Icon: Sting & the Police

Sting, Copeland and Summers had come together in late '76/early '77 in London, where each had been knocking around with different bands, different styles: Stewart with the fading prog band Curved Air, Sting trying to make it with his Newcastle group Last Exit. (Stewart's brother Miles Copeland III was building a management stable in London; another brother, Ian Copeland, was developing his booking agency. They became brain trust and business backbone... of the Police.) The original trio had guitarist Henri Padovani. Their first gigs, in 1977 consisted of filling the opening slot on a U.K. tour for glam personality Cherry Vanilla. By most accounts, they were an unconvincing punk band. Though impressed by the energy and anti-authoritarian vibe of punk, Sting and Copeland were too professional to be part of the insurgency. Padovani wasn't a good fit, and was quickly replaced by Summers, whose pedigree included stints with jazzman Zoot Money, psychedelic band Soft Machine and Eric Burdon's New Animals. One of the first songs they recorded was Sting's "Roxanne," an imagined peek at the persona of a Parisian prostitute. Instead of punk aggression, it had reggae aggression: Rather than the maintaining the laid-back beat of dub, or the lilting beat of uptempo reggae, the slow verses accelerated into overdrive. Infectious excitement was also palpable on other tracks from the same blueprint: "So Lonely" and "Can't Stand Losing You." "Next to You" and "Peanuts" were neither power pop nor punk, but something smart in between: pogo pop. Summers got one of the rare chances to show off some of his jazz chops on "Hole in My Life." Sting's "Born in the 50's" fell short of being the generational anthem he might have hoped for, but it proved something else: Unlike many of their confederates on the punk side of the spectrum, Sting could really sing his ass off. The band as global Police-men was underlined by "Masoko Tanga," which sounds like it could be the title theme to a Japanese anime film.

Translation: "White Reggae," in the pseudo international language the Police used to title their first three albums. Confidently played and arranged, the songs didn't expand the range of the band as much as they affirmed its strengths. "Message in a Bottle," a castaway's desperate plea, and the sexual loneliness of "The Bed's Too Big Without You" revealed Sting's increasing confidence as a reggae songwriter and singer: Maxi Priest later covered the... former, Sheila Hylton the latter, but the Police originals did not suffer by comparison. The repetition of the lyrics at the end of "Message in the Bottle" was protected by the sturdiness of the riff: Sting repeats the line "sending out an S.O.S." 25 times to the fade, but it's still ear candy thanks to the intricate interplay underneath. The pulse and dub shine of "Walking on the Moon" is one of the highlights of the Police catalog. Breaking the reggae mold a bit is "It's Alright With You," which at least in the verse borrows some of the cadence of Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues." "Bring On the Night" is another depature, a more mature pop song that would be one of the relatively few Police songs Sting would embrace later in his solo career.

The whole band shares songwriting credit on the mostly instrumental title song and on the oddity "Deathwish," which works well in its Bo Diddley-beat musical passages but whose lyrics seem like verses in search of a chorus.

Copeland — who in the earliest days was the band's primary songwriter — gets three and a half songwriting credits, his most on any Police album. His best tune in the band's repertory is "On Any Other Day," a comedic litany of domestic frustrations. The others aren't quite as good: "Contact" has a bit of Kinks influence, perhaps, and "Does Everyone Stare," one of the only Police songs with piano as the dominant instrument, seems an attempt at pop via jazz chord change in the manner of Steely Dan. Then again, Sting too fades in the stretch, with "No Time This Time" one of his most forgettable songs with the band.

The third in a series of titles in Pig Esperanto, meaning essentially nothing, though always a topic for lively discussion on Internet message boards. (One thing is for sure: it is the source of the name of the beloved near-perfect race horse Zenyatta, owned by A&M Records' co-founder Jerry Moss.) As an album, it's a mixed bag: some great fast reggae ("Don't Stand So Close to Me"), the energetic pop of "Canary... in a Coalmine," and the lush "When the World is Running Down" are among some of the band's best songs. But experimentation gives way to exhaustion on other tracks: Sting's "Man in a Suitcase" appears to be both about and a symptom of their back-breaking touring schedule. "Voices Inside My Head" is a workmanlike sketch using African-sounding guitar and vocals mixed way back to resemble a chant; Middle Eastern motifs emerge in Summers' solo in "Bombs Away," a song by Copeland that's prescient in its assessment of "unpaid bills in Afghanistan hills." The Middle Eastern musical theme is also evident in "Behind My Camel," a Summers-composed instrumental evoking the North African desert, but its relevance is just a mirage. The coup de grace (to use a phrase in Sting's frequently-favored French) is the band's first top 10 U.S. hit: "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da." No relation to the German band Trio's 1982 new wave hit, "Da Da Da," though the point should be made. Did radio programmers appeal to the lowest common denominator of their audience's intelligence? Weren't they right? In the 30 years since, the deepest thinkers at the Academy for the Study of Rock Lyrics have deconstructed, reconstructed and post-modernized these lyrics, and have come to conclude that "De Do Do Do" means "De Do Do Do." And so forth.

