Bleep

Regarded by many as Prince’s finest hour (a bold statement considering the prolific nature of his late 1980s period) 1987’s Sign O’ The Times crystallises the many sides of the artist — peerless story-teller, panting sex symbol, socially-omniscient commentator, general badass — into a multifaceted and beloved icon. Novelistic dimensions unfurl on the micro-funk title track, later pumped up on the downright salacious ‘The Ballad of Dorothy Parker’ and the slap-happy androgynous anthem ‘If I Was Your Girlfriend’. That’s only part of the story; this double LP is so full of hits that surely the sheer volume of bonus tracks in the Super Deluxe Edition must be tantamount to a kind of princely heaven.