Sting has written some really great songs that won’t go down as classics or standards because, frankly, his vocabulary and melodies are usually more sophisticated than what the pop market can bear. But in “I Hung My Head,” from his 1996 album Mercury Falling, Sting managed to – as Malcolm X says at the beginning [...]

Sting 25 Years [A&M] Rating: Has any other artist in the history of rock and roll ever squandered as much good will as Sting? In the late 1970s, the schoolteacher/jazz sideman moved to London and co-founded the Police, who bridged postpunk, pop, and reggae over five hit albums in five years. Just as the band [...]

“You people are either very lucky or very hooked up.” Bill Flanagan, the television executive and music critic, was warming up an invitation-only crowd at the Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan Tuesday night for a taping of the latest episode of CMT Crossroads. “This is the hottest ticket in New York tonight,” he said without exaggeration, [...]

“The Cherry-Tree Carol” is one of the few Christmas songs that was also collected by the American scholar James Francis Child, in his famous Child Ballads, published in ten volumes beginning in 1882. The narrative focuses on an apocryphal story of the Virgin Mary and Joseph, traveling to Bethlehem – Mary pregnant with the baby [...]

Sting Featuring The Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra Live In Berlin Deutsche Grammophon/Universal Rating: The confidence and star quality that makes Sting Sting are as vibrant as ever on Live In Berlin, a recording taken from the ambitious Symphonicity tour that saw Sting present a symphonic career retrospective to sellout crowds worldwide. Only a handful of [...]

Richard Thompson Dream Attic Shout Factory! Rating: While recording an album’s worth of new songs live in the studio with minimal overdubs is challenging enough, veteran songwriter and Strat strangler Richard Thompson’s latest CD, Dream Attic, forgoes the recording-studio safety net altogether: he recorded 13 new songs not only live, but in front of a [...]

What was in the water during Thursday night’s annual Rainforest Fund benefit show? The concert, which found Lady Gaga joining a cast of usual suspects (event organizer Sting, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, and Debbie Harry) at Carnegie Hall, featured some bizarre covers: Elton John tackled Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and “Material Girl!”  Sting took on [...]

Inauguration Concerts Continue To Bring Out Big Stars Tonight