Sting Sings “Fortress Around Your Heart”

Listen to this track by former Police bassist, songwriter, and singer turned exploratory solo artist Sting. It’s “Fortress Around Your Heart”, a smash single of a deeply personal nature taken from his 1985 debut under his own name The Dream of the Blue Turtles. This cut was the record’s third single in the UK, and the second in the States. Overall, it was his second number one charting song as a solo artist on Billboard’s Top Rock Tracks chart. Added to the success of two other singles, things were off to a pretty good start for Sting outside of his former band.

The results he won were significant, if not entirely surprising. Sting was a welcome and familiar presence on the radio and on MTV’s video flow at the time. This had been mostly in the context of The Police who scored their highest sales and best reviews only a couple of years before with the landmark Synchronicity album and its ensuing tour. This culminated in an historic appearance at Shea Stadium by the summer of 1983 in front of seventy-thousand fans. That’s Beatle-sized success right there. So, the best thing to do was to keep it all going.

Right?

Sting?

Well, on paper, sure. This was but for an actual dream Sting had of enormous blue turtles invading his garden; bursting out from holes in the walls, doing backflips, and generally making a mess of things. His subconscious was trying to tell him something—or at very least it sparked a great hook for press releases. The retelling of this dream from which the record gets its title was at the forefront of interviews at the time. This stood to reason as the question hung in the air. The Police had been the biggest act on planet Earth. Why he would take such a sharp left turn from the prescribed pop music path to further success that was practically guaranteed with The Police?

Undoubtedly, there were personal reasons for doing this as well as artistic ones. As successful as they were, The Police was not an easy band to be in. All three members have acknowledged that at length by now. And besides that, there really is something to be said for going out on top. The Police definitely did that. As for the creative reasons beyond all that, the impulse to tear up one’s carefully manicured artistic garden in favour of sowing a bit of chaos instead is a pretty rock ‘n’ roll move—as long as it works! To help ensure it would, Sting decided to make a few changes to his approach.

By 1985, pop music was becoming increasingly compartmentalized across both stylistic and racial lines. So first, to buck the system on two different fronts, he hired prominent Black American jazz and fusion musicians to back him up on the record and on tour. The new band included Kenny Kirkland on keyboards, Branford Marsalis on saxophones, and Omar Hakim on drums. Vocalists Janice Pendarvis and Dolette McDonald joined the group as well, the latter of whom having accompanied The Police on the aforementioned Synchronicity tour of the previous two years.

Second, he largely handed bass duties to former Miles Davis sideman and future Rolling Stones hired gun Darryl Jones, another key member of the new band. Sting became the guitarist instead. This subtle instrumental shift helped him serve an essential factor particular to a lead singer of a popular band striking out on his own; a unique sound to separate his past work from his present.

Third, instead of trying to stick to a strict pop rock template, Sting went back to where he came from stylistically. His previous band to The Police was the fusion outfit Last Exit based in his hometown of Newcastle in the days before he decided to go to London to see what all the punk rock fuss was about. With those aforementioned American jazz musicians being first-rate purveyors of the styles Sting was interested in exploring, they all laid the groundwork to planting a new kind of artistic garden together. They recorded the album in Barbados and then took it on tour.

Even with a new approach in place, there were still a few stylistic markings left over from The Police. After all, it was in that band that he came into his own as a singer and writer over eight years as a group. You can hear those influences in “Fortress Around Your Heart”, particularly in terms of atmosphere. The shadowy psychological angles found in the lyrics are of the same variety as the ones Sting explored since at least the Ghost in the Machine era. Saying that, there is another facet of his past that can be found in this tune that makes it an important statement in his catalogue of songs even today.

While he was in The Police, Sting’s first marriage ended. This was difficult enough to navigate without his obligations to millions of fans and steeple-fingered record label executives who all expected him to continue as an untouchable pop avatar. “Fortress Around Your Heart” is an expression of that troubled time and emotional landscape, full of metaphor and symbolism equal to anything on Synchronicity. Today, it remains to be one of the most personally revealing songs he ever wrote. With all of the risks he took in leaving The Police behind and going in what was considered to be an unexpected direction, “Fortress Around Your Heart” represents a risk of another kind.