A concept album with an iconic cover: three primitive digital-looking representations of the band members (I believe that left to right, it's Summers, Sting and Copeland). Anyway you slice it, it's a bit ahead of its time in its theme: a complaint about media overload ("Too Much Information") more than a decade before the Internet would become the centerpiece of planetary communication and knowledge. Heck, the Sony Walkman hadn't been invented yet.... But the Caribbean-soul horns on the track represented a new wrinkle. "Rehumanize Yourself" was about the debilitating effects of work; though true to its time, the central image is the soul-numbing effect of "working all day in the factory." That's hardly the case in the western world these days, so it's a reminder to be careful what you wish for.

The album was recorded at AIR Studios in Montserrat, and the album's biggest hit, "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic," captures the mood of an isolated but posh Caribbean resort island, complete with steel drums. Synthesizer sounds generate reggae beach visions on the seductive opener "Spirits in the Material World." Summers gets to inject some uncharacteristic but appealing metal riffs on "Demolition Man," while "One World (Not Three)" is a dub-heavy track that that flourishes in Copeland's rocksteady hands. Sting's swing to topical lyrics is represented by "Invisible Sun." One of the Police's best tunes, the pained verses giving way to a hopeful bridge. Relying heavily on synthesizer, its message was inspired by martyrdom of Irish political prisoner Bobby Sands, who died the result of a hunger strike in a British prison in 1981.

The fifth album in four years during which touring was almost constant. Talk about dehumanizing labor. The title, in retrospect, couldn't have been more ironic: by most accounts, the band members were as out of sync as they ever were with each other. Still, making good music out of bad feelings is something great bands do. "Every Breath You Take" reflects a drift away from reggae, a kind of pure pop tune... that wouldn't have been out of place in the '50s or early '60s — although if you think too much about it, the song could be heard as the obsession of a stalker: "Every bond you break, every step you take — I'll be watching you."

It's not at all out of place on an album that concludes with "Murder By Numbers," a bizarre Summers song that could have been adapted into a book, "Homicide for Dummies." His other composition, "Mother," might be the back story of such a killer, a hysterical whacked-out blues progression on which the singer shouts such disinviting lines as, "Every girl I go out with becomes my mother in the end." Copeland's "Miss Gradenko" may draw on his insider knowledge of the Cold War spy trade. As for Sting, he's a little loony, too, having "Tea in the Sahara" with Paul Bowles (author of "The Sheltering Sky") presumptively declaring himself the "King of Pain," and insisting in "Walking In Your Footsteps" that "Mr. Dinosaur" was "God's favorite creature." In case you miss the metaphor, Sting sings that "If we explode the atom bomb/ Would they say that we were dumb." The band's imminent dissolution could be the central metaphor of "Synchronicity II," a musically exciting song that tells the story of a terminally dysfunctional suburban family having its own nuclear meltdown.

Sting finished his first solo album before the Police had even split up. The opening song, "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" was a promising beginning, carried by the bristling energy of a good Police tune, striking a message of optimism and regret that could have been aimed at his soon-to-be-former band: "If it's a mirror you want, just look in my eyes/ Or a whipping boy, someone to despise."

Despite politics-on-his-sleeve... lyrics, like those on "Russians," another plea against nuclear war, and "Children's Crusade," about the slaughter of millions of young men in World War I, this is a smart transitional album, with other Police-fan friendly tunes such as the hit single, "Fortress Around Your Heart."

Sting mostly puts down the bass, focusing on singing and playing guitar and the synclavier. The basic lineup: Omar Hakim, drums; Darryl Jones, bass; Kenny Kirkland, keyboards; and Branford Marsalis, saxophones, all jazz players, helped Sting create his new sound, most notably on free-swinging tracks like "Shadows in the Rain."

Sting really got carried away with the idea that his supporting crew for Dream of the Blue Turtles was a real jazz band, and technically, he was kind of right. He did pluck them straight out of Wynton Marsalis' backing band (thereby angering Wynton and emboldening his anti-rock stance, while flaring up a sibling rivalry between the trumpeter and his saxophonist brother Branford -- a veritable hat trick, that), and since he... was initially a jazz bassist, it seemed like a good fit. At the very least, it seemed like a monumental occasion because he documented the entire development of the band and the making of Dream with a documentary called Bring on the Night, releasing a double live album as its soundtrack just a year after the debut hit the stores. The live album feels like a way of showcasing Sting's jazz band and jazz chops. Most of the songs run around five minutes long and there are no less than three melodies, two of which marry an old Police number with a tune from Dream. Arriving as a second solo album, it can't help but feel a little unnecessary, although the loose, rather infectious performances show what Sting was trying to achieve with his debut. [A&M reissued the album in 2005.]

