Tag: under the cherry moon

The Best Film of 2026: Sign ☮︎’ the Times

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

Yeah, that skinny motherfucker with the high voice released a film in 1987 as well.

Of course, you won’t know my (scientifically correct) opinions on the accompanying album of the same name until the end of year list, but I think it’s fair to say that the March release of Prince’s ninth album had been reasonably well received in 1987. He chose to mark the release with a tour of Europe, which He’d grown attached to since filming ‘Under the Cherry Moon’ in France the year before. Prince never liked long roll outs and advance warnings for tours and gigs, preferring to perform as spontaneously as logistically possible when you’re filling stadiums. This was obviously very fulfilling artistically, but in practice it was a huge pain in the arse for the circle of people around you who were forced to put your insane ideas into practice with little to no notice. Like when you’re tour manager Jeff Mason and Prince has decided He has very specific designs based around the concept of the soon to be iconic record sleeve:

“Prince handed me an 8.5 inch by 11 inch piece of paper with some doodles on it. He was detailing a set. He just tore it from a notebook and said to me ‘Make this'”

Mason in ‘Prince: A Sign o’ the Times’ by John McKie

Shut up already, damn,

who in this house know about the quake?

Top 40 Prince Songs Recorded Between 23rd April 1985 and 31st March 1986

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

The eighth Prince album ‘Parade’ was released in 1986. It has twelve songs on it. Is it any good? Mate, spoiler alert! You’ll find out if I think it’s a stinker when I list the 2025 Necessary Evil albums of the year!

Previously though, I have included tracks from Prince’s albums in my Legit Bosses countdowns of the best songs of the year. But that’s not really fair, is it? When He was listed as the joint best song of 2024 people were piiiiiiiiiiiissed!

So I’m going to give Prince His own dedicated countdown, at least in the near future, simply ranking all the songs that He recorded between His last album, 2024’s ‘Around the World in a Day‘, and 2025’s ‘Parade’. So, ranking ‘Parade’s twelve tracks, right?

Well… no… I could never settle on an exact number, but Prince recorded somewhere between 60 and 100 original songs in the eleven month period between the two albums. Eleven of them would appear on ‘Parade’; one would appear on His 1987 album ‘Sign ‘O’ the Times’; a handful would appear on future albums; some were given to protegees and other artists (including one that was famously taken the fuck back); and many are instrumental jams that were… maybe… never going to be released, but Prince was planning an instrumental jazz album at the time so it’s impossible to say.

We are now entering Prince’s most prolific period: in the next two or three years He would plan and then cancel at least four separate albums, countless side projects, a damn play, He would split up His band, start to question whether Warner Brothers were working in His best interests; and launch a near impossible to count number of failed protégées. It’s quite a ride.

Oh, and that 23rd April 1985 (when ‘Around the World in a Day’ was released) to 31st March 1985 (‘Parade’) timeline is occasionally loosely applied by a week or so (and, in one case, two fucking months). I’ve gone with the first recording of each song, as otherwise we have no idea (so, obviously, thanks a billion to https://princevault.com/.

Here’s the YouTube playlist, you lazy bastards.

This is what it’s like in the Dream Factory