The Current

Great Music Lives Here
Listener-Supported Music
Donate Now
Local Current Blog

‘Sign O’ the Times’ expanded reissue to include 63 audio tracks from Prince’s Vault

by Jay Gabler

June 25, 2020

Over the past two days, Prince fans have been abuzz with news that leaked via an inadvertent Amazon posting and has now been officially confirmed: the artist's seminal 1987 album Sign O' the Times is getting the expanded reissue treatment, with a new release featuring over 60 newly available audio tracks and two complete concert recordings from an era that some say was even more artistically fertile than the Purple Rain period earlier in the '80s.

The expanded reissue from the Prince Estate and Warner Records follows similar reissues for Purple Rain and 1999, and promises to shed new light on Prince's process as he crafted and promoted an album both more political and more personal than anything he'd ever done before. One previously unreleased track, "Witness 4 the Prosecution (Version 1)," is now available. The full reissue, in various configurations, will be released on Sept. 25.

The most lavish version, the Super Deluxe edition, will feature 92 audio tracks, 63 previously unreleased, spanning eight CDs or 13 LPs. As with previous reissues, it will also be available on streaming services. An accompanying DVD features a concert video spanning over two hours, recorded at Paisley Park on Dec. 31, 1987. In addition to being a stellar performance overall, that show is also famed among fans for being Prince's only onstage collaboration with Miles Davis.

According to a press release, a 120-page hardcover book in the Super Deluxe edition includes photos and handwritten lyrics, and "is completed with brand-new liner notes by Prince’s creative peers and friends Dave Chappelle (in conversation with photographer Mathieu Bitton) and Lenny Kravitz; Prince’s longtime engineer Susan Rogers; Daphne A. Brooks, Professor of African American Studies, Theater Studies, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University; Minneapolis radio host and author Andrea Swensson, host of the Official Prince Podcast; and Prince scholar Duane Tudahl."

Jack White's Third Man Records is also pressing a limited-edition (limited to 1,987, natch) set of seven 7" singles, including reissues of all four official singles plus two promo singles and a record with two different versions of the previously unreleased track "Witness 4 the Prosecution" - recorded March 14, 1986 at Prince's Galpin Blvd. home studio. Pre-orders and more information are available here; the Super Deluxe edition's full track list is below.

CD1 / LP1: Remastered Album (Disc 1)

1          Sign O’ The Times

2          Play In The Sunshine

3          Housequake

4          The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker

5          It

6          Starfish And Coffee

7          Slow Love

8          Hot Thing

9          Forever In My Life

CD2 / LP2: Remastered Album (Disc 2)

1          U Got The Look

2          If I Was Your Girlfriend

3          Strange Relationship

4          I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man

5          The Cross

6          It’s Gonna Be A Beautiful Night

7          Adore

CD3 / LP3&4: Single Mixes & Edits

1          Sign O’ The Times (7” single edit)

2          La, La, La, He, He, Hee (7” single edit)

3          La, La, La, He, He, Hee (Highly Explosive) (7” single edit)

4          If I Was Your Girlfriend (7” single edit)

5          Shockadelica (“If I Was Your Girlfriend” B-side)

6          Shockadelica (12” long version)

7          U Got the Look (Long Look) (12” edit)

8          Housequake (7” edit)

9          Housequake (7 Minutes MoQuake) (12” edit)

10        I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man (Fade 7” edit)

11        Hot Thing (7” single edit)

12        Hot Thing (Extended Remix)

13        Hot Thing (Dub Version)

CD4 / LP5&6: Vault, Part 1         

1          I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man (1979 version)

2          Teacher, Teacher (1985 version)

3          All My Dreams

4          Can I Play With U? (featuring Miles Davis)

5          Wonderful Day (original version)

6          Strange Relationship (original version)

7          Visions

8          The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker (with horns)

9          Witness 4 The Prosecution (version 1)

10        Power Fantastic (live in studio)

11        And That Says What?

12        Love And Sex

13        A Place In Heaven (Prince vocal)

14        Colors

15        Crystal Ball (7” mix)

16        Big Tall Wall (version 1)

17        Nevaeh Ni Ecalp A

18        In A Large Room With No Light

All tracks previously unreleased

CD5 / LP7&8: Vault, Part 2          

1          Train

2          It Ain’t Over ‘Til The Fat Lady Sings

3          Eggplant (Prince vocal)

4          Everybody Want What They Don’t Got

5          Blanche

6          Soul Psychodelicide

7          The Ball

8          Adonis And Bathsheba

9          Forever In My Life (early vocal studio run-through)

10        Crucial (alternate lyrics)

11        The Cocoa Boys

12        When The Dawn Of The Morning Comes

13        Witness 4 The Prosecution (version 2)

14        It Be’s Like That Sometimes

All tracks previously unreleased

CD6 / LP9&10: Vault, Part 3

1          Emotional Pump

2          Rebirth Of The Flesh (with original outro)

3          Cosmic Day

4          Walkin’ In Glory

5          Wally

6          I Need A Man

7          Promise To Be True

8          Jealous Girl (version 2)

9          There’s Something I Like About Being Your Fool

10        Big Tall Wall (version 2)

11        A Place In Heaven (Lisa vocal)

12        Wonderful Day (12” mix)

13        Strange Relationship (1987 Shep Pettibone Club Mix)

All tracks previously unreleased

CD7&8 / LP11-13: Live In Utrecht – June 20, 1987  

1          Intro/Sign O’ The Times

2          Play In The Sunshine

3          Little Red Corvette

4          Housequake

5          Girls & Boys

6          Slow Love

7          Take The “A” Train/Pacemaker/I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man

8          Hot Thing

9          Four

10        If I Was Your Girlfriend

11        Let’s Go Crazy

12        When Doves Cry

13        Purple Rain

14        1999

15        Forever In My Life

16        Kiss

17        The Cross

18        It’s Gonna Be A Beautiful Night

All tracks previously unreleased          

DVD: Live At Paisley Park – December 31, 1987

1          Sign O’ The Times

2          Play In The Sunshine

3          Little Red Corvette

4          Erotic City

5          Housequake

6          Slow Love

7          Do Me, Baby

8          Adore

9          I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man

10        What’s Your Name Jam

11        Let’s Pretend We’re Married

12        Delirious

13        Jack U Off

14        Drum Solo

15        Twelve

16        Hot Thing

17        If I Was Your Girlfriend

18        Let’s Go Crazy

19        When Doves Cry

20        Purple Rain

21        1999

22        U Got The Look

23        It’s Gonna Be A Beautiful Night Medley (featuring Miles Davis)

All tracks previously unreleased

Clean Water Land & Legacy Amendment
This activity is made possible in part by the Minnesota Legacy Amendment’s Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund.