Sting has always appealed to me because he can infuse his lyrics with his own experiences. He then uses those lyrics to delve into his emotions and ultimately his conclusions about the way the world really is and effectively share them with his audience. It takes some active listening, but all of his albums are accesible to enjoy and discover on many diffenent levels.
The Soul Cages, which came out in 1991, is a concept album that Sting wrote in response to his father's death. Each of the songs follows his personal journey through extreme grief, fond memories, doubts about life and life after death and his eventual acceptance of death and a feeling of redemption and peace.
The album starts off with "Island of Souls" in which his alter ego Billy thinks about setting sail across the sea with with his father. However, his father is injured and can't live for very long. He dies and, in the next song "All This Time", Billy (a.k.a. Sting) expresses his desire to burry his father at sea. I really like the video here. It showcases Sting's ability to laugh (perhaps ironically) at the absurdities of life and death and ultimately put it all behind him. It's one of his most entertaining videos as well.
The next couple of songs focus on the town in which Billy grew up and all the people there. Essentially nostalgic portraits of a his childhood until the introspective "Why Should I Cry for You?". In "The Wild, Wild Sea" Billy gets lost at sea (metaphoricaly or otherwise) and is guided back home by the spirit of his father.
For this point on, the tone of the speaker changes bit by bit from darkness, cynicism and despair to peace and acceptance of the way things are. The lyrics of the last song, "When Angels Fall", end slightly ambiguously, but we get the feeling that Billy has come to some satisfactory conclusions. The song remains tonaly ambiguous until it finally makes its way to a solid major G chord. This "return to home" tonally is even more significant because it harkens back to the key of "All This Time", definitely one of Sting's focal points in the album.
So to tie it all together, the common threads that run through The Soul Cages are: Sting's emotional and spiritual response to losing his father, motifs of the sea and boats etc. as well as various comments about and references to Catholicism which Sting strongly associates with his father. There are definitely others (more technical stuff about musical motifs and themes etc.), but these are enough to prove that The Soul Cages is definitely a lyrical sequence. It maintains and develops a certain focused, emotionally driven subject and presents it in first-person poetic narrative. I love the way Sting continues in this very old poetic tradition to create a very modern and acessible album about his own life experiences.
I think this album was a great example of lyrical sequence and the message is extremely powerful. I have never been a huge follower of Sting, but the songs you posted were extremely moving. I find it particularly interesting that he has an alter-ego named Billy and follows that character throughout the album. I think this makes the progression of the album much more meaningful since you have invested so much into the character. It is parallel to analyzing a character's development throughout a novel, only here you are listening to their feelings, rather than reading about it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Christina - this album is a great example. I don't follow Sting much either, but I like how you really highlighted the influence his personal experiences and faith brought to this album. I especially like the musical references that you highlight- that he's bringing us to G major, the tonic, the "HOME." While personally I wouldn't have thought this album immediately to use as an example of a lyrics sequence, you show that it really is!
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