirth of the Flesh episode right before this, because Prince recorded these two songs in a short succession, just a few days apart.

So, Good Love is the final Camille album song that I had yet to cover on the podcast.

That's it, after this one.

So after both the Camille project was supposed to be, I don't know, released in either late 86 or early 87.

And then, of course, the triple disc Crystal Ball project morphed into Sign of the Times.

Prince pulled the song back out a year later for inclusion on the Warner Brothers release of the Bright Lights Big City soundtrack.

Really?

Uh, if you listen to, like, uh, Sign o' the Times, on songs like, uh, If I Was Your Girlfriend, um, he does that a lot to kind of make his voice sound a little bit more feminine.

Oh, okay.

Uh, yeah, that, like, vari- varispeed thing is really cool.

And don't forget the '80s.

Prince's Sign o' the Times came in from another Beat viewer, as with their key vinyl record.

And The Clash's London Calling, if you wanna go across the pond, which of course modernized punk.

You can see the Instagram user who gave us that one, again, in response to this question.