If Sting's solo material has always been cerebral, there is a reason. Describing the songs on this album (title courtesy Shakespeare), Sting wonders: "Why does tradition locate our emotional center in the heart and not somewhere in the brain?" Perhaps he answers his own question in the first two songs: "The Lazarus Heart" and "Be Still My Beating Heart," both of which feature on guitar his former bandmate Andy Summers. In addition... to Kirkland on keyboard and Marsalis on saxes, the leader's world music credentials are burnished by percussionists Manu Katché and Mino Cinelu. The emotional dislocation of the "legal alien" is the theme of "Englishman in New York." A vigorous supporter of human rights organization Amnesty International, the key song here is "They Dance Alone." A star-loaded indictment of Chile's barbarous 1980s military dictatorship led by General Pinochet, the song is an eloquent balance of mood and message. Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler are among the guitarists on the track, and salsa singer Ruben Blades delivers a verse in Spanish. In the year of Michael Jackson's Bad, there are also party songs like "We'll Be Together" and "Rock Steady," the torch song "Sister Moon," and a version of Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing" based on jazz arranger Gil Evans' big band rendition.

Emboldened by the enthusiastic response to the muted Nothing Like the Sun and reeling from the loss of his parents, Sting constructed The Soul Cages as a hushed mediation on mortality, loss, grief, and father/son relationships (the album is dedicated, in part, to his father; its predecessor was dedicated to his mother). Using the same basic band as Nothing Like the Sun, the album has the same supple, luxurious tone, stretching out... leisurely over nine tracks, almost all of them layered mid-tempo tunes (the exception being grinding guitars of the title track). Within this setting, Sting hits a few remarkable peaks, such as the elegant waltz "Mad About You" and "All This Time," a deceptively skipping pop tune that hides a moving tribute to his father. If the entirety of The Soul Cages was as nimbly melodic and urgently emotional as these two cuts, it would have been a quiet masterpiece. Instead, it turns inward -- not just lyrically, but musically -- and plays as a diary entry, perhaps interesting to those willing to spend hours immersing themselves within Sting's loss, finding parallels within their own life. This may be too much effort for anyone outside of the devoted, since apart from those two singles (and perhaps "Why Should I Cry for You"), there are few entry points into The Soul Cages -- and, once you get in there, it only rewards if your emotional state mirrors Sting's.

A "summoner" in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales was a cruel and offensive figure who collected fines from sinners and other medieval iconoclasts. What this has to do with the first 10 of 11 songs here is hard to say, unless it's one of Mr. Sting's inside jokes. The album finalizes his evolution from rock star/new wave hero and even jazz bandleader, to adult contemporary mellowness, typified by the AC hit "Fields of Gold"... and the pop ballad "If I Ever Lose My Faith in You." Sting tries on a number of other different styles that he does not wear quite as well: the Tex-Mex bridge of "Love is Stronger Than Justice (the Munificent Seven)" is a mismatch; the jump blues "She's Too Good For Me" is better, and the jazz organ lifts "St. Augustine in Hell." Clapton is back for a track, "It's Probably Me," co-written by Sting, Clapton and Michael Kamen The closing tune, "Epilogue (Nothing 'Bout Me)" warns the listener not to assume anything from the persona presented by the artist, but like anyone else, the singer wants and needs to be loved.

As always, the value of Sting's many gifts remain in the ear of the beholder. One test: Listen to the last line of the opening song. "The hounds of winter, they harry me down." If you stop at the word "harry," used correctly, but out of place in a pop song, this is probably not for you. If you find it a sign of intelligence, dedication to painstaking craftsmanship, you and Sting... are on the same page. This may be Sting's most "international" record in its adaptation of styles. The spiritual ballad "Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot" (a first cousin to Elton John's "Take Me to the Pilot") gets vocal reinforcement from a gospel choir; the jazzy "I Was Brought To My Senses" gets its mojo, as so many Sting solo tracks do, from saxophonist Branford Marsalis' eloquence and touch. But "I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying" is supposed to revel in blues wisdom, bringing universal truths to a tale of modern divorce, but the humor falls flat and the lessons are dubious. "I Hung My Head" is a Johnny Cash-style ballad of murder and guilt that really needs Johnny Cash in order to work. Way out on other continents are "Valparaiso," of stars and seas in the southern hemisphere. "La Belle Dame Sans Regrets," written with longtime guitarist Dominic Miller, is sung entirely in French, which makes the salsa flourish at the end seem peculiar.

The title song comes by its breezy soulfulness naturally, with Stevie Wonder on harmonica. It ends this stylistically diverse album, full of millennial thoughts, on a tone of optimism. The global layovers this time include Algerian rai music, courtesy Cheb Mami on "Desert Rose," Brazilian bossa nova on "Big Lie, Small World", and perhaps the ethnic suburbs of Paris in "Perfect Love...Gone Wrong," which has two long segments in French... featuring the female rapper Sté. "Fill Her Up," however, is a strange country music fantasy about a guy working at a rural gas station, with a judgmental moral lesson about impulsiveness. "Tomorrow We'll See" with clarinet this time by Branford Marsalis, is sung from the point of view of a prostitute so intelligent and self-aware that she could be the character on which Woody Allen based his famous short story, "The Whore of Mensa."