"Fortress Around Your Heart" is a single released from Sting's 1985 debut solo studio album The Dream of the Blue Turtles. It was released as the album's second single in the US and the third single in the UK, where it peaked at No. 8 and No. 49. The song also reached No. 1 for two weeks on the US Billboard Top Rock Tracks chart, becoming his second consecutive #1 hit on this chart.Whitburn, Joel (2004). The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits, 8th Edition (Billboard Publications), page 606.
The song was later included on the U.S. release of the Fields of Gold: The Best of Sting 1984–1994 compilation album.
Background Sting wrote "Fortress Around Your Heart" in a Barbados recording studio in 1985. He had been working with modal chords on a guitar, which he thought sounded "kind of medieval". He then wrote lyrics referencing sieges, castle walls, and armies as a metaphor for a struggling romantic relationship. 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.Hirshey, Gerri. "Sting feels the burn", Rolling Stone, September 1985.
Reception Billboard said that the single is "challenging, complex and rather difficult," with "mysterious poetic imagery" and a melody that is "more recitative than hook." Cash Box said that the song illustrated Sting's "genius as songwriter," although it is "tinged with melancholy" and "less jazzy and more Police-like than Sting's previous US single, "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free."
Charts Weekly charts Chart (1985) PeakpositionAustralia (Kent Music Report) N.B. The Kent Report chart was licensed by ARIA between mid-1983 and 12 June 1988.72Canada Top Singles (RPM)Canada Top Singles RPM20Israel (IBA) Search "Sting" for Israeli chart history.8
Year-end Year-end chart (1985) RankUS Top Pop Singles (Billboard)95
References