Sting initially described this song as one of appeasement, of trying to meet someone half-way to keep a connection with them alive. But the language of protection in the chorus begins to blur with allusions to prisons in the verses until “Fortress Around Your Heart” becomes a song about confinement instead. Both parties involved are encircled in trenches and barbed wire, walking through minefields of their own making and trapped inside of oppressive architecture that undoes all of the good intentions they have to stay connected. This song is a desperately sad expression of all that, and all too real as a reflection of what can happen in a marriage despite the love that so often remains even when one ends.

In the meantime, “Fortress Around Your Heart” shines instrumentally. Branford Marsalis’ pleading soprano saxophone lines throughout provide an additional voice to embody the reflective and profound sadness that Sting’s lead vocal conveys lyrically. The track certainly wins in terms of pure atmosphere and emotional tone that seems to embody resignation as much as regret and sadness. Overall, the song reflects the artistic signature of its writer with incredible precision. It complemented the familiar sonic landscapes established with The Police with the new directions Sting was taking by 1985. Together with the whole of the album, it met and exceeded all expectations on those fronts, and on others besides.

As big a solo artist as he would become for the rest of the decade and onward, going solo at the time he did was very risky. With the success of The Police, Sting had to match the potential of that success right out of the box, which was no small task. But the bravest thing when it comes to this song is in revealing his own faults, missteps, and personal regrets that present a unique level of openness. In a profound way, this song that served as a hit single embodied a kind of personal liberty in more than one sense. The song that tells a story about thick walls and barriers also reveals that they could not contain the storyteller for very long as he sings of them. On another level, with the success of this song and the album Sting was free to go his own way.

For more background on Sting’s artistic journey during this post-Police and early solo period, check out this page on his website, sting.com

And for a fuller portrait of Sting and his band around the time of the album and the shows to support it, check out Michael Apted’s 1985 documentary and concert movie Bring on the Night. Check out the trailer for that film right here.

Enjoy!

Paul McCartney Sings “My Brave Face”

Listen to this track by one-time Beatles bassist turned pop songwriting elder statesman Paul McCartney. It’s “My Brave Face”, a smash radio single as taken from his 1989 record Flowers in the Dirt. That album saw McCartney returning from a wilderness period of flagging chart results and back into the top twenty again. This was in part thanks to a return to his celebrated Beatle-y sound which for some years he’d mostly avoided in favour of synths and big Eighties-style production. Although McCartney would score hits after this, “My Brave Face” resulted in the last single by a former Beatle as a solo artist to crack the Billboard Hot 100 top 40.

One of the signs that McCartney had returned to his Beatle sounds around this time was in his use of his iconic Höfner bass again. While in Wings in the 1970s, McCartney mostly stuck with Yamaha or Rickenbacker basses for a brawnier rock and R&B sound suitable for big Seventies-style arena shows. Here on “My Brave Face”, his bass playing is lighter and poppier although no less intricate and appealing. The album’s overall sound follows suit, influenced by McCartney’s selection of well-known co-producers. This cut features the work of Mitchell Froom, recognized at the time for his sterling work with registered McCartney-and-Beatles appreciators Crowded House, and later with Elvis Costello; this song’s co-writer.

One of the roles Costello played on this particular song was as an influence to steer it in a more Fab direction, melodically speaking. As broad as his musical vocabulary and reach was becoming by the end of the 1980s, Costello loved The Beatles as much as any of us do, and still does. Use of the Höfner bass on initial recording sessions was purportedly at Costello’s prompting, possibly in the hopes that such an emblematic instrument might help lead them down some familiar sonic avenues when it came time to lay down the track. McCartney knew the score as well as anyone and leaned into it.

Again, it was easy to assume that the musical sunniness heard in this song is all McCartney, and that the downcast lyrics were Costello’s. But, not so! And what of the lyrics to this song, anyway? On the surface, it seems like a standard my baby left me song. But amid all of the musical effervescence of chiming guitars and tight harmonies, the story turns out to be far more complicated. It hints that the former lover’s departure was justified even if her reasons for leaving aren’t really the point. Instead, the focus is on the narrator’s capacity, or lack thereof, to emotionally manage the situation on his own, which is not going well by the time the story begins.

