Thinking Like a Mall

Damn, do IDER make themselves easy to love. The London flatmates make for unlikely pop darlings, but in a crowded era of rampant poptimism with its Carly Rae's and K-pop, they've managed to carve out a respectable space for themselves.

They're his songs, so he can do whatever he wants with them. That seems to be the idea behind My Songs, a 2019 collection where Sting decides to revisit 15 of his most famous songs and tweak them for modern audiences. The inspiration behind the project was an updated version of "Brand New Day," which he reworked at the end of 2018 not only so it'd have a shiny new arrangement for a New Year's Eve gig, but so the track could slide between Ariana Grande hits on a playlist. Happy with the results, he turned his attention to Sting and Police songs you know by heart, re-recording a few chestnuts outright, but usually satisfying his muse by stripping away old studio effects, swapping out lead vocals, and adding instruments and vocal harmonies along with numerous other minute but discernable changes.