The Dream of the Blue Turtles

The album is named after a dream that Sting had.^[12] He initially worked on tracks for his debut solo album with producers Torch Song: William Orbit, Laurie Mayer and Grant Gilbert.^[13] 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.^[14][15] Seven weeks were spent recording the songs at Eddy Grant's Blue Wave Studio in Barbados, followed by mixing at Le Studio in Quebec.^[16]

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.^[16] "Shadows in the Rain" had originally appeared on Zenyatta Mondatta by the Police and was re-recorded for The Dream of the Blue Turtles.^[17] "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.^[18] "Consider Me Gone" references the first quatrain of Shakespeare's Sonnet 35.

More information Review scores, Source ...

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[19]
Chicago Tribune	[20]
Los Angeles Times	[21]
Orlando Sentinel	[22]
Record Mirror	4/5[23]
Rolling Stone	[24]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[25]
The Sacramento Bee	[26]
Smash Hits	6/10[27]
The Village Voice	C+[28]

Close

The Dream of the Blue Turtles received critical acclaim, although both rock and jazz purists objected to the two genres being mixed together.^[29] Creem critic Richard Riegel described it as a modest, intelligent album and "a welcome and probably deliberate retreat from all the superstar hysteria that had been building up around the Police the past few years."^[30] Pete Bishop of The Pittsburgh Press felt the album "borders on brilliant", praising the songs, musicianship, production and Sting's vocals, "full of feeling from pain to exuberance".^[31] Rolling Stone critic Jon Pareles praised Sting for making a solo album of "brilliantly enlightened self-interest" rather than a Police-style record, praising the young jazz musicians for avoiding "pop-jazz clichés" and Sting for being able to swing, although noting that, except for three tracks, "the Blue Turtles is a pop record above all. It's only a jam session between the lines, where Marsalis answers Sting's voice with slyly ubiquitous fanfares and curlicues and epigrams."^[24] Eurotipsheet later named it the best debut album of 1985, further grouping it among "the most exciting solo albums that have come out this year and one that crossed the rigid borders between pop and jazz".^[32]

In a mixed review, Smash Hits critic Ian Cranna felt that many songs were spoilt by Sting shoehorning "awkward attempts to show you can be rich and still care into uncomfortably simplistic lyrics – exactly the kind of thing that gets 'political' pop a bad name", but he nonetheless praised the energetic production, the woodwind orchestral parts and the more personal songs.^[27] Robert Christgau of The Village Voice felt that not since Paul Simon had a pop star "made such a beeline for the middlebrow cliché", adding that "[by] displacing the Police's sere dynamics we have bathtubs full of demijazz, drenching this self-aggrandizing and no doubt hitbound project in a whole new dimension of phony class."^[28] In a review named "Sting's Blue Turtles poses as art outside the mainstream", Rick Shefchik of The Daily News considered it superior to any Police albums because the jazz musicians "are better at disguising Sting's exotic poses as art", but lamented that only few of the songs let listeners "find out what kind of a guy [Sting] really is". However, he singled out the Kurt Weill-esque "Moon Over Bourbon Street" as a promising exception.^[33]

Retrospectively, AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine opines that, while the critical shorthand of Blue Turtles being "Sting's jazz record" is partly true, it is more accurate to say Sting relied on revivalist musicians who were still developing their own style, "and then had them jam on mock-jazz grooves – or, in the case of Branford Marsalis, layer soprano sax lines on top of pop songs." Erlewine felt that, "with every measure, every verse, Sting cries out for the respect of a composer, not a pop star, and it gets to be a little overwhelming when taken as a whole."^[19] Noting that Sting abandoned "mere rock" to work with highly-skilled American jazz players, Ira Robbins of Trouser Press writes: "The auteur sounds like he's having a bloody fine time jamming with such cool cats, but the results mainly point up the narrow possibilities of his singing. And despite the illustrious company and his switch from bass to guitar, Sting alone is still like Sting in the Police: smug and pretentious."^[34] Pieter de Bruyn Kops of Music & Media contended that the album "showed that Still was still searching for a true direction."^[29]

Among reference books, Colin Larkin wrote in The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (1997) that Blue Turtles found Sting developing "the more cerebral lyrics" found on the Police's Synchronicity (1983),^[35] whereas Martin C. Strong of The Great Rock Discography (2006) describes the album as "an endearing set of jazz-influenced, infectiously off-kilter pop songs".^[36] Blue Turtles is named one of Sting's best albums in The Rough Guide to Rock (1999), where Jonathan Holden calls it "[an] enjoyable jazzy record, if a touch ponderous in places."^[37] In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), J. D. Considine writes that "it's the balance between the melodic appeal of [Sting's] songs and the improvisational fire of his band that gives The Dream of the Blue Turtles its character. How that works varies somewhat from song to song, but for the most part it's a matter of mood in which the arrangements set the emotional context for each song."^[25]

Grammy Awards

All tracks are written by Sting, except "Russians", which is written by Sting and Sergei Prokofiev.

• "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" (1985) No. 3 US Hot 100, No. 26 UK Singles Chart^[40][9]
• "Russians" (1985) No. 16 US Hot 100, No. 12 UK Singles Chart^[40][9]
• "Fortress Around Your Heart" (1985) No. 8 US Hot 100, No. 49 UK Singles Chart^[40][9]
• "Love Is the Seventh Wave" (1985) No. 17 US Hot 100, No. 41 UK Singles Chart^[40][9]
• "Moon Over Bourbon Street" (1986) No. 44 UK Singles Chart^[9] – with a B-side of "The Ballad of Mack the Knife"

Adapted from the album's liner notes.^[41]

• Sting – lead vocals, backing vocals, guitars, Synclavier, bass (2, 10),^[42] double bass (9), arrangements
• Omar Hakim – drums
• Kenny Kirkland – keyboards, synthesizers
• Darryl Jones – bass
• Branford Marsalis – soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, clarinet, percussion
• Dolette McDonald – backing vocals
• Janice Pendarvis – backing vocals