The Dream of the Blue Turtles | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | 17 June 1985 [1] | |||
Recorded | March – April 1985 | |||
Studio | Blue Wave Studio, Saint Philip, Barbados and Le Studio, Morin-Heights, Quebec, Canada | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 41:40 | |||
Label | A&M | |||
Producer | Sting and Pete Smith | |||
Sting chronology | ||||
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Singles from The Dream of the Blue Turtles | ||||
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Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
AllMusic | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Chicago Tribune | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Los Angeles Times | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Orlando Sentinel | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Record Mirror | 4/5 [13] |
Rolling Stone | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The Rolling Stone Album Guide | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The Sacramento Bee | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Smash Hits | 6/10 [17] |
The Village Voice | C+ [18] |
The Dream of the Blue Turtles is the debut solo album by English musician Sting, released on 17 June 1985. The album reached number three on the UK Albums Chart [19] and number two on the US Billboard 200.
Five singles were released from the album: "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free", "Fortress Around Your Heart", "Russians", "Moon Over Bourbon Street", and "Love Is the Seventh Wave". The album earned Grammy nominations for Album of the Year, Best Male Pop Vocal Performance and Best Engineered Recording; the instrumental title track was nominated for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance.
A digital-only special expanded edition of The Dream of The Blue Turtles was released on 11 July 2025 to celebrate its fortieth anniversary. The version includes B-sides such as "Another Day" and "The Ballad of Mac the Knife", as well as remixes of "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free", "Love Is The Seventh Wave", "Moon Over Bourbon Street" and "Fortress Around Your Heart". [20] [21]
The album is named after a dream that Sting had. [22] He initially worked on tracks for his debut solo album with producers Torch Song: William Orbit, Laurie Mayer and Grant Gilbert. [23] These sessions were more synth-driven and 'electrofunk' in nature than what eventually was recorded and released; Sting eventually decided against this direction, and instead decided to pursue more jazz-oriented music.
Thus, in January 1985, he began assembling his backing band after holding auditions for jazz musicians in New York, including the likes of Omar Hakim, Branford Marsalis, Kenny Kirkland and Darryl Jones. Subsequently, he rehearsed the material with his band for a week before three surprise concerts at The Ritz in New York in late February; Sting's idea was for a "baptism of fire" to help consolidate the band's identity before recording began in early March. [24] [25] Seven weeks were spent recording the songs at Eddy Grant's Blue Wave Studio in Barbados, followed by mixing at Le Studio in Quebec. [26]
Although the single "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" reached No. 3 in the US, it only reached 26 in the UK, where the album's track "Russians" (about Cold War nuclear anxieties, which had peaked in the 1980s) proved more popular.[ citation needed ]
In the UK the album was kept off No. 1 in the week of its release by Marillion's Misplaced Childhood and Born in the U.S.A. by Bruce Springsteen occupying the top two places. In the US, the album reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200.[ citation needed ]
The film Bring On the Night documents some of the recording work that produced this album, as well as the subsequent tour.[ citation needed ]
The songs include "Children's Crusade", which was demoed at AIR Studios on a 48-track machine. The song relates to the destruction of the younger generation in World War I. [26] "Shadows in the Rain" had originally appeared on Zenyatta Mondatta by the Police and was re-recorded for The Dream of the Blue Turtles. [27] "We Work the Black Seam" was about the UK miners' strike of 1984–85 and musically based on "Savage Beast", a song dating back to Sting's days in Last Exit). Sting played double bass on "Moon Over Bourbon Street, which was inspired by Anne Rice's novel Interview with the Vampire . [28] "Consider Me Gone" references the first quatrain of Shakespeare's Sonnet 35.
Grammy Awards
Year | Nominee / work | Award | Result |
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1986 | The Dream of the Blue Turtles | Album of the Year [29] | Nominated |
Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male [30] | Nominated |
All tracks are written by Sting, except where noted.
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
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1. | "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" | 4:16 | |
2. | "Love Is the Seventh Wave" | 3:32 | |
3. | "Russians" | Sting / Sergei Prokofiev | 3:58 |
4. | "Children's Crusade" | 5:02 | |
5. | "Shadows in the Rain" | 4:50 |
No. | Title | Length |
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6. | "We Work the Black Seam" | 5:42 |
7. | "Consider Me Gone" | 4:20 |
8. | "The Dream of the Blue Turtles" | 1:18 |
9. | "Moon Over Bourbon Street" | 4:00 |
10. | "Fortress Around Your Heart" | 4:40 |
Weekly charts
| Year-end charts
Decade-end charts
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Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
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Australia | — | 200,000 [53] |
Canada (Music Canada) [54] | Platinum | 100,000^ |
France (SNEP) [55] | Platinum | 300,000* |
Germany (BVMI) [56] | Platinum | 500,000^ |
Hong Kong (IFPI Hong Kong) [57] | Gold | 10,000* |
Italy (FIMI) [55] | Platinum | 500,000 [55] |
New Zealand (RMNZ) [58] | Platinum | 15,000^ |
Spain (PROMUSICAE) [59] | Gold | 50,000^ |
United Kingdom (BPI) [60] | 2× Platinum | 600,000^ |
United States (RIAA) [61] | 3× Platinum | 3,000,000^ |
Yugoslavia | — | 50,000 [62] |
* Sales figures based on certification alone. |
The title of the album came from a dream that woke me up on my first night in Barbados. I dreamed I was sitting in the walled garden behind my house in Hampstead, under a lilac tree on a well manicured lawn, surrounded by beautiful rosebushes. Suddenly the bricks from the wall exploded into the garden and I turned to see the head of an enormous turtle emerging from the darkness, followed by four or five others. They were not only the size of a man, they were also blue and had an air of being immensely cool, like hepcats, insouciant and fearless. They didn't harm me but with an almost casual violence commenced to destroy my genteel English garden, digging up the lawn with their claws, chomping at the rosebushes, bulldozing the lilac tree. Total mayhem. I woke up to the sound of Branford in the room upstairs, riffing wildly on his tenor sax, followed by his unmistakeable laughter.