You know, the palazzo here, the whole property, the vineyards around it, that cost me a song, maybe two. The well-aged pop star spoke with a delightful smile. Then he looked out into the Tuscan expanse and enjoyed the breathless admiration of the television woman who was sitting across from him. Phew You want to like Sting, you want to praise him for the many, many really great songs he’s written, for his role in pop history, for The Police, for his solo hits, for his voice, for his bass playing. Everything is perfect. Bow. Thanks. But whenever you mean it well, he comes around the corner with some pretentious crap, just like a few years ago on this US show, and … it’s maddening.
An English magazine once wrote: Other pop stars want to move the masses, Sting just wants to be admired. Unfortunately true.
Even if you like him and his music, you have to certify that the man has an exhausting tendency towards complacency. Even in the early days of The Police. There he played punk rock songs – with a fretless bass. It’s much more difficult to use, but it shows so nicely: Watch out, I actually come from jazz.
More than 100 million records sold and, one has to give him credit for that, always remained mobile
He had himself filmed during rehearsals with his next band – in a specially rented French castle of the very finest (and because his wife was expecting a child at the time, he asked the cameras into the delivery room). And if you want to know how to clap pretentiously – yes, you can – watch how Sting received the Kennedy Prize in Washington in 2014 on the Internet. From the audience balcony he applauds the musicians who play his songs for him. Put your nose up, each finger individually spread, as if the hands were supposed to express in piquancy: Well, we’re not used to applauding others.
And that from someone who seriously calls himself Sting. Sting. Allegedly because he had a black and yellow striped sweater when he was young. In short, it would be easy to make fun of Mr. Stachel.
But there is nothing more tired than picking on the usual suspects with expected jokes (haha, Bono is a pretty pathetic sock, hoho, Mick Jagger is totally old). Anyway, Sting is reason enough to be admired. Incredible huge hits, more than 100 million records sold – and at the same time, one has to say that he has always remained flexible. A thousand hooks from reggae to new wave, from stadium pop to chamber music, from musicals to the Middle Ages. And in contrast to many others of his age group (well, but still Bono and Jagger) he is interested in playing his old songs, which the audience will listen to forever, in new forms – sometimes in a trio, sometimes with an orchestra, sometimes with a jazz tendency, sometimes with a passion for noise. Someone tries to keep things interesting to the best of their knowledge and belief. Respect.
And yet, Gordon Sumner, born in a dark corner of the northern English working-class town of Wallsend, 70 years old for a few weeks, doesn’t make it easy for you. Not even with his new album “The Bridge”. It is, depending on the count, the 25th or maybe even the 26th of his career. And what unfortunately can get on your nerves again from the first note, even as a well-meaning listener, is this eternal self-presentation as thinking man’s popstar. Sting, the aspirational popper for the better educated music lover. After all, he used to be a teacher and incorporated references to Vladimir Nabokov and Carl Gustav Jung into his songs at an early age.
So on the new album he thinks about love, life, the big picture. Three songs have the word “Love” in the title. The continuous gesture in tone and word: Please listen carefully, I am thinking about the world here, in well-arranged melodies. But, to be honest, the thoughts are not exactly of Nabokovian depth. Right in “Rushing Water”, the first song: “I’ll see my shrink on an analyst couch / Hit me with a hammer and I’ll say, ouch”.
Oh, psychoanalysis, Freud, couch. But also oha, incredibly silly rhyme, because, well, it just had to be a rhyme. The chorus sounds like his hit “All This Time” from 1991, which, funnily enough, also applies to the second song, “If It’s Love”: very sunny love pop with a whistled intro. No doubt the man knows melodies.
It’s about “Heaven”, it’s about “Hell”. In general: everything is full of ecclesiastical metaphors
But then, of all things, he saves on the strong melodies. Maybe because he’s so busy thinking. The music of “The Book Of Numbers” patters away, quickly forgotten. In addition, Sting tells of himself as a lonely hiker with dirt on his face, who talks to the barman in greasy bars, in search of truth. It’s about “Heaven”, it’s about “Hell”. In general, the whole album is full of ecclesiastical metaphors, biblical catchphrases. Unfortunately, they always seem calculated. Just as a counterexample: You don’t have to like Nick Cave at all, but you believe that he really associates a hope for salvation with biblical images, an inner search. With Sting, on the other hand, they remain ornament, pure euphony. Nice couch, but rather ouch.
He then, unfortunately, continues to look at the search as a topic. “The Hills On The Border” takes you through the “Valley of your fears”, again the lonely wandering man who speaks to strangers to find the way. “The Bells Of St. Thomas” then again church: the morning after the one-night-stand, the lonely man wants to leave, the woman offers him to stay. And also “howl the bells”. Sin, repentance, repentance. “Norwegian Wood” for religion teachers.
The song “The Bridge”, only voice and acoustic guitar, goes head first into the metaphors. The bridge, of course, is a transition, new banks. Very seriously, but about the tenth time it was also badly drawing board. Torment by Numbers. Immediately afterwards “Waters Of Tyne” – the same thing again: “Where is the boatman bringing me?”, Sting sings to the guitar, especially intense, especially breathed into the microphone (please be careful: If you listen to this album with headphones, you have it the man really right in the cerebellum).
The continuous gesture in tone and word: Please listen carefully, I am thinking about the world here, in well-arranged melodies: Sting.
(Photo: Eric Ryan Anderson)
Otherwise, of course, there are many of the ingredients with which the maestro (you can well imagine that he is called that by the neighbors in Tuscany, right?) Has been seasoning his work for years. In “For Her Love” the classic nylon string guitar, since “Fragile” an indispensable part of the spiked world. Echoes of English folklore in “Captain Bateman”, a kind of morality with a fiddle, as already often demonstrated in “The Last Ship”. Jazz references in the rather aimless instrumental “Captain Bateman’s Basement”. For something like that he used to smile at his police colleague Andy Summers.
Sting can do anything. Sting doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone anymore. But despite all the sympathy: “The Bridge” leaves a bit of the aftertaste of a reading in which an excellently dressed author takes a seat at a very noble table – but then flips through his diary most of the time with self-love. Sting could well look after that. Whoever can do what can be vain. But what you don’t want to forgive him is that he forgets exactly what made him famous: the mad melodies, the great refrains, the unbeatable things that you keep in your ear forever. This man wrote “Walking On The Moon” and “Every Breath You Take”, “Englishman in New York” and “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You”. There can be no question of that level on “The Bridge”. Too bad.
But as a consolation there are still the wines that he bottles on his Tuscan one-or-two-song estate. One of the reds is considered particularly successful, 90 percent Sangiovese, ten percent Cabernet Sauvignon, refined for four months in wooden barrels, medium texture, rich in sand and lime, 26 euros a bottle. The wine is called “Roxanne”.