Video hit Sting

Sting - Fortress Around Your Heart

This was inspired by Sting's divorce.

The pain he felt when he couldn't make his first marriage work led him to write some of his biggest hits, including "Every Breath You Take" and "King Of Pain."

During one of Sting's concerts, his roadies pulled a practical joke by lowering a miniature fortress around him while he performed this. Sting was not pleased.

During rehersals for this tour, Sting had a camera crew along to make a documentary called Bring On The Night.

Fortress Around Your Heart is one of four hit singles released from Sting's 1985 solo debut album The Dream of the Blue Turtles.

The lyrics:

Under the ruins of a walled city

Crumbling towers in beams of yellow light

No flags of truce, no cries of pity

The siege guns had been pounding through the night

It took a day to build the city

We walked through its streets in the afternoon

As I returned across the fields I'd known

I recognised the walls that I once made

I had to stop in my tracks for fear

Of walking on the mines I'd laid

And if I've built this fortress around your heart

Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire

Then let me build a bridge

For I cannot fill the chasm

And let me set the battlements on fire

Then I went off to fight some battle

That I'd invented inside my head

Away so long for years and years

You probably thought, or even wished that I was dead

While the armies all are sleeping

Beneath the tattered flag we'd made

I had to stop in my tracks for fear

Of walking on the mines I'd laid

And if I've built this fortress around your heart

Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire

Then let me build a bridge

For I cannot fill the chasm

And let me set the battlements on fire

This prison has now become your home

A sentence you seem prepared to pay

It took a day to build the city

We walked through its streets in the afternoon

As I returned across the lands I'd known

I recognised the fields where I'd once played

I had to stop in my tracks for fear

Of walking on the mines I'd laid

And if I've built this fortress around your heart

Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire

Then let me build a bridge

For I cannot fill the chasm

And let me set the battlements on fire