30 years Of Sting The Great & Really Bad

That "Christmas" album was an unbelievable stinker. But I watched the "Bring On The Night" DVD last month, and remembered why I loved him 30 years ago.

 

I feel mostly the same way, BUT, his recent The Last Ship has some good songwriting.

 

The Police started out as a quirky rock trio, and morphed into a pop singles band.
Sting's solo work was mostly an extension of that.
He's not young or hungry anymore, and I can't think of anything memorable of late. But I think he wrote some good songs and left some memorable music to enjoy.

 

I think Sting's early solo work surpasses most of his work with The Police.

The Soul Cages is his masterpiece. An epic achievement, both musically and from a poetry standpoint.

There have been great moments on all of his subsequent albums, but none of them have been great from start to finish.

It took me a very long time to appreciate Sacred Love, which was his last real pop/rock album. There are some great songs on it, even if the arrangement and production choices failed to serve the songs as well as they might have.

I appreciate that Sting has done his own thing and hasn't chosen to pander to the crowd that would prefer to see him stuck back in 1980.

 

Was and still am a huge police fan. I really wanted to like his solo career, and feverishly collected all the 7" from dream of the blue turtles, but something just wasn't right. I always attributed it to him growing up and maturing and me remaining a punk, but I don't know. Still like him, but his music just doesn't resonate with me.

 

If only Bring On the Night video was the actual concert and not a making of the concert, then I would agree. What a pisser that it wasn't the actual concert footage...

 

Looking at singles:
Fields of Gold is good, in my opinion, but it is clear some don't like it.
Love is the Seventh Wave is just terrible, both the song and the video too (Sting riding on a cartoon magic carpet?) Hard to believe that a musician that had done such good work with the Police would put out a single as truly bad as this.

 

I wanted to disagree with you, put on Dream of the Blue Turtles and threw it in my used give away bin. It doesn't hold up over time.

 

One of the things I always liked and respected about Sting, once he went solo, is he did what he wanted to do as opposed to bowing down to any label pressure. It's obvious to me that he felt the need to grow musically and I think he has done so with considerable success. It's also true that many of his previous fans while with The Police didn't cotton to much of his solo output. That's a chance a lot of solo artists take....it's a duel-edged sword.

I'm not a superfan by any stretch, but he's done some outstanding work.

 

I'm familiar with the really bad...

 

I bought and listened to Ten Sumoners a lot in 93...was getting ready to see him open for the Dead that summer. That album has some happy memories attached to it. It is nice to revisit.

 

I thought "Dream of the Blue Turtles" would have made for another excellent, smash-hit Police album. "Nothing Like the Sun" was pretty good, too. After that, it seems to me that the muse kind of left him and I haven't bought an album by him since.

I know that's not the common opinion - he continued to self tons of albums throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, but that's my view.

 

I agree with the above. I have the same sentiment with regards to Genesis and Phil Collins.

 

With A&M you mean? Sorry, couldn't resist ;-)

 

There is not a bad Police album. It's a choice between "4"s and "5"s at most. Few bands you can say that about. Although Side One of "Synchronicity" is the last Police album and Side Two is the first Sting solo album, IMO. But it sort of makes a nice bridge between the two eras in that regard.

"Dream of the Blue Turtles" and "...Nothing Like The Sun" are excellent. As is the live "Bring On The Night" set, which is my favorite Sting solo album.

After that, he is hit and miss as so many other aging/successful artists become. It was Sting himself who said at one point "I'm rich. I'm happy. I have nothing left to write about."

 

As I keep saying,why on earth hasn't the studio version of "Another Day" been officially released on cd? Great track.

 

Not only that, but I'd like a complete live audio document of that tour too. The official live album left off all the pop singles from his excellent debut album.

It would be great to get a multi disc box set of this release.

 

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Good to hear that he' s rocking a little.

 

Glad I found this thread because I had no idea where to start.
Was flipping around Tidal and saw "Bring on the Night". Maybe my favorite concert movie, and specifically, "I Burn For You".

Because it'd been so long I tried to remember that song's origins before it appeared in the movie and found it listed on a greatest hits album he released called "25".
Now what is really weird is as I was listening, I began to wonder what was up. The song sounded like the identical arrangement to the version in the movie, but without the audience included. And sure enough about half way there is a quiet section and you can hear the crowd. What I'm wondering is, is this another performance of the song from elsewhere in the tour because the version is slightly different here - there's a structure and performance that is different starting about halfway thru and then in some parts towards the end - or did they marry different performances together for this version - or this is the exact same version as the concert movie/album version but once they took out the audience tracks it revealed parts of the song I'd never heard before?

Anyone with some background or explanation would be much appreciated. thanks!

 

The Soul Cages and Bring On The Night are my favorites of his solo albums.

His most recent studio album 57th & 9th was much better than I expected.

I also love The Police 2008 reunion live album Certifiable: Live In Buenos Aires. Summers and Copeland are amazing and seem to subconsciously push Sting to give his performance more of an edge than he has when he's solo.

 

His first four solo albums and the live album Bring on the Night vary from excellent to very good. After that, most of it was crap.

 

I think they played all the songs a bit differently each night. With the caliber of the musicians he was playing with on that tour, improvising was no problem. The versions of the songs in the concert film and on the CDs are different.

 

It was...ahem...part of a package deal.

 

I lost interest after his albums all blended together and sounded like elevator music. Would also be refreshing if he could perform something with a tempo of higher than 60 bpm.

His last good album was 10 Summoner's Tales with the exception of the *horrendous* Fields of Gold. Can't understand why anybody would love this Muzak piece. Utter junk.