Fields of POLL: The Best of Sting

boy do I find "Why Should I Cry For You" affecting

I dunno man but it really is. It's his "In Your Eyes"

'If I Ever Lose My Faith In You' still remains my favourite solo Sting song, and Ten Summoner's Tales still remains the only Sting album that I would gladly listen to if I had to listen to a Sting album. 'Saint Augustine In Hell' still brings a smile to my face, particularly the part where the guy comes in playing the devil and explains the type of people that hell is full of... "Certified accountants, music critics, they're all here!" hehehehe...

Funny, that "St. Augustine" song to me is some kind of nadir, where his smugness can't be contained in song and bursts out in monologue.

Fields of Gold sounds better the older it (and he) gets.

I'm a fan of "The Soul Cages" and "Nothing Like the Sun," the latter an awesome adult contemporary work of ace session players. Don't remember much of "Ten Summoner's Tales.". Don't know anything really from the following albums except "Mercury Falling" (which he keeps playing to let his backing vocalist show off) and "I Hung My Head," which is really great by Sting and also the version by Johnny Cash.

From the looks of this set, the only two songs I don't recognize are "When We Dance" and "The Cowboy Song" (?). Want to say the only one I don't like is "Russians," and even that one I think is just a bad idea, badly written, but not really bad to listen to, as long as you barely listen to it.

Saw him this year with Peter Gabriel and he was in better form/spirits than any other time I'd seen him recently.

'ten summoner's tales' imo is an excellent album overall

I just remember it being a little too boring to be that slick, if that makes any sense. Like, "If I Ever Lose My Faith In You" and "Fields of Gold" are not bad, just sort of hermetically sealed, safe.

oddly the album i always associate it with, maybe in terms of production and even in terms of some of the pacing and atmosphere, is 'san francisco days' by chris isaak.

Huh. See, I really like "San Francisco Days," feels very loose and airy and live, vs. Sting's click-tracky early '90s CD-ready sound.

I'm with Josh re TSG but it's not that different from the others. The one about the rock critics is horrifiyng though.

to be fair i haven't heard TST in a long time but i remember the production being fairly lush and smooth in a way that didn't seem too saccharine or bland.

he can go choke on an alto sax though

The Soul Cages is one of those records I'm surprised to like. Concept album + Stingo + Stingo writing about dead dad + no rock? But its gravity and stateliness has real warmth too.

From the looks of this set, the only two songs I don't recognize are "When We Dance" and "The Cowboy Song" (?).

those two were both collector bait, though I will admit "When We Dance" is as pretty a song as Sting ever did ("This Cowboy Song" pretty much bites it though)

I dug a number of songs from TST - "Everybody Laughed But You" and "Something The Boy Said" both seemed pretty good for album tracks. But yeah it's too much of a wine n' cheese album for me. Sadly his last kinda good one though I'm willing to give Mercury Falling another shot.

The drop off with Mercury Falling was palpable. TST had been such a consolidation of his entire solo career to that point – with rousing singles ("If I Ever..."), smooth Nothing Like the Sun ballads ("Fields of Gold," "It's Probably Me"), the usual hamfisted attempts at humor ("Cowboy Song," "Saint Augustine in Hell"), Blue Turtles jazzbo ("Heavy Clouds"), and TSG-like ethereal-ness ("Something the Boy Said"), but with a warmth few of those records had achieved. My memory was that he recorded TST in his home/castle with windows wide open and his kids running around. It shows. As a friend of mine said at the time, the only real weak spot of the record was that the bridges on these songs were kinda forgettable.

It doesn't quite hold up the way it did then. But it is almost certainly the best record he made.

Should add that Blue Turtles is probably a close second on tunes alone. "We Work the Black Seam," "Children's Crusade," and "Fortress Around Your Heart" are as melodically solid as anything he ever wrote but the Synclavier jazz arrangements and high school earnestness of the lyrics drag them all down.

Bring On the Night is a bit of an improvement, as his band around then (particularly Omar Hakim and Kenny Kirkland, RIP) def. took the material if not to another level at least another place. "When the World Is Running Down" in particular is completely transformed.

yeah Bring on the Night is really great, definitely the best Sting solo release (IMO), even better because it intentionally seems to skip the hits. even The Police songs they trot out are relatively obscure.

Bring On the Night is a bit of an improvement, as his band around then (particularly Omar Hakim and Kenny Kirkland, RIP)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgxy9lMbqJc

(Basically minute two and onwards, well, burns)

Yes. Tho you don't go to Sting for a cooking lite jazz band. And you still are left with the optics of a white guy fronting an all black band in an attempt for respectability. Sort of like a KC and the Sunshine Band AP course credit.

YT has the whole BotN movie, directed by Michael Apted. Kind of worth a spin thru for the odd moment.

(BTW that's supposed to mean a cooking...lite jazz band – tho I suspect a Cooking Lite jazz band would be equally appropriate)

The doc is pretty good. Sting has a self-righteous attitude about hiring an "all-black" band but when they interview the musicians they definitely know what's up

The best part is when Sting bristles at the term "motherfucker."

