![\"Sting](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Sting-Gordon-Matthew-Thomas-Sumner-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: A&M Records)<\/p>\n
Tue 5 August 2025 16:30, UK <\/p>\n
There comes a point where many music legends can\u2019t outrun their old records<\/a>. <\/p>\n It\u2019s nice to have a catchy tune that people can sing along with and recognise you for, but when it never fails to keep ringing in your head, anyone would want to pull their hair out whenever they hear their musical children out in public. But for someone like Sting, it usually pays to have music that\u2019s a little more sophisticated to get stuck in people\u2019s heads.<\/p>\n As far back as The Police, Sting was always toying with the idea of what a pop song could sound like. \u2018Every Breath You Take\u2019 was probably the most overt pop tune that he ever wrote for the band, but looking back on his entire catalogue of tracks, \u2018Walking on the Moon\u2019 sounds miles different from \u2018King of Pain\u2019, and neither of them sound nearly as ethereal as \u2018Fortress Around Your Heart\u2019 or \u2018Fields of Gold\u2019.<\/p>\n That\u2019s partly because Sting never wanted to feel like he was repeating himself. He knew all too well that artists could get put into little boxes whenever they played music, so it was better for him to work on whatever music he felt sounded right to his ears. But looking at his entire solo catalogue, nothing compares to when he had two other musical geniuses to work off of in The Police. Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers knew how to bring a song to life, but they knew Sting was too good a songwriter for them to push for their original tunes.<\/p>\n \u2018Message in a Bottle\u2019 could have easily been a hit on its own, but looking back on their early records, you can hear them all absorbing influences from everywhere. Punk may have dumbed down<\/a> what was required of musicians to play, but when listening to a track like \u2018Roxanne\u2019, it has all the sense of swagger that you would get out of a punk tune, but with the musical depth of a traditional pop song.<\/p>\n Sting had initially conceived the song as a bossa nova tune, and even with Summers adding those punky stabs to the track, it sounds far too strange to be a straight-ahead pop hit. No one was using the strange suspended chords in the verse, and even if they happened to discover it when screwing around on guitar, hearing Sting\u2019s melody over the top of everything was a lot better than anything The Clash could have come up with.<\/p>\n