Songs Lyrics and YT- Youtube Music Videos

Sting - The Soul Cages

Sting - The Soul Cages Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: The Soul Cages
Released: 1991

The Soul Cages Lyrics

The boy child is locked in the fisherman's yard
There's a bloodless moon where the oceans die
A shoal of nightstars hang fire in the nets
And the chaos of cages where the crayfish lie

Where is the fisherman where is the goat?
Where is the keeper in his carrion coat?
Eclipse on the moon when the dark bird flies
Where is the child with his father's eyes?

These are The Soul Cages
These are the soul cages

He's the king of the ninth world
The twisted son of the fog bells toll
In each and every lobster cage
A tortured human soul

These are the souls of the broken factories
The subject slaves of the broken crown
The dead accounting of old guilty promises
These are the souls of the broken town

These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages

'I have a wager' the brave child spoke
The fisherman laughed, though disturbed at the joke.
'You will drink what I drink but you must equal me
And if the drink leaves me standing,
A soul shall go free'

'I have here a cask of most magical wine
A vintage that blessed every ship in the line
It's wrung from the blood of the sailors who died
Young white body adrift in the tide'

'And what's in it for me my pretty young thing?
Why should I whistle, when the caged bird sings?
If you lose a wager with the king of the sea
You'll spend the rest of forever in the cage with me'

These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages

A body lies open in the fisherman's yard
Like the side of a ship where the iceberg rips
One less soul in the soul cages
One last curse on the fisherman's lips

These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages
These are the soul cages

Swim to the light
Swim to the light

He dreamed of the ship on the sea
It would carry his father and he
To a place they could never be found
To a place far away from this town
A Newcastle ship without coals
They would sail to the island of souls

Writer/s: Sumner, Gordon
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

The Soul Cages Song Chart

This was the third single from the Soul Cages album. Although it didn't chart on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, it did peak at #7 on the Mainstream Rock chart and #9 on the Modern Rock chart.

The roots of this song are buried in British folklore. Sting explained in Lyrics By Sting: "There is an old British folktale about the souls of the dead being kept under the sea in the lobster cages of a creature who is half man, half fish. Anyone who dares try to free the souls of the dead must go under the sea himself and drink with the creature. If he drinks him under the table, the souls will go free. If, on the other hand, the creature prevails, the challenger will be imprisoned forever in the cages at the bottom of the sea. You need a strong stomach to treat with this creature."

This won the first Grammy Award in the inaugural Best Rock Song category in 1992, beating Metallica's "Enter Sandman," Jane's Addiction's "Been Caught Stealing," Bryan Adams' "Can't Stop This Thing We Started," Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' "Learning To Fly," and Queensryche's "Silent Lucidity."

Sting - All This Time

Sting - All This Time Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: The Soul Cages
Released: 1991

All This Time Lyrics

I looked out across the river today.
Saw a city in the fog and an old church town where the seagulls play.
Saw the sad shire horses walking home in the sodium light,
Two priests on the ferry.
October geese on a cold winter's night.
All This Time the river flowed endlessly to the sea.

Two priests came 'round our house tonight,
One young, one old, to offer prayers for the dying to serve the final rite.
One to learn, one to teach which way the cold wind blows.
And fussing and flapping in priestly black like a murder of crows.
All this time the river flowed endlessly to the sea.

If I had my way, take a boat from the river and I'd bury the old man.
I'd bury him at sea.

Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth.
Better to be poor than a fat man in the eye of the needle.
As these words were spoken I swear I hear the old man laughing.
What good is a used up world and how could it be worth having?
All this time the river flowed endlessly like a silent tear.

All this time the river flowed.
Father, if Jesus exists then how come he never lives here?
Yeah yeah. Yeah yeah. Yeah yeah.

Teachers told the Romans built this place.
They built a wall and a temple and an edge of the empire garrison town.
They lived and they died.
They prayed to their gods, but the stone gods did not make a sound.
And their empire crumbles 'till all that was left
Were the stones the workmen found.
All this time the river flowed in the falling light of a Northern sun.
If I had my way, take a boat from the river.
Men go crazy in the congregations, they only get better one by one.
One by one. One by one by one. One by one.

(I looked out across)
Sad shire horses walking home in the sodium light.
(the river today)

Writer/s: STING
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

All This Time Song Chart

This song is about a boy who wants to bury his father at sea over the objections of two priests. It's a satire of rituals - the priests think the man should be buried according to their practices.

Sting's father died shortly before he wrote this song, and The Soul Cages album was a result of his grief. Sting wrote in Lyrics By Sting: "We'd had a difficult relationship, and his death hit me harder than I'd imagined possible. I felt emotionally and creatively paralyzed, isolated, and unable to mourn. I just felt numb and empty, as if the joy had been leached out of my life."

He added: "I became obsessed with my hometown and its history, images of boats and the sea, and my childhood in the shadow of the shipyards."

The music is based on a Cello suite from Bach.

Sting used the river to represent continuity. Civilizations and structures can come to an end, but rivers are always there. He explained in an acceptance speech when he was honored by his hometown of Newcastle:

"I was born with in sight of that river [The River Tyne]. It runs through my veins, as surely as it runs through the landscape of my dreams. It is a constant recurring theme in many of my songs: 'All this time the river flowed endlessly to the sea.' I wrote that song about the time of the death of my father, gaining some solace in the idea that one human life may come to an end, but the river carries on, just as those of us who are left must carry on."

Most of the images, including the priests, shire horses and ferry, are based on things Sting encountered when he was growing up.

Sting became interested in the burial at sea theme after reading about cultures that bury their dead in boats, which are supposed to take them to the afterlife.

Melanie Griffith is in the video along with Sting's wife, Trudie Styler. They play French maids.

Sting used this to open most of the shows on his Soul Cages tour.

Sting used this as the title to his 2001 concert album. The show was recorded in Italy on Sept 11, the day of the terrorist attacks on America. The planned webcast was pulled after one song, but the concert continued with a somber tone.

Sting wrote this in Normandy while staying in the room novelist Marcel Proust used to occupy. He told The Independent: "OK, I'm in Proust's room, Remembrance of Things Past and all that, right, sat down and looked at the sea. Wrote a few images down, a bit of free association, and then after a while you get some idea of a structure. Songwriting has always been a miraculous process which is incredibly satisfying, and I don't necessarily understand how it's done. And, for me, it happens with less and less frequency, actually. Which is scary, I suppose."

Along with "Island of Souls" and "When We Dance," this was one of three previously released songs that Sting included in his 2014 musical The Last Ship, which was inspired by his childhood growing up in a shipbuilding community. Sting, who wrote all the music for the play, joined the cast of the Broadway production a few months after it opened.