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Still Floating Like A Butterfly
05/16/2001 3:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Gary Graff
Sting's first solo hit proclaimed that if you love someone, you should set them free. But that's not something the former Police man's audience seems willing to do a year and a half after the release of his latest album, Brand New Day.
"I'm incredibly gratified about how successful it's been," says Sting, who's found himself making multiple concert treks around the globe since the album's release. "It's 18 months now, and it's had a life which you don't really expect in this day and age, when things come and go very quickly. Seven million album sales later, I feel great. Two Grammys? I can't complain. I take nothing for granted; it's just a matter of time, and this one seemed to be just right. Next time, I don't know..."
Truth be told, Brand New Day did not dawn brightly for Sting. Sales were disappointingly slow when the album emerged during the fall of 1999, and the former Gordon Sumner--whose past successes, after all, haven't left him wanting for lucre or luxury--was prepared to write it off as a creatively satisfying achievement, another tuneful and genre-hopping exercise that afforded him the chance to work with personal heroes such as James Taylor and Stevie Wonder.
Then he climbed into the front seat of a Jaguar...
That would be the video for "Desert Rose," Brand New Day's second single and a song that became a worldwide smash after the Jaguar car company appropriated footage from the video for its 2000 campaign. "Well, you know, that was a calculated risk," Sting acknowledges. "It happened in a very organic way; they saw our video in which I was in the back of a brand-new Jaguar, and they said, 'That's what we'd like as our commercial. Can we use it?' And we said yes--I mean, you couldn't have paid for more promotion than that! It costs millions to have that kind of promotion.
"So we said, 'OK, we're going to try to put this song out to as many people as possible, people who wouldn't necessarily hear it,'" Sting continues. "That kind of opened the floodgates, really; once people recognized the song, radio was much more amenable, and we ended up playing the Super Bowl! So a song which might have had a limited audience ended up with a huge audience--which pleased me, because it's an unusual song."
Indeed, Sting says the best part of "Desert Rose"'s success was the opportunity to once again bring to the pop mainstream a set of exotic sounds--in this case, indigenous Arabic instruments and the vocals of Algerian rai singer Cheb Mami. "It begins with Cheb Mami singing in Arabic, which people were very afraid of at first, when they first heard it--they thought it would be an impossible task getting that on the radio," recalls Sting (who's receiving the 2001 Kahlil Gibran Spirit Of Human Award from the Arab-American Institute on September 5 in recognition of his "commitment to indigenous people and the environment, as well as his efforts to promote cross-cultural understanding"). "So I feel proud that we did it. I'm glad we took the risk."
Risks, of course, have been part and parcel of Sting's performing career. With the Police, he turned a blend of reggae and pop into gold (and platinum)--then, at the height of that band's success, he decided to strike out on his own. Since then, the key to Sting has been that he's predictably unpredictable, purposefully and joyfully colliding musical genres into one another, crafting new sonic stews that are still melodic and accessible enough for airplay and chart success.
It doesn't stop with music, either. He's worked in theater (Threepenny Opera on Broadway) and onscreen (Dune, Plenty, Brimstone & Treacle, Quadrophenia), and he's been an activist for political, humanitarian, and environmental causes such as Amnesty International and the Rainforest Foundation, which he founded with his wife, Trudie Styler. As admirer Lenny Kravitz says, "Sting just does whatever he wants, man. He just goes for it."
"I've always managed to do exactly what I want," agrees Sting, who was nominated for an Oscar earlier this year for his work on the soundtrack to Disney's animated feature The Emperor's New Groove. "When it comes to music, largely it's collided with popular tastes, which I like rather than say, 'OK, what's the formula here? How do I sound like Britney Spears this week, or 'N Sync?' I can't, and I don't. So I really make the record for myself and my friends, and musicians. If it flies up the flagpole, great; if it doesn't, we'll have another go a couple of years later."
Sting's now starting to think about what that next go will be. He finishes touring at the end of July, and there are plenty of projects being proffered--though, he notes, "nothing I could really tell you about that's specific or has been decided on." He does, however, have plans to record a pub-style gig in the early fall for a live album, which will feature an expanded version of his band and some "old friends" as guests--including saxophonist Branford Marsalis. "We're gonna play in a kind of acoustic way and reinterpret the songs in a small, intimate way as a memento and a thank-you to the fans," Sting explains. "It's a risk, but I think we'll get something a little more interesting than the normal live album."
After that, he suspects it won't be too long until he's making new music again. "I'm starting to get anxious about it, which is always the key to creativity. It's the anxiety," he says with a laugh. "I'm not really interested in repeating what I've done before, even though it might sound like I am if I fall in my quest. But my intention is always to get better--to be a better arranger, a better songwriter, a better player. So I still practice. I'm still a serious student of music, and I want the stuff I do to reflect some kind of progress being made."
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