Sting – Fortress Around Your Heart
Probably my favorite cut from the first wave of Sting’s solo career, and a single off the Dream Of The Blue Turtles record. And much like The Police’s “Every Breath You Take”, the foundation for the song resides in the failure of his first marriage.
There’s a gradualization with this one that I always liked.. It keeps building and building up to a great melody chorus, which is very pop, still very grand. In fact Sting has said he believes this chorus is the best he’s ever written stating; “It’s about appeasement, about trying to bridge the gaps between individuals. The central image is a minefield that you’ve laid around this other person to try and protect them. Then you realize that you have to walk back through it”.
The flavor of this tune has moments of an uptown jazz feel, as does a lot of the album, with those sax accents. He could have done us a favor and hooked us up with a 12″ remix for this great tune as he did others, but for all I know there was never an official version of that. So here’s the classic album cut that really doesn’t get much airplay these days.
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I can still remember Casey Kasem talking about the imagery of this song on American Top 40 back in the fall of ’85. The alternating major-minor chords in the verse are also pure genius. Thanks Chris!
@ Randy – Great add-on info to this post! Thanks for you recollection and appreciation for this great track!!
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