Covid Island Discs

Song 1: Russians 2022 Version, Sting

Covid Island Discs came to an end after the UK finally came out of all lockdown restrictions on the 16^th of July 2021. However, a lot has happened since my final Covid Island Discs post. Besides the many covid-19 variants (now up to Omicron XE) that mean the incidence rate in Britain is as high as it has ever been, although thankfully, the pathogenicity of the disease is now much less with the majority of the UK population being vaccinated and the virus itself is becoming less pathogenic, the most terrible development of 2022 has been the invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s Russia. This has resulted in senseless death of many thousands of innocent Ukrainians and Russians alike.

It was therefore significant that on the 25^th of March 2022, Sting re-released a Cello/guitar version of his famous hit Russians which first appeared on the Dream of Blue Turtles album that was released in 1985. After the collapse of the Berlin wall, we all thought that this song had been safely assigned to history. As with so many assumptions in this fallen world, how wrong we all turned out to be. Anyway, I guess the only good thing to come out of Putin’s unspeakable wickedness is at least we get an updated version of this Sting classic to enjoy for another 30 years (assuming Putin doesn’t do something completely insane).