“I’ve been living a lie
Unaccustomed as I am
To the work of a housewife
I’ve been breaking up dirty dishes and throwing them away.
Ever since you left I have been trying to
Compose a ‘baby will you please come home’ note meant for you.
As I clear away another untouched TV dinner from the table
I laid for two …”

– “My Brave Face”, Paul McCartney

This isn’t because of the narrator’s seemingly antiquated view of who’s responsible for household chores or his inability to manage them. It’s more to do with locked up emotions and the limited capacity to express them. These go along with repressing and denying feelings for appearances sake. In this, “My Brave Face” is a real typical guy song, trained as many of us are in acts of emotional disconnection so that we can appear strong even in our weakest moments. In these kinds of situations, brave faces are more important than examined feelings.

This song’s narrator indulges in these same performances of the brave soldier that so many guys feel are necessary to overcome sadness and loneliness. Here, this comes at the cost of knowing what’s really going on in his own heart, with unexamined feelings that keep returning him to the place of heartbreak and unable to move on. He hits the town, does the rounds, and lives a lie without the emotional wherewithal to unpack just what’s happening to him and why, kicking him back to square one again in an endless, heartbreaking loop.

This very relatable tension and sense of the unresolved is why “My Brave Face” works so well as a pop song. Against a poptastic sound that puts a very brave face on a harrowing story, “My Brave Face” is about complex emotions and how disorienting and debilitating they can be even as everything seems sunny and bright on the surface.

As far as Paul McCartney’s ability to write these kinds of stories in his lyrics, this was not new thematic territory for him. In fact, “My Brave Face” could easily be a sequel song to The Beatles’ “For No One”; another tale of a love gone south for emotionally complex reasons. In that song, a woman gains clarity on what she wants and doesn’t want in her relationship, ultimately feeling the need to move on. “My Brave Face” provides a new angle to the story from the perspective of the one she leaves behind. This is a man who has resolved not to change a single thing for sentimental reasons without the awareness that change is as necessary for him as it is to the woman who’s left him.

“My Brave Face” remains to be one of McCartney’s best songs and one that showcases so many of his strengths as a songwriter and musician. Even in his earliest days, he was the one in The Beatles who was the most interested in telling stories about well-drawn characters and their inner lives. This one is a continuation in that tradition. Along with all the jangly guitars, soaring harmonies, and aural Sixties-inspired sunshine, this was another sign of Macca’s return to Fab form that’s just as significant as his reunion with his iconic Höfner bass guitar.

And speaking of reunions with McCartney’s Höfner bass guitar, the instrument he used during his early days at the Cavern Club and on the first two Beatles albums was returned to him last year. That original bass guitar he bought in Hamburg was relegated to back-up bass status by 1963 in favour of other Höfner instruments. It was stolen in 1972 from the back of a van in London. But the bass was recently recovered thanks to the efforts of The Lost Bass Project. It’s almost like the video for “My Brave Face” in which a collector is arrested for stealing that instrument, among other McCartney artifacts, was resolved in real life!

Paul McCartney is an active songwriter and performer today. You can catch up to his more recent movements at paulmccartney.com.

For more on McCartney’s Flowers in the Dirt album, check out this song-by-song reflection from the man himself, courtesy of People Magazine of all sources.

And to go even further into his catalogue of material, here’s a list of 20 great Paul McCartney songs from his Fab days to the 21st century.

Enjoy!

#80sMusic #bassGuitar #PaulMcCartney #songsAboutBreakingUp #storySongs

Listen to this track by world renowned and one-time Star Wars universe-adjacent singer-songwriter Paul Simon. It’s “Hearts and Bones”, the title track from his 1983 album, his sixth record as a solo artist. The record was once slated as a new Simon & Garfunkel record, conceived in part after the duo’s successful 1981-83 reunion tour. But soon enough, Simon found himself with a new solo project on his hands instead, deciding that his new songs were far too personal to share with his former musical partner. Simon also realized that their ways of working on new material as a duo in the studio were no longer compatible. This was purportedly much to Garfunkel’s great chagrin, and everyone’s, given the hit this album would have been as a reunion record.

