After hearing about it for months, I can now finally write about new music released by Sting. His new single, “I Can’t Stop Thinking About You”, is bringing back some of that old energy that he had as the bandleader for The Police.
The song leads the upcoming '57th & 9th' album, which is already noted to be more rock oriented. The video emphasizes this even more, showing the singer in his writing and recording process, but also with a, could be, iconic closing shot of the singer rocking his heart out on the roof top.
Sting, on his own, has mostly been influenced by jazz and became very experimental with each album he produced. Never one to stop learning and trying new things, he even got into creating a musical, which spun his last album, “The Last Ship”, in 2010. Duets put aside, Sting has mainly been performing since.
When I heard about him working on a new album, I couldn’t really get too excited about it, because the truth is that Sting got a little too experimental for me and he lost me somewhere along the way. There is, of course, the exception of his return to The Police. That did get my interest, even though I never liked them the first time around. I think you learn to appreciate certain music much later in life sometimes. Something about understanding it and having lived al little, perhaps…
Anyway, Sting has stepped it up a notch or two in his new single. When artist announce a new album, they usually give some sort of statement of where they are going with the album and, interesting enough, at age 64, Sting has still not stopped exploring: "On this album, we ended up with something that's energetic and noisy, but also thoughtful." And that describes the new single pretty well. In fact, I have nothing to add really. Other than the release date of the new album, which is November 11th.
