…A deeply-felt song cycle, The Soul Cages found Sting simultaneously looking backward & forward. In the studio, he reunited with producer Hugh Padgham, who’d overseen The Police’s Ghost in the Machine and Synchronicity; he also diversified his backing band, picking up session guitarist Dominic Miller – his musical right hand ever since. (Saxophonist Branford Marsalis and keyboardist Kenny Kirkland return from Sting’s original solo band; other musicians include drummer Manu Katche and keyboardist David Sancious.)
Lyrically, the album takes Sting in a different territory than ever before: deep into his past growing up in the English shipbuilding town of Wallsend. Drawing from the death of his father, who’d passed on only a year after his mother, "The Soul Cages" addressed grief, love and humanity in more personal (but typically literary) terms than his prior works.
For his trouble, he earned his first solo Grammy Award (for the title track in the category of Best Rock Song), and the philosophical “All This Time” became his highest-charting single credited solely to him, reaching No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. (“All for Love,” a soundtrack ballad for The Three Musketeers with Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart, remains his only Stateside solo chart-topper.)
Other favorites include the pulsing “Mad About You” and the introspective “Why Should I Cry for You”; in 2018, when putting together the musical The Last Ship for a troubled Broadway run, Sting augmented the new material with the album’s opening tracks, “Island of Souls” and “All This Time.”
The expanded The Soul Cages includes nine bonus tracks, many of which have never been available digitally. There’s foreign-language versions (“Mad About You” in Italian, “Why Should I Cry for You” in Spanish), single edits, rare remixes of “Mad About You,” B-side curiosities like the instrumental “I Miss You Kate” and obscurity “Oo La La Hugh,” live covers of Squeeze’s “Tempted” and Jacques Brel’s “Ne me quitte pas” from his 1988 tour, and even a cover of Elton John’s “Come Down in Time” for a tribute album to the artist released later in 1991.
Track listing
1. Island of Souls - 6:40
2. All This Time - 4:54
3. Mad About You - 3:53
4. Jeremiah Blues (Part 1) - 4:54
5. Why Should I Cry for You - 4:46
6. Saint Agnes and the Burning Train - 2:42
7. The Wild Wild Sea - 6:41
8. The Soul Cages - 5:52
9. When the Angels Fall - 7:48
10. I Miss You Kate - 3:42
11. Come Down in Time - 3:45
12. Tempted (Live) - 4:42
13. Ne Me Quitte Pas (Live) - 3:32
14. Oo La La Hugh - 2:45
15. Mad About You (Original Remix) - 4:33
16. Mad About You (Remix Edit) - 4:05
17. Mad About You (12″ Remix) - 5:43
18. Mad About You (Italian Version) - 3:57
19. Why Should I Cry for You (Spanish Version) - 4:48
20. Why Should I Cry for You (Extended Mix) - 7:22
21. The Soul Cages (Edit) - 4:26
22. All This Time (Edit) - 3:59
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