“He had to have his privacy. He had to be completely alone. We did not have visitors in the studio”: After the brutal firing of his Purple Rain band, Prince worked in isolation to create a foreboding masterpiece
Publish Date: 2026-06-11 06:06:00
Source Domain: www.musicradar.com
There are key moments in most gifted artists’ careers when they instinctively recognise the need to make radical stylistic shifts in order to move forward creatively.
Throughout the ’80s, for example, certain artists stood out for defying convention and carving out their own unique creative paths – artists such as Peter Gabriel, Pixies, Kate Bush, Kraftwerk, Laurie Anderson, Run-DMC, Rakim, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Brian Eno, Swans, Grace Jones, The Smiths, Sonic Youth and Talking Heads, to name just a few.
One pivotal addition to that list is Prince, a one-stop creative powerhouse whose phenomenal talent spanned songwriting, composing, production, filmmaking and the ability to play pretty much any instrument under the sun.
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He also had a ferocious work ethic and a fearless artistic vision, as was demonstrated in February 1987, when he released Sign O’ The Times, the title track from his sprawlingly ambitious double album of the same name.
This song was a sparse, heavily stripped-back amalgam of electro-funk, soul, psych-pop, blues and rock, with lyrics that were aimed squarely at socio-political issues of the day – AIDS, gang violence, poverty, the crack epidemic and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
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Sign O’ The Times was the sound of ’80s optimism unravelling. It was also a song that, in the context of 1987 chart land, sounded quite unlike anything else around.
By the time Prince began work on the song and the album from which it came, he had fired his backing band, The Revolution, with whom he recorded the landmark albums Purple Rain (1984), Around The World In A Day (1985) and Parade (1986).
It has been suggested that Prince fired the band due to the potential awkwardness following the ending of his engagement to fiancée Susannah Melvoin, sister of The…
