I was just thinking about this song, and I’ve always wondered what it’s about? Are they describing a totalitarian government that’s taken over the world? The constant battle between the British and the IRA? Someone in prison?
Anybody know?
IIRC, the “invisible sun” is nuclear energy.
Sting would sing about it again in “We Work the Black Seam” from his first solo album.
I slightly remember that the Video was banned from the BBC at that time, something about IRA images or something like that.
Ar? 
It’s about the Troubles. (Incidentally, I have an Armalite. 
) The narrator doesn’t want to spend his life looking down the barrel of a gun. He doesn’t want to have to be subservient to the police. He doesn’t want to have to fight back and wind up in the Maze, or dead as a ‘statistic’.
The black smoke from the factories darken the days, and their glaring lights light up the night. (Or perhaps, in spite of the mention of acetylene lights, it’s a reference to burning buildings? But I think there were more bombings than burnings.) In this verse he doesn’t want to go to work with his ‘head caved in’. This could mean ‘hung over’, or it could mean that he’d been in a fight.
He decides that the only way to stop the fighting would be to kill everyone in Belfast (his ‘world’). He’s in a dangerous place where you can be killed for something very trivial, like a cigarette (or for being on the wrong side, even if you’re a non-combatant).
He wants to believe that there is hope (an ‘invisible sun’).
Anyway, that’s my take on it.
I always thought the obvious implication was that it was about Christ and wasa play on the word “son” (ie invisible son = Christ)
I hadn’t thought of that. I said, ‘He wants to believe that there is hope (an ‘invisible sun’).’ Certainly Christ implies Hope. And your idea also fits with the Catholic vs. Protestant angle.
I hadn’t thought of that. I said, ‘He wants to believe that there is hope (an ‘invisible sun’).’ Certainly Christ implies Hope. And your idea also fits with the Catholic vs. Protestant angle.
Op by Johnny L.A.
Actually that’s what my husband said, too. I seem to remember the video being about the IRA and the British army. Thanks, guys,
I suspect Sting of being literate enough to have been aware of this quote by the 17th-century poet and philosopher Thomas Browne:
Your take is pretty much on the mark.
Years ago, I remember Stewart Copeland, the Police drummer, saying that Sting wrote “Invisible Sun” about Northern Ireland, but that he always thought of Beirut, Lebanon (a city where he’d spent several years, since his father was a CIA operative there) when he played it.
I just have to say I love the cover Sting and Aswad did for the X-Files movie soundtrack…