The Police: Invisible Sun

Remarks:

My favourite Police song by far. In 1981 it went to #2 in the UK. It was never released in the US, but MTV, starved for videos, played it a few years later.

Sting was writing about Northern Ireland during the Troubles, then ongoing, as shown in the video. Years later, in “Lyrics by Sting” (2007), he said:

“‘Invisible Sun’ is a dark, brooding song about the lurking violence of those streets, patrolled by armored cars, haunted by fear and suspicion, and wounds that would take generations to heal. I’m happy that the glimmer of hope in the song’s title was somewhat prophetic and pray that the sectarian violence that destroyed so many lives is well and truly over.”

I had completely forgotten about this song, but back then, in the early 1980s, it had a huge effect on me: it put words to my sense that there was more to life than what my parents and friends were saying. Looking back I can see that my parents were trying to keep me alive and out of poverty. My mother was afraid I would be dead by 30. But their vision of life was so narrowly survivalistic and dream-crushing – “Keeping out of trouble like the soldiers say” – that it left me nothing to live for.  So much so that the-sky-is-blue words of Jesus in Matthew 6:25 came as a revelation: “Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?”

See also:

• songs: the 1980s
• The Police: Don’t Stand So Close to Me
• also about Northen Ireland:
  • U2: Where the Streets Have No Name
  • The Cranberries: Zombie
• Cinderella is Dead – the parents in this book also operate out of fear

Lyrics:

(One, two, three, four, five, six
Oh oh oh oh oh oh)

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life
Looking at the barrel of an Armalite
I don’t want to spend the rest of my days
Keeping out of trouble like the soldiers say
I don’t want to spend my time in hell
Looking at the walls of a prison cell
I don’t ever want to play the part
Of a statistic on a government chart

There has to be an invisible sun
It gives its heat to everyone
There has to be an invisible sun
That gives us hope when the whole day’s done

It’s dark all day and it glows all night
Factory smoke and acetylene light
I face the day with my head caved in
Looking like something that the cat brought in

There has to be an invisible sun
It gives its heat to everyone
There has to be an invisible sun
That gives us hope when the whole day’s done

And they’re only going to change this place
By killing everybody in the human race
They would kill me for a cigarette
But I don’t even wanna die just yet

There has to be an invisible sun
It gives its heat to everyone
There has to be an invisible sun
That gives us hope when the whole day’s done

(Oh oh oh oh oh oh…)

Source: AZ Lyrics.