Sting on the vital element disappearing from songwriting: “There is no bridge. For me, the bridge is therapy”
A word of caution for any musician – if a songwriting God such as Sting offers you advice, you better take it. The 73-year-old former Police frontman is known for making his voice heard on everything from the state of the industry to human rights issues, and now he’s passing on his words of wisdom to current artists trying to make some headway in the songwriting realm.
Of course, hailing from the landscape of the 1980s new wave heyday, Sting is bound to have his opinion on all the various bangers – and clangers – over the subsequent sonic eras and decades. But it seems he’s noticed a shift recently, and it’s not necessarily boding in the right direction.
In a clip resurfaced on social media this week from an interview with Rick Beato in 2021, Sting explained how he feels a particularly vital element is disappearing from contemporary songwriting. He started by defending that: “There’s some great musicians and great songwriters and great music out there.”
OK, so what’s the problem? “For me,” he said, “The bridge is disappearing.”
You can’t expect any less criticism from such a technical writer. He continued: “What I have noticed now is that structure is slightly simpler – it’s minimalist. There is no bridge. For me, the bridge is therapy.”
We need not look any further than Police megahits like ‘Every Breath You Take’ to get what he’s talking about. It’s a build-up of tension, belting out the brunt of the angst before releasing into a majestic conclusion, and it’s this sense of power which Sting feels has been lost to a landscape of TikTok soundbites and 30-second hits.
But this wouldn’t be good advice without him giving us a quick rundown of songwriting 101: “You set out a situation in a song – ‘my girlfriend left me’. Chorus; ‘I’m lonely’. But then you get to the bridge, and a different chord comes in, and you think, ‘Maybe she’s not the only girl on the block. Maybe I should look elsewhere.’ That viewpoint leads to a key change and a coda where maybe things aren’t so bad.”
Returning to his mantra, Sting reiterated that “the structure is therapy to me”, left to the wayside in a world where, “In modern music, you’re in a circular trap, really – it just goes round and round and round. You’re not getting that release, a sense that there is a way out of our crises.”
Whether personal or political, he makes the salient point that we need music now more than ever to see us through the dark times, between the extremes of relationship heartbreak to world breakdown. Of course, this is not to say that no music released since has ever reached the same heady heights as that of the 1980s – far from it – but the point is we need a return to nostalgia, the stuff we all know and love, to get us back on track. It’s a debate that music buffs could carry on forever, but it’s clear that Sting, the master of ceremonies, is having the final word.
