With songs culled from a series of aborted albums during the nadir of Prince’s Purple Rain hangover, Sign O’ the Times has no business being anything but a career-sinking mess. Instead, it’s the best album of the 80s. Most of this is attributable to genius; Prince flips back and forth between R&B and rock like a kid popping wheelies, but that’s more virtuosity than the G word. Genius is knowing that “If I Was Your Girlfriend” and “The Cross” don’t need much adornment and the “Housequake” does. Genius is also the ability to usher in a succession of female vocalists—Camille, Susannah, Sheila E. and Sheena Easton, playing way out of her league—and coax career-defining performances out of them.
All-TIME 100 Albums
The album may be dead, but it's certainly not forgotten. TIME's critics have chosen the 100 greatest and most influential musical compilations since 1954.
Sign O’ The Times
Full List
1950s
1960s
- Abbey Road
- Bitches Brew
- Stand!
- Astral Weeks
- The Band
- At Folsom Prison
- Lady Soul
- The Beatles (“The White Album”)
- Are You Experienced
- I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You
- Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
- The Velvet Underground and Nico
- Blonde on Blonde
- Pet Sounds
- Revolver
- Highway 61 Revisited
- Otis Blue
- Rubber Soul
- A Love Supreme
- Live at the Apollo (1963)
- Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music
- King of the Delta Blues
1970s
- London Calling
- One Nation Under a Groove
- Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols
- Rumours
- Hotel California
- Ramones
- Songs in the Key of Life
- Born to Run
- Horses
- Red Headed Stranger
- Call Me
- Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
- The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust
- Exile on Main Street
- Talking Book
- The Harder They Come
- Blue
- Coat of Many Colors
- Hunky Dory
- Led Zeppelin IV (a.k.a. Zoso)
- Paranoid
- Sticky Fingers
- Tapestry
- What’s Going On
- Who’s Next
- After the Gold Rush
- Bridge Over Troubled Water
- John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
- Moondance
1980s
- Like a Prayer
- Paul’s Boutique
- The Stone Roses
- It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
- Straight Outta Compton
- Straight Outta Compton
- Document
- Paid in Full
- Sign O’ The Times
- The Joshua Tree
- Graceland
- Master of Puppets
- Raising Hell
- Legend
- Stop Making Sense
- The Great Twenty-Eight
- Thriller
- Back in Black
- Purple Rain
1990s
2000s