Songoftheday 5/31/14 - Under the ruins of a walled city, crumbling towers and beams of yellow light...

Sting - "Fortress Around Your Heart"
from the album The Dream Of The Blue Turtles (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #8 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 11

Today's Song of the Day is by singer/songwriter/bassist/tantric expert Sting, who left The Police and released his first solo album in 1985, scoring a top-10 pop hit in America with "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free". He followed that record up with "Fortress Around Your Heart", which sounded more like his old band, with a few jazz touches in the instrumentation by saxophonist Branford Marsalis. I could have seen this one on their last album Synchronicity. It was inspired by Sting's divorce from his first wife, actress Frances Tomelty...

"Fortress Around Your Heart" became Sting's second top-10 solo hit in the U.S. in October of 1985, while topping the Mainstream Rock radio chart like its predecessor. However, in his native England, the single didn't even reach the top-40, stopping at #49.

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Here's Sting with the song from his tour behind the album which was released in the documentary Bring On The Night in 1985...

..and again from his tour after his second solo album release in 1987...

Now jumping ahead to 1992 in his Soul Cages tour shows...

and finally from his tour in 2012...

Up tomorrow: two old blokes go cavorting on the avenue for charity.