Continuing a countdown of my favorite albums of 1985…
#6 – The Dream of the Blue Turtles – Sting
Now I’m getting to the 1985 albums I know by heart, starting with Sting’s debut solo record.
Released two years after the blockbuster success of The Police’s Synchronicity, and the band’s subsequent breakup, this album proved that their former frontman could be a major star on his own.
The Dream of the Blue Turtles traded The Police’s New Wave sound for a jazz rock fusion that would serve Sting’s solo work well for years to come. The album features a jazzy new take on The Police’s ‘Shadows in the Rain’ and an instrumental title track that makes great use of Branford Marsalis.
The album spawned four top 20 singles in ‘If You Love Somebody Set Them Free,’ ‘Love Is the Seventh Wave,’ ‘Fortress Around Your Heart,’ and ‘Russians.’ ‘Russians’ is the rare overtly political song that gets a pass from me. ‘Children’s Crusade’ and ‘We Work the Black Seam’ are statement songs that fare a little less well, but they’re worthy nonetheless.
I love the gothic romance ‘Moon Over Bourbon Street,’ inspired by Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, and the broken heart ballad ‘Consider Me Gone.’ But my favorite song on this album is ‘Fortress Around Your Heart,’ an epic masterpiece comparing a doomed love affair to a medieval battle.
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 fields I’d known
I recognized the walls that I’d once made
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I’d laid
[Chorus]
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
[Verse 2]
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 tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I’d laid
[Chorus]
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
[Verse 3]
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
[Chorus]
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
Meet Me In Montauk 
The Police were huge in my junior high and high school years, but I didn’t completely embrace them at the time. When this album came out, however, I was all in and remained a big Sting fan.
We just saw Sting recently in concert and he sounds as great as ever!