Songoftheday 9/2/14 - In Europe and America there's a growing feeling of hysteria, condition to respond to all the threats of in the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets...

Sting - "Russians"
from the album The Dream Of The Blue Turtles (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #16 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 8

Today's Song of the Day is from singer/songwriter/bassist Sting, who broke up The Police to release a solo album that had already scored three top-40 pop hits in the U.S. with "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free", "Fortress Around Your Heart", and "Love Is The Seventh Wave". For the fourth single from the album he released the call for peace of "Russians". Without a drumbeat and an orchestra interpolating a work from Russian composer Prokofiev behind his despairing lyrics over the Cold War, it was a risky choice for a radio single in the height of Reagan-era fervor and pop radio sheen, but his performance struck a chord with those of us disaffected by the Ronnie/Maggie idol-worship...

"Russians" became the fourth top-20 solo hit for Sting in America in March of 1986, while climbing to #34 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart. Internationally, the single was quite successful; actually it was the highest charting single from The Dream Of The Blue Turtles in Sting's native England, peaking at #12, while going top-10 in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

While the topic of Russo-American relations has come back into the news, this song remains an often-overlooked nugget in Sting's repetoire, though its stark and powerful production influenced not only socially-conscious rock music, but also pop music to expand its range that could be seen in the recent piano-driven ballads of Adele and Bruno Mars.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


I give credit to Sting for choosing to perform "Russians" on the Grammy broadcast instead of his more upbeat hits...

Here he is again at the Night of the Proms in the Netherlands in 1993...

Fast forward to 2010 with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Berlin...

Last year German artist Ben Ivory covered "Russians" to respond to the anti-LGBT laws of Putin's government...


Ben Ivory "Russians" (Cover, Sting) from ENOUGH is ENOUGH OPEN YOUR MOUTH on Vimeo.


...and finally, it's back to Sting performing "Russians" in concert in Moscow...

Up tomorrow: Philly boys take things like Godspell.