Sign o' the Times

Sign o' the Times was Prince's first album after he disbanded the Revolution, and it was assembled from the wreckage of Dream Factory, Camille and the three-LP Crystal Ball. BBC Culture reported that Warner Bros. marketing executives wanted neither a triple album nor one that banished his name, so the double album was a compromise. The sessions ran from March 1986 to January 1987, with the engineer Susan Rogers recording him in studios from Minnesota to Paris. Rogers said he did his vocals alone in the control room. Slow Love dates from basic tracking in July 1984, and the live audience on It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night is credited as 6,000 wonderful Parisians, recorded at a Parade Tour show on 25 August 1986. Of its 16 songs only three have co-writers, and Pitchfork's Nelson George noted that outside musical help is slight.

The Ballad of Dorothy Parker was the first song recorded in his new home studio, and a flaw in the console installation gave the drum machine a watery sound. Housequake, Strange Relationship, U Got the Look and If I Was Your Girlfriend use pitch-shifted vocals for a higher voice, Camille. Susan Rogers told BBC Culture that Purple Rain was the work of a brilliant young man and Sign o' the Times that of a grown man.

The album reached number six on the Billboard 200 and was certified platinum four months after release, and the singles Sign o' the Times, U Got the Look and I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man reached numbers three, two and ten on the Hot 100. It was voted best album of 1987 in the Pazz & Jop critics' poll, and the title song best single. It was nominated for Album of the Year at the 30th Grammy Awards and lost to U2's The Joshua Tree. In the NME critics' poll it came second among albums, with the title song first among tracks. Bart Bull of Spin wrote that nobody else's outtakes would sound so strong. George wrote in Pitchfork that it is "still a vibrant thing", and Simon Price ranked it first among all his albums in the Guardian. It entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2017. The Super Deluxe edition of 25 September 2020 added previously unreleased material, including a live show from Utrecht on 20 June 1987.