Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner (born 2 October 1951), known as Sting, is an English musician and actor. He was the frontman, principal songwriter and bassist for the rock band the Police from 1977 to 1984 and briefly during 1986 and 2007–08. He launched a solo career in 1985 and has included elements of rock, jazz, reggae, classical, new-age, and worldbeat in his music.
Sting has sold a combined total of more than 100 million records as a solo artist and as a member of the Police. He has received three Brit Awards, including Best British Male Artist in 1994 and Outstanding Contribution to Music in 2002; a Golden Globe; an Emmy; and four Academy Award nominations. As a solo musician and as a member of the Police, Sting has received 17 Grammy Awards. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Police in 2003. Sting has received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors; a CBE from Queen Elizabeth II for services to music; Kennedy Center Honors; and the Polar Music Prize. In May 2023, he was made an Ivor Novello Fellow. the eldest of four children of Audrey (née Cowell), a hairdresser, and Ernest Matthew Sumner, a milkman and former fitter at an engineering works. He grew up near Wallsend's shipyards, which made an impression on him. As a child, he was inspired by the Queen Mother waving at him from a Rolls-Royce to leave the shipyards and seek a more glamorous life. He helped his father deliver milk and by ten was "obsessed" with an old Spanish guitar left by an emigrating friend of his father.
Sting attended St Cuthbert's Grammar School in Newcastle upon Tyne. He visited nightclubs such as Club A'Gogo to see Cream and Manfred Mann, who influenced his music. He learned to sing and play simultaneously by listening to records at 78 rpm. After leaving school in 1969, he enrolled at the University of Warwick in Coventry, but left after a term. After working as a bus conductor, building labourer, and tax officer, he attended the Northern Counties College of Education (now Northumbria University) from 1971 to 1974 and qualified as a teacher. He taught at St Paul's First School in Cramlington for two years.
Sting performed jazz in the evenings, at weekends, and during breaks from college and teaching, playing with the Phoenix Jazzmen, Newcastle Big Band and Last Exit. He gained his nickname during his time with the Phoenix Jazzmen, when bandleader Gordon Solomon remarked that Sumner's habitual black-and-yellow striped jumper made him look like a wasp. In the 1985 documentary Bring On the Night a journalist called him Gordon, to which he replied, "My children call me Sting, my mother calls me Sting, who is this Gordon character?" In 2011, he told Time "I was never called Gordon. You could shout 'Gordon' in the street and I would just move out of your way". Despite this, he chose not to legally change his name to "Sting".
Musical career
1977–1984: The Police and early solo work
thumb|right|Sting in 1979
In January 1977, Sting joined Stewart Copeland and Henry Padovani (soon replaced by Andy Summers) to form the Police, becoming the band's lead singer, bass player, and primary songwriter. From 1978 to 1983, the Police had five UK chart-topping albums, won six Grammy Awards and won two Brit Awards (for Best British Group and for Outstanding Contribution to Music). Their initial sound was punk-inspired, but they switched to reggae rock and minimalist pop. Their final album, Synchronicity, was nominated for five Grammy Awards including Album of the Year in 1983. It included their most successful song, "Every Breath You Take", written by Sting.
According to Sting, appearing in the documentary Last Play at Shea, he decided to leave the Police while onstage during a concert of 18 August 1983 at Shea Stadium in New York City because he felt that playing that venue was "[[Mount Everest|[Mount] Everest]]". While never formally breaking up, after Synchronicity, the group agreed to concentrate on solo projects. As the years went by, the band members, especially Sting, dismissed the possibility of reforming. In 2007, the band did reform temporarily for the purpose of undertaking a reunion tour.
Four of the band's five studio albums appeared on Rolling Stones list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and two of the band's songs, "Every Breath You Take" and "Roxanne", each written by Sting, appeared on Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In addition, "Every Breath You Take" and "Roxanne" were among the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. In 2003, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They were also included in Rolling Stone and VH1's lists of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time".