Unless I am misremembering. Though it does have his wife giving birth!

I think you can generally gauge Sting's pretentiousness by whether or not he is playing guitar. He's a lot more comfortable on bass. He was having a blast playing with Peter Gabriel.

Yech, from the I Burn For You vid posted above:

00:39: [Sting sings while dry humping the air] "You and I are lovers!"
00:41: [Stings smirks lasciviously at audience]

Cut to

00:42: [Underage girl smiles back shyly]

Hey, blame it on Apted. Maybe he originally planned to follow the next 42 years of that girl's life?

Want to say the only one I don't like is "Russians," and even that one I think is just a bad idea, badly written, but not really bad to listen to, as long as you barely listen to it.

And how!!

I disagree about 'Synchronicity I' and 'Mother', and 'Saint Augustine in Hell' has that funny segment where he disses music critics.

"fragile" or "be still my beaten heart" both solid jams

how in the world did Englishman in NY win this? what a dumb song.

I dunno, The Soul Cages is a good album.

i still ride for Ten Summoner's Tales, though "feel her body rise/when you kiss her mouth" is one of the great all time terrible lyrics.

That's a good line!

I might be officially getting old and lame because I just heard Fragile and Fields of Gold after years of not hearing any Sting music and I'm finding them sort of brilliant. They also sound tacky as hell with those 'sensuous' Spanish guitars and the overall new age seriousness so a part of me is still resisting its charm.

ok 'desert rose' sounds like something off some cirque du soleil soundtrack so that one is definitely still going to the dump.

“Fragile” and “Be Still My Beating Heart” are pretty great

Damn there’s a lot of trash on this CD

Always had a soft spot for ‘We’ll Be Together’...’Nothing Like The Sun’ sounds awfully quaint now in a good way

It sounds like he wrote the damn thing in less time than it plays, but "Fields of Gold" is a gorgeous song. "If I Ever Lose My Faith" is also one of those songs that has stuck with me

I love Nothing Like the Sun. Peak adult contemporary Sting, with some really interesting musical and stylistic choices. In some ways like. So if Peter Gabriel weren't weird.

I think ...Nothing Like The Sun and Soul Cages are better than any Police album, but not many of his singles touch his best work with The Police - 'Fortress Around Your Heart' is just about the only one that sounds like a viable Police hit.

The flip is that a song like "Fragile" could never be a Police song, and essentially codifies solo Sting.

I would watch a Sting pornography if, in it, he had intercourse with younger guys who looked sort of like him, like Neil Patrick Harris and Christopher Masterson.

Doogie Does Stingus

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45182000/jpg/_45182049_bf5ceb9d-5cdd-4893-be05-785da4c84e64.jpg

i am a bard. mock me not.

― Daniel, Esq., Sunday, March 14, 2010 10:14 PM (thirteen years ago)

LMAO

I was surprised to find out that Ten Summoner's Tales was Down Beat's album of the year - don't know if that was typical of them back then, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt and gave it a good listen as I only knew the two hit singles. As jazz or pop, it couldn't have been a more ludicrous pick. The only unfamiliar tracks that had some appeal were "Seven Days" (I can see this being a fun song for a jazz singer to cover - rhythmically it's pretty engaging) and "Shape of My Heart" (appropriately shapely acoustic guitar part - that may have been his guitarist/co-writer's doing). The rest was like getting through a visit to the dentist.

My dentist plays Bad Bunny and Sheryl Crow, as I learned last week, so we may have to retire that trope.

"Shape of My Heart" has been a staple of hip-hop producers looking for a pretty sample.

LOL - mine actually plays a lot of '50s and '60s jazz (big Miles Davis fan). Whenever I go, he does a thorough job of cleaning, which means cleaning below every bit of my gumline and setting off every nerve - so if you can picture what that's like, sitting there and gripping the armrest, waiting for the process to run its course and be over, that's what I had in mind.

"Shape of My Heart" has been a staple of hip-hop producers looking for a pretty sample.

Still digging for these, but here's the opening track on Nas's second album (I should probably give that another try):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3CGu0ezd68

Also the Roots's "Break You Off" - sounds like they re-recorded it as a keyboard part, but I guess it could be buried in there as a guide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPcwUu_gcqo

A blog post from 2018 with more:

https://hypebeast.com/2018/6/sting-shape-of-my-heart-sad-rap-20-years-nas-the-message-juice-wrld-lucid-dreams

It Was Written? Most of it is marvelous.

"Seven Days" is indeed very intrguiging, I just hate the lyrics so much I can't listen to it. the chorus is fine at least.

I think I posted this in another thread but one really nice deep cut is "The Lazarus Heart" from Nothing like the Sun. I guess it's not a deep cut when it's the first track on the album, but still it's not a tune I've ever really heard anyone talk about. Sounds like something people would be crazy for...if it was done by Peter Gabriel

That whole album is great, peak adult contemporary. Yes, even the song Soto hates.