A few minutes ago the radio played Sting's "Fortress Around Your Heart." I've always liked that song: for me, it has a kind of epic dreaminess. It came out when I was living in Vienna, VA, where we'd moved early in fifth grade; that town (heck, the whole Northern Virginia/D.C. region) turned out to be a good place for me to figure out "my front end from my ass-end," as I've put it; I had some good growing-up time there, Cold War threat and nuclear-war nightmares notwithstanding. (Which reminds me of Sting's lyric "Mr. Krushchev said we will bury you/ I don't subscribe to this point of view/ Believe me when I say to you/ I hope the Russians love their children too...")
I didn't really realize it at the time, but in the '80s Sting was probably as close to batting .1000, songwriting-wise, as anyone in pop. You agree,