Sting – “Russians” (1985)

Sting – “Russians” (1985)

Another one of the famed Cold War works, Sting’s “Russians” is one of those songs from a perspective between that of the Americans and that of the Russians. Rather than a paranoid or furious screed, it’s a fractured prayer delivered over synth-strings and a motif borrowed from Soviet composer Sergei Prokofiev. He references both Reagan and Khrushchev along the way, but the tone of it is one of struggling hope that both sides realize some kind of common humanity before destroying the entire world, continuously wrapping around to the line “I hope the Russians love their children, too.”