Sign of the Times 33 1/2 Years Young

I’m in the middle of writing a review of 4 recent books on Prince for a popular music and culture journal. this even as I’m trying to get back into the academic grind by completing an article on a Swiss travel writer that I started like 3 years ago…. The books are all really good, each in their own way. I’m still trying to nail down a theme, figure out my critical lens etc. but mostly am just having fun with this stuff.

One of the authors mentions a book that I’d heard about but never read, Sign ‘O’ The Times by Michaelangelo Matos. It was written in 2004, so is outside the scope of my roundup. Reading the book is the closest I’ve yet come to recapturing the experience of what listening to that album was like. He has some good takes on the 60s nostalgia that permeated the 80s, and it’s in that context that he “reads” SoTT. But he just writes so damn well.