In some ways though, the weight must have been off Simon’s shoulders not to have to follow up 1970’s iconic Bridge Over Troubled Water. Yet in another sense, following 1980’s One Trick Pony must have been a significant source of pressure, with the associated movie project being something of a commercial disappointment despite the album producing a big hit single. In any case, the working title for the record Think Too Much may have been come by pretty honestly as Simon found himself in the middle of a productive but personally taxing point in his career.

The more insular and less pop craftsman-like nature of the material on the re-christened Hearts and Bones album certainly is something of a departure as Simon explores deeper emotional territories in a more personal way than ever before. This title track is one of the finest examples of that as a little movie about how complicated love can be and how ready or not we are in our hearts and bones to sustain it. But what is meant by the hearts and bones in the title, and what does it say about the way human beings experience each other in the arc of a love affair?

In 1977, Paul Simon met actor Carrie Fisher; she of George Lucas’ beloved series of space fantasy films who would reveal herself to be a gifted novelist and memoirist, film script doctor, and acerbic wit in her own right. After years in an on and off courtship characterized by clashing personalities that still seemed to share an enduring affinity, they married in 1983. That was the year this record came out and while Simon was still on tour with Garfunkel. It was an outrageous act even to Simon, evidently.

As for the music to go along with this fractious and fraught love story, listeners were treated and/or surprised by a more understated Paul Simon sound rooted in a kind of Africanized worldbeat pulse. Sonically speaking, this musical direction and this song in particular cleared the way for a more celebrated song that touched on the emotional impact of a troubled marriage: “Graceland”. Three years later, that single featured “Hearts and Bones” as its B-side. Appropriately enough, its natural thematic and musical fit makes it easy to think that “Graceland” is something of a spiritual sequel to this earlier song. Both are a part of the same story with 1991’s “She Moves On” being the final chapter in the trilogy.

In the meantime, “Hearts and Bones” is about how two people individually understand their marital union and about what arises out of the differences between their two perspectives. It is about the need and the desire to truly connect with that other person, but with a great gulf that makes the effort into one that’s difficult to overcome.

Two people were married
The act was outrageous
The bride was contagious
She burned like a bride
These events may have had some effect
On the man with the girl by his side

– “Hearts and Bones”, Paul Simon

The lines are revealing of Simon’s perspective as a man who indeed thinks too much, possibly at the cost of his emotional availability even on the most joyous of occasions. This helps to lay out the central dichotomy in this song, which concerns the divide between what others want from us in a loving relationship versus how well equipped we are to deliver it. The hearts to love each other are there. But the very bones of our being set so firmly in place often stop us from being what a lover needs us to be; “why can’t you love me for who I am, where I am?” “He said: that’s not the way the world is, baby. This is how I love you, baby.”

These stark personal revelations reflect the songwriter’s plight as he faces up to his own limitations when it comes to loving another person. In this, Simon was quite right about the album he was making while it was still a proposed Simon & Garfunkel comeback record; that this was a statement from an artist at a personal crossroads, confronting those limitations and seeing how they play out in a very important relationship. True to that, Simon openly wrestles with the angel here, cherishing the arc of a love affair while also acknowledging it as a source of turmoil.

Such is often the nature of love and the unions its inspires. Despite it all, the love itself is still there, even long after two people have taken entirely separate paths. We treasure that love and agonize over it all at once. That’s why love is so messy so much of the time. In our hearts and bones, we know that sometimes its bigger than any two people can contain or wholly define as good or bad, especially when sometimes it’s both.

Paul Simon is an active songwriter today, still creating work that challenges and delights listeners. You can catch up to his recent activities and learn more about his influential career as a songwriter at paulsimon.com.

Also, read this article about Paul Simon’s 12-year on-off relationship with Carrie Fisher that reveals further details only hinted at in this song.

Enjoy!

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#80sMusic #LoveSongs #PaulSimon #singerSongwriters #songsAboutBreakingUp