Sunny Songs: Invisible Sun

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Howdy from the home of the University of Illinois! I’m having lunch with Marie in an hour or so, but first I have to brighten your day with a song that has “sun” in the title. Here’s today’s not-too-cheery song of optimism. Invisible Sun - The Police We saw it on the side of a car. — Andy Summers, when asked how The Police got their name You know something funny? Sting was the “hunk” in this band, allegedly, but I always found guitarist Andy Summers to be the cutest. When I saw them on the tour for this album in 1981, I spent most of my time watching Andy (and, as we were sitting behind the stage, drummer Stewart Copeland as well). Sting? I like what Copeland once said about him: “To me, he’ll always be the singer in my band.” This is hardly a happy song. Sting wrote it specifically about the hunger strikes going on during The Troubles in Northern Ireland (I remember when the news would always contain a blurb about what day it was of Bobby Sands’ hunger strike). Copeland, who was born in America but grew up in Beirut (his father was Miles Copeland, American diplomat and CIA agent), felt the same way as Beirut was being bombed by both sides during that time (Copeland wrote the song “Bombs Away” on Zenyatta Mondatta about the war in Lebanon). The moral of the gloomy song (“they would kill me for a cigarette but I don’t wanna even die just yet”) is that there is hope. Invisible Sun Written by Sting Recorded by The Police From Ghost in the Machine, 1981 A statistic on a government chart: