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In 1987 US activist and engineer Ben Linder was shot dead in Nicaragua while working on a dam in the rural north of the war-torn Central American country.
“We had loved the song for a long time. But when we began arranging it, the lyrics of the verses resonated on a deeper level,” said series composers Aaron May and David Ridley. “It felt almost like it was written for the show and was musically a treat to set for choir.”
If “Fragile” marks a moment of evolution for Sting, its wider resonance would remain far from fixed too. “When I sing it now I think of Bosnia,” he said in 1994, referencing the conflict in the fracturing Yugoslavia and reflecting how the meaning of the song changes regularly.
For Sting, the benefits of what he described as “dressing up” a song in metaphor rather than writing a direct polemic were becoming apparent. Seven years later, on September 11, 2001, Sting was due to hold a private concert at Il Palagio, his Tuscan retreat. News of the terror attacks on the US broke but the band decided they would still play. Opening with “Fragile”, they dedicated the song to those who had lost their lives. Distraught fans embraced and comforted each other.
Sting has denied that it is an “ecological song” despite his growing involvement with environmental causes around the time of its release; the impression is reinforced by a line that “tomorrow’s rain will wash the stains away” and the track’s overall world music flavour. He told The Independent on Sunday in 1994: “I’ve never written a tree-hugging song in all my years of tree-hugging.” Sting’s music was arguably less of a vehicle for his beliefs than peers such as U2’s Bono, who really did believe “rock and roll could be a force for social change,” as he once put it.
“We get to hear the voices of a collective group of children. And in hearing them sing together, the message comes across that crimes like these really affect us all,” the soundtrack duo said, echoing how Sting was moved by the senseless act in Nicaragua nearly 40 years ago.
Let us know your memories of ‘Fragile’ in the comments section below
The paperback edition of ‘The Life of a Song: The stories behind 100 of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Chambers
Music credits: A&M; Netflix; Jive; Jal; Arista; Untertainment
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