The Apocalyptic Song Prince Wrote in Complete Isolation After Disbanding The Revolution: “He Had To Be Completely Alone”

A truly great artist never rests on their laurels. When we look at musicians who have become artists in the truest sense of the word, they routinely switched things up, following their creative drive to the bitter end. They never trusted what had worked in the past and threatened to squander their success by taking risks. These kinds of musicians may not have perfect track records, but they have more exciting ones than the rest. Prince was one of these artists.

Prince never let things just be good. He wanted every album to be legendary, and he followed through on that goal almost every time. He took a massive risk when making one of his signature songs, dropping a band that helped earn him his commercial peak.

[RELATED: Prince Was Worried That “Purple Rain” Sounded Too Much Like This Journey Hit From 1983]

The Making of Prince’s “Sign O’ The Times”

Before making his 1987 album, Sign O’ The Times, Prince dropped The Revolution. This band backed Prince up on the seminal Purple Rain album. While many artists would’ve kept a good thing going, Prince decided to cut ties and maintain complete creative control on this subsequent record. With a minimal amount of collaborators, mainly just engineer Susan Rogers, Prince delivered the apocalyptic title track and spoke for an entire generation of rock fans.

In his isolation, Prince was able to create sounds unlike anything he had ever made before. Moreover, nothing on the radio at the time sounded like this either. Prince relied on the comfort of being alone, alongside a handful of trusted people, to make this legendary work.

“He had to have his privacy,” Rogers once said. “He had to be completely alone. We did not have visitors in the studio. He needed his people around him, the people that he knew well and that he could feel comfortable with – during that time I was one of them.”

“I knew how he liked to work, I could be quiet, I was his facilitator of recording, and I made that happen,” she continued. “He [required] everything there and set up ahead of time because he wanted to be able to move from instrument to instrument.”

Sonic Innovations

This unique recording style gave him the freedom to innovate. The result of that innovation was “Sign O’ The Times”, an apocalyptic song that had its pulse on culture.

“He was definitely growing and trying new things lyrically,” Rogers added elsewhere. “He had some new textures and new sounds there as well, but definitely the single ‘Sign O’ The Times’ was a serious attempt at social commentary. It was timely, so he was expressing, ‘Here’s where I’m going, everybody.’ That song came about halfway through the making of the album and was a pivotal moment in shaping the record.”

This track is about a great many things, all of which were uber relevant at the time. Prince gave his two cents on everything from the AIDS crisis to gang violence.

“In France, a skinny man died of a big disease with a little name / By chance, his girlfriend came across a needle, and soon she did the same / At home, there are seventeen-year-old boys and their idea of fun / Is being in a gang called The Disciples, high on crack, totin’ a machine gun,” the lyrics read.

This was Prince at his most potent, which was undoubtedly fueled by his chosen isolation. Revisit “Sign O’ The Times” above.

(Photo by Bill Marino/Sygma via Getty Images)

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