Here’s one of our favorite songs from Sting’s early solo career – “Fortress Around Your Heart” – which includes Branford Marsalis on the saxophone. It’s also one of the former Police frontman’s favorite songs, as he declared its chorus “one of the best I’ve ever written.”
“Fortress” is from Sting’s 1985 debut solo album Dream of the Blue Turtles (released while The Police were still ostensibly a band). That album also spawned his first solo hit “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” (which we’ve never particularly cared for) as well as “Russians,” Sting’s big political anthem (which we like).
Enjoy …
Under the ruins of a walled city
Crumbling towers and beams of yellow light
No flags of truce, no cries of pity
The siege guns had been pounding all through the night
It took a day to build the city
We walked through its streets in the afternoon
As I returned across the lands I’d known
I recognized the fields where I’d once played
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I’d laid
And if I built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire
Then I went off to fight some battle
That I’d invented inside my head
Away so long for years and years
You probably thought or even wished that I was dead
While the armies are all sleeping
Beneath the tattered flag we’d made
I had to stop in my track for fear
Of walking on the mines I’d laid
And if I built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire
This prison has now become your home
A sentence you seem prepared to pay
It took a day to build the city
We walked through its streets in the afternoon
As I returned across the lands I’d known
I recognized the fields where I’d once played
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I’d laid
And if I built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire
Previously …
Beck – “Loser”
Ben Folds Five – “Rockin’ The Suburbs”
Billy Ward & The Dominoes – “Sixty Minute Man”
The Black Crowes – “Wiser Time”
B.O.B. – “Nothing On You”
Coolio – “Fantastic Voyage”
Cypress Hill – “Rock Superstar”
Eminem (ft. Rihanna) – “Love The Way You Lie”
Filter – “One (Cover)”
Foo Fighters – “Times Like These”
Lady Ga Ga/ Beyonce – “Telephone”
Led Zeppelin – “Your Time Is Gonna Come/ Black Mountain Side”
Led Zeppelin – “Misty Mountain Hop”
LL Cool J – “Mama Said Knock You Out”
Midnight Oil – “Dreamworld”
Monster Magnet – “Negasonic Teenage Warhead”
Naughty By Nature – “O.P.P.”
Nine Inch Nails – “Piggy”
Owl City – “Hot Air Balloon”
The Outfield – “I Don’t Need Her”
Panic At The Disco! – “Karma Police” (Cover)
Pavement – “Range Life”
Pearl Jam – “Alive”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Geek, U.S.A.”
The Spin Doctors – “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues”
Stevie Wonder – “I Believe (When I Fall In Love This Time It Will Last Forever)”
Tom Petty – “The Waiting”
U2 – “Until The End Of The World”
U2 – “Where The Streets Have No Name”
The Waitresses – “I Know What Boys Like”
Weezer – “Put Me Back Together”
Yeasayer – “Ambling Alp”
