The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker
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Slow Love
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If I Was Your Girlfriend
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Adore
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Album: Sign O’ The Times (1987)

Most casual Prince fans would peg Purple Rain as their favorite of his albums. But those that have followed Prince’s career would probably pick Sign O’ The Times, his double LP from 1987. I play this record all the time, and picking only a few tracks to share was challenging.

I was fortunate enough to see Prince on the Sign O’ The Times tour in 1988. My high school friend, Adrian, and I had spent the day in Manhattan and we were approaching Penn Station to take the train home to Long Island. A scalper approached us and offered us tickets to that night’s show for $60 each. We were typical broke high school students and bargained him down to $60 for both. Amazing seats, right on the floor. Here are my memories of the show: it was in the round, there was a basketball court on the stage, a huge pipe organ was lowered from the ceiling, Eric B. and Rakim was sitting close to us, and a car actually drove him on and off the stage (talk about extravagant!). Overall, it was among the best live performances I’ve ever seen.

Back to the record. As I wrote earlier, it’s chock full of 5-star classics, so I tried to pick ones that folks may not know as well. And just to be really OCD about it, I selected one song from each of its four sides.

First up is the bouncy “The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker,” a story-song about a dude with relationship problems who takes a bath with a waitress. Prince’s songwriting is adventurous, with tone and key changes that flow magically from one passage to the next. Apocryphally, Prince didn’t know anything about Dorothy Parker (the writer), he just liked the name.

The next selection is “Slow Love,” which has a great retro feel to it. Based on the title, it wouldn’t be surprising if this was another one of Prince’s dirty songs but it’s actually a sincere and romantic groover. Throughout the LP — but especially on this track — Prince deploys his horn section in counterpoint to the melody.

For sheer cojones, it’s hard to beat “If I Was Your Girlfriend,” where the purple one reimagines his relationship with his ex-lover as her female best friend. At first, it’s all about picking out clothes, washing her hair and such. But this being a Prince song, he/she soon begins to fantasize about hot girl-on-girl action. This song is hilarious yet deep, and I gotta believe Prince is in on both the joke and the novel concept he concocted.

The final selection may be the most straightforward love song Prince has ever written (“Love is 2 weak 2 define; Just what u mean 2 me”) though of course, Prince can’t help himself from bringing a touch of the profane to it (“In a word, U were sex; All of my cool attitude U took”). Vocally, Prince offers up his most expressive falsetto, swooping into his uppermost register with full command.

For reals, you should really just go out and purchase this one.