Sting found expression for his personal grief and political disaffection in the jazz pop explorations of his sophisticated sophomore solo serenade. '...Nothing Like the Sun' builds on the sound of his solo debut 'The Dream of the Blue Turtles' with an even more expansive musical pallate.
Sting said in a Rolling Stone interview: "It's nice to make pop music without necessarily following to the letter the formula that's presented. That's what makes pop interesting. Anything can happen...What is pretension? I'm being cast in this idea that rock stars should be idiots and should only be allowed onstage. They shouldn't be allowed to speak or hear, they shouldn't be able to write prose or lead reasonable lives. It's the dictatorship of the critic. And anyone who tries to break that mold is supposed to be pretentious: pretending to be human, pretending to be thoughtful, pretending to be caring, pretending to be weak, pretending to be strong. What saves you from pretention is the idea of metaphor. If you hit issues head-on - let's make the world a happier place, let's all love each other, let's stop war - there's no art to it. If you approach the issue through a metaphor, it's not pretentious - it's powerful. I don't think I can write without one. And if I am pretentious, it's because I haven't got a metaphor."
The album was recorded at Air Studios in Montserrat with Sting on lead vocals, bass, and guitar; Branford Marsalis on saxophone; Kenny Kirkland on keyboards; Mino Cinelu on percussion and vocoder; Rubén Blades on vocals; Mark Egan on bass; Ken Helman on piano; Hiram Bullock, Eric Clapton, Fareed Haque, Mark Knopfler, and Andy Summers on guitar; Kenwood Dennard, Manu Katché, and Andy Newmark on drums; and Renée Geyer, Dollette McDonald, Janice Pendarvis, and Vesta Williams on background vocals. Gil Evans & His Orchestra also took part in the sessions, which were co-produced by Sting, Hugh Padgham, Bryan Loren, and Neil Dorfsman.
During the recording of the album, Sting's mother Audrey Sumner died. Sting admits: "I felt my mother dying was something we had no choice about. She was going to die; it was a given. And how were we to approach it, my brothers and sisters and myself? The way I deal with it is to express it in terms of songs. I think it was much easier for me because I had this valve I could turn on. It was almost like exploiting it, which sounds awful, exploiting it for your own sanity...If we agree that the album is about mourning, then I needed to start it off in this special, joyful way. It's about rebirth, hopefully. I didn't want to just cry in my beer, do this moaning record about how awful life and death are. I wanted to say that, yes, we have to face death and there is a way to do it that isn't just moaning. We have to rejoice, in a way. It's a victory song. That's the way my mother was. That's what she gave to me when I said goodbye to her. It was her incredible sense of humor and her sense that all was not lost. She was joking and she was loving. she gave me such and example of courage that I had no choice but to rejoice. That's why the record is happy. It's not a mournful record; it's an up record."
'...Nothing Like the Sun' went to number thirteen in New Zealand; nine in the US; seven in Sweden; five in Australia; four in Germany; three in Austria, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland; two in Norway; and number one in Italy, Japan, and the UK. It has sold over eleven million copies worldwide. The title comes from Sonnet #130 by William Shakespeare.
http://www.sting.com/
The funky leadoff single 'We'll Be Together' went to forty-six in France, forty-one in the UK, thirty-three in the Netherlands, fourteen in Ireland, and number seven in the US.
'Englishman in New York' was written about Sting's friend Quentin Crisp. The single sauntered to number eighty-four in the US, fifty-one in the UK, thirty in France, thirteen in the Netherlands, and twelve in Ireland.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d27gTrPPAyk
'Be Still My Beating Heart' pulsed its way to number fifteen in the US.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng4P6FWVdcE
'Fragile' charted at seventy in the UK and twelve in the Netherlands. Sting wrote in the liner notes: "In the current climate it's becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish "Democratic Freedom Fighters" from drug dealing apolitical gagnsters or Peace Corp workers from Marxist revolutionaries. Ben Linder, an America engineer was killed in 1987 by the "Contras" as a result of this confusion."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB6a-iD6ZOY
'They Dance Alone' moved to ninety-four in the UK, sixty-six in Germany, and twenty-seven in the Netherlands. Sting explains the origin of the song: "On the Amnesty Tour of 1986 the musicians were introduced to former political prisoners, victims of torture and imprisonment without trial, from all over the world. These meetings had a strong effect on all of us. It's one thing to read about torture but to speak to a victim brings you a step closer to the reality that is so frighteningly pervasive. We were all deeply affected. Thousands of people have 'disappeared' in Chile, victims of murder squads, security forces, the police, the army. Imprisonment without trail and torture are commonplace. The 'Gueca' is a traditional Chilean courting dance. The 'Gueca Solo' or the dance alone is performed publicly by the wives, daughters, and mothers of the 'disappeared'. Often, they dance with photographs of their loved ones pinned to their clothes. It is a symbolic gesture of protest and grief in a country where democracy doesn't need to be 'defended' so much as exercised."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS_bN5ECJTI
'Up From the Skies' was another Hendrix tune recorded with Gil Evans & His Orchestra. It was a b-side to 'Englishman in New York'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcbnbgEpYN4
'...Nothing Like the Sun'
full album:
01 00:00 "The Lazarus Heart"
02 04:30 "Be Still My Beating Heart"
03 09:55 "Englishman in New York"
04 14:16 "History Will Teach Us Nothing"
05 19:14 "They Dance Alone"
06 26:15 "Fragile"
07 30:08 "We'll Be Together"
08 34:58 "Straight to My Heart"
09 38:48 "Rock Steady"
10 43:12 "Sister Moon"
11 46:56 "Little Wing"
12 51:34 "The Secret Marriage"
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