The 1991 album Sting called a musical “godsend”
Being the biggest pop singer in the world wasn’t something that appealed to Sting after a while.
Sure, The Police could have continued on and played the kinds of shows that any other artist would have dreamed of, but when they reached Synchronicity, there was no sense in any of them thinking that they could have become any bigger than they already were. They were on their way into legendary territory, and Sting felt that there was no greater time for them to cut their losses and quit while they were ahead.
But the thought of becoming a solo artist wasn’t exactly going to be easy for the bassist, either. He was already one of the biggest stars in the world, but if everyone was thinking about Dream of the Blue Turtles as ‘the first Sting record’ before they heard a note of music, it was bound to be a bit daunting for him to take in. That said, it’s not like he didn’t call in the right people to help him on the record.
He was slowly becoming a student of jazz whenever he worked with his friends, and given that some of the best names in the fusion scene had been working with him on that first record, he had the perfect template for how he wanted his music to sound. He could still make the catchiest tunes that anyone had ever thought of, but there would also be a bit more nuance to him working on something like ‘Russians’ or a slight tweak to the way that he approached a song like ‘If You Love Somebody Set Them Free’.
When he finally had time to take a breath, though, he did get more than a little bit of a shock when he found his footing. Losing one’s parents is always going to do a number on someone’s psyche, and while Sting’s mother was the first major blow for him, hearing about his father’s passing hit especially close to home. He didn’t have the strongest relationship with his father, but when looking at the way that he processed everything on The Soul Cages, he did have a lot more on his mind than tribute tracks.
A lot of the record is the sound of Sting processing his grief in real time whenever he sings, and while it’s not necessarily packed with hits, it was never supposed to be. Sting needed to air out a lot of his issues when he performed these tunes, and he felt that a lot of the music helped heal pieces of himself that may have been gone forever after losing his parents.
So while it’s not exactly a fun listen all the way through, The Soul Cages was the kind of album that Sting thanked God for helping him create, saying, “I started with my first memory and from there everything started to flow. My first memory was of a ship, because I lived next to a shipyard when I was young and it was a very powerful image of this huge ship towering above the house. Tapping into that was a godsend – I began with that and the album just flowed.”
And given what he would be doing next, you can definitely feel Sting getting into a much better groove when he got to Ten Summoner’s Tales. The album was never going to match up to what he had done with The Police, but after settling into a more mellow groove, you can hear him learning to love playing music again on the next few records, especially when he began working on tracks like ‘Nothing ‘Bout Me’ and actually bothered to make a rock and roll song on ‘She’s Too Good For Me’.
It took a long time for him to work out all of his own issues, but the fact that he was able to pull himself out of that funk at all was everything that the fans could have hoped for. Otherwise, we would have had a version of Sting that kept on making music that revolved around sadness, and given where he has gone since, he’s made an entire second career out of making music that never fails to excite him.
