Making His Mark In More Than A Decade Of Popularity, Sting Has Covered A Range Of Genres
Forget for a moment about Sting the Star and Sting the Brooding Intellectual. Concentrate instead on the trajectory of his music, and you’ll see just how amazing his evolution has been.
Imagine, say, Billy Joe of Green Day becoming in the next 10 or 15 years the most tasteful purveyor of literate pop-rock to the nation’s radio stations. That’s approximately equal to what Sting, who plays The Gorge Saturday, has pulled off since the early ‘80s, when he was a somewhat disheveled English scruff fronting a slightly punkish rock band. He was known less as an adventurous, intelligent musician then as a guy who could scream the word “Rooooxannne!” like a particularly pained alley cat.
The band, the Police, reached the top of the commercial heights in the mid-‘80s, at which point it broke up and Sting became - a jazz musician. Or at least he hired jazz musicians to lend a sophisticated New Orleans sound to his first solo album, “The Dream of the Blue Turtles” (1985).
From there, in his next several solo albums, he explored denser jazz sounds (“Nothing Like the Sun,” 1988), then moody art songs of haunted regret (“The Soul Cages,” 1991) and then whimsical and cheerful folk-pop tunes with a sense of humor (“Ten Summoner’s Tales,” 1993).
One common thread through all of these albums - they all spawned hit songs. “Ten Summoner’s Tales” produced two staples of Top 40 and adult contemporary radio, “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You” and the beautiful “Fields of Gold.”
His latest effort, “Mercury Falling,” released in March, looks like it may be the first album to snap that string. So far, it has produced no hit singles and when last seen was in danger of falling all the way out of the Top 100. This says more about radio formats than the quality of the album. The album mixes genres at will and the next single even has a country flavor, which may automatically spell its doom on contemporary hit radio.
But slower album sales are almost inevitable as his audience ages along with him (he’s 44).
“You can’t expect to be a mass-market artist all of your life,” he recently told the Associated Press. “I don’t.”
Sting has often been accused of being pretentious. Anybody who once dared to declare himself the “King of Pain” leaves himself open to that charge. Yet all this really means is that he writes songs with historical, classical and literary allusions (he was once a teacher), which passes for a sin in the low-brow world of rock and pop.
Still, there’s something refreshing about a pop artist who can call his new album “Mercury Falling” and then give a thoughtful discourse on the various meanings of the word “mercury” and its symbolism as a metal, a planet and a god.
Sting remains a wildly popular live draw. Reports from earlier stops on the tour indicate that the show is an audience-rousing, crowd-pleasing success. The “Mercury Falling” tunes are punched out early, followed by a number of his greatest hits, including Police songs such as “Synchronicity II.”
His band includes guitarist Dominic Miller, keyboardist Kenny Kirkland and drummer Vinnie Colaitu.
The opening act will be the Samples, an independent Boulder, Colo. band with a strong word-of-mouth following. This four-man group mixes world beat sounds with a catchy pop flavor, somewhat like the old Police.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CONCERT Sting will perform Saturday at 7 p.m. at The Gorge. Tickets are $49.10, $38.60 and $33.35, available at Ticketmaster outlets (Pay Less Drug Stores at University City, Northgate, downtown and South Regal) or call (509) 735-0500.