Sting

After two albums of muted, mature jazz-inflected pop, the last being an explicit album about death, Sting created his first unapologetically pop album since the Police with Ten Summoner's Tales. The title, a rather awkward pun on his given last name, is significant, since it emphasizes that this album is a collection of songs, without any musical conceits or lyrical concepts tying it together…

Although the Scorpions had already achieved fame after 1982's Blackout, Love at First Sting brought them their biggest single of the decade, the slick anthem "Rock You Like a Hurricane," with some greatly underrated songs to back it up…

One does an aural double take upon hearing the opening bars of “Raised on Rock,” the first track from the Scorpions Sting in the Tail. Rudolph Schenker's opening power chord riff and guitar tone sound like something from 1976’s Virgin Killer, or 1979’s Lovedrive. When he’s joined by Matthias Jabs on their trademark twin-guitar attack, and by Klaus Meine's instantly recognizable vocal, the effect is complete, the sound familiar, but somehow not nostalgic…

The Police never really broke up, they just stopped working together – largely because they just couldn't stand playing together anymore and partially because Sting was itching to establish himself as a serious musician/songwriter on his own terms. Anxious to shed the mantle of pop star, he camped out at Eddy Grant's studio, picked up the guitar, and raided Wynton Marsalis' band for his new combo – thereby instantly consigning his solo debut, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, to the critical shorthand of Sting's jazz record…

Emboldened by the enthusiastic response to the muted Nothing Like the Sun and reeling from the loss of his parents, Sting constructed The Soul Cages as a hushed mediation on mortality, loss, grief, and father/son relationships (the album is dedicated, in part, to his father; its predecessor was dedicated to his mother). Using the same basic band as Nothing Like the Sun, the album has the same supple, luxurious tone, stretching out leisurely over nine tracks, almost all of them layered mid-tempo tunes (the exception being grinding guitars of the title track). Within this setting, Sting hits a few remarkable peaks, such as the elegant waltz "Mad About You" and "All This Time," a deceptively skipping pop tune that hides a moving tribute to his father.

Sting - Songs From The Labyrinth (2006)
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© 2006 UMG / Deutsche Grammophon | 06025 170 3139
Classical Crossover / Folk / Early Music

It probably would have been difficult, circa 1978, for fans of the Police's bouncy, ska-inflected new wave to conceive that Sting, circa 2006, would release an album of madrigals written in the late 1500s and early 1600s by Renaissance composer John Dowland. Yet Sting has always been musically adventurous and possessed of highbrow notions, as his eclectic solo career in the intervening years demonstrated. In a way, Sting's musical journey to Elizabethan England comes as no surprise.

Sting - Symphonicities (2010) {Deutsche Grammophon}
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© 2010 Deutsche Grammophon / Cherry Tree / UMG | 274 2537
Rock / Pop / Classical Crossover

Given Sting’s far-reaching ambition and interests, it was merely a matter of time before he recorded an orchestral album, but 2010’s Symphonicities surprises by offering symphonic arrangements of his older songs instead of a new work. This is a canny move, for the common complaint lodged against rock-classical crossovers is against the quality of the material – think Paul McCartney or Billy Joel – a criticism that can’t be leveled here, as this is a selection of some of Sting’s best songs.