Fortress Around Your Heart

"Fortress Around Your Heart" is one of four hit singles released from Sting's 1985 solo debut album The Dream of the Blue Turtles.

"Fortress Around Your Heart"
UK 12-inch vinyl single
Single by Sting
from the album The Dream of the Blue Turtles
B-side
  • Shadows in the Rain (Europe)
  • Consider Me Gone (live) (USA)
Released1 October 1985
Genre
Length4:48
LabelA&M
Songwriter(s)Sting
Producer(s)
  • Sting
  • Peter Smith
Sting singles chronology
"Love Is the Seventh Wave"
(1985)		 "Fortress Around Your Heart"
(1985)		 "Russians"
(1985)

The song was later included on the U.S. release of the Fields of Gold: The Best of Sting 1984–1994 compilation album.

Song information

"Fortress Around Your Heart" was inspired by Sting's divorce. The pain he felt at the collapse of his first marriage led him to write some of his biggest hits, including "Every Breath You Take" and "King of Pain". Sting wrote the song in the studio in Barbados in 1985. The song features a Branford Marsalis sax solo.[1] In a Musician magazine interview later that year, Sting said:

"'Fortress' is 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. I think it's one of the best choruses I've ever written."

During one of Sting's first performances of the song in concert in Paris, his crew lowered a tiny fortress onto the stage in a parody of the similar Stonehenge scene from the film This Is Spinal Tap.[2]

Single release

The song was also released as a single, and reached #8 and #49 on the U.S. and U.K. singles charts, respectively. It also reached #1 for two weeks on the Billboard Top Rock Tracks chart, becoming his second consecutive #1 hit on this chart.[3]

Charts
Year-end chart (1985)Rank
US Top Pop Singles (Billboard)[4] 95

References
  1. "discography.albums". Sting.com. Archived from the original on 9 October 2007. Retrieved 9 October 2007.
  2. Hirshey, Gerri. "Sting feels the burn", Rolling Stone, September 1985.
  3. Whitburn, Joel (2004). The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits, 8th Edition (Billboard Publications), page 606.
  4. "1985 The Year in Music & Video: Top Pop Singles". Billboard. Vol. 97 no. 52. 28 December 1985. p. T-21.



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