In 1978, Sting collaborated with members of Hawkwind and Gong as the Radio Actors on the one-off single "Nuclear Waste". In September 1981, Sting made his first live solo appearances, performing on all four nights of the fourth Amnesty International benefit The Secret Policeman's Other Ball in London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, at the invitation of producer Martin Lewis. He performed solo versions of "Roxanne" and "Message in a Bottle". He also led an all-star band (dubbed "the Secret Police") on his own arrangement of Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released". The band and chorus included Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Robin Gibb, Cliff Richard, Phil Collins, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, all of whom (except Beck and Gibb) later performed at Live Aid. In 1982 he released a solo single, "Spread a Little Happiness" from the film of the Dennis Potter television play Brimstone and Treacle. The song was a reinterpretation of the 1920s musical Mr. Cinders by Vivian Ellis and a Top 20 hit in the UK.
1985–1989: Solo debut
thumb|left|Sting performing in Norway in 1985
Sting's first solo album, 1985's The Dream of the Blue Turtles, featured jazz musicians including Kenny Kirkland, Darryl Jones, Omar Hakim and Branford Marsalis. It included the hit singles "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" (backed with the non-LP song "Another Day"), "Fortress Around Your Heart", "Love Is the Seventh Wave" and "Russians", the latter of which was based on a theme from the Lieutenant Kijé Suite. Within a year, the album reached Triple Platinum. The album received Grammy nominations for Album of the Year, Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, Best Jazz Instrumental Performance and Best Engineered Recording.
In November 1984, Sting was part of Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?", which raised money for famine victims in Ethiopia. Released in June 1985, Sting sang the line "I Want My MTV" on "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits. In July 1985, Sting performed Police hits at the Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium in London. He also joined Dire Straits in "Money for Nothing" and he sang two duets with Phil Collins. In 1985, Sting provided spoken vocals for the Miles Davis album You're Under Arrest, taking the role of a French-speaking police officer. He also sang backing vocals on Arcadia's single "The Promise", on two songs from Phil Collins' album No Jacket Required, and contributed "Mack the Knife" to the Hal Willner-produced tribute album Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill. In September 1985, he performed "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" at the 1985 MTV Video Music Awards at the Radio City Music Hall in New York. The 1985 film Bring On the Night, directed by Michael Apted, documented the formation of his solo band and its first concert in France.
thumb|right|Sting and [[Bono at the Conspiracy of Hope concert in New Jersey, 1986]]
Sting released ...Nothing Like the Sun in 1987, including singles, "We'll Be Together", "Fragile", "Englishman in New York" and "Be Still My Beating Heart", dedicated to his mother, who had recently died. It went Double Platinum. "The Secret Marriage" from this album was adapted from Hanns Eisler and "Englishman in New York" was about Quentin Crisp. The album's title is from William Shakespeare's Sonnet 130. The album won Best British Album at the 1988 Brit Awards and in 1989 received three Grammy nominations including his second consecutive nomination for Album of the Year. "Be Still My Beating Heart" earned nominations for Song of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. In 1989, ...Nothing Like the Sun was ranked number 90 and his Police album Synchronicity was ranked number 17 on Rolling Stones 100 greatest albums of the 1980s.
In February 1988, he made Nada como el sol, four songs from Nothing like the Sun he sang in Spanish and Portuguese. In 1987, jazz arranger Gil Evans placed him in a big band setting for a live album of Sting's songs, and on Frank Zappa's 1988 Broadway the Hard Way he performed an arrangement of "Murder by Numbers", set to "Stolen Moments" by Oliver Nelson and dedicated to evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. In October 1988 he recorded a version of Igor Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale with the London Sinfonietta conducted by Kent Nagano. It featured Vanessa Redgrave, Ian McKellen, Gianna Nannini and Sting as the soldier.
1990–1997: Greater solo success
Sting's 1991 album, The Soul Cages, was dedicated to his late father. It included "All This Time" and the Grammy-winning title track. The album went Platinum. Also in 1991, he performed "Come Down in Time" for the tribute album Two Rooms: Celebrating the Songs of Elton John and Bernie Taupin.
Sting's fourth album, Ten Summoner's Tales, peaked at two in the UK and US album charts in 1993 and went triple platinum in just over a year. The album was recorded at his Elizabethan country home, Lake House in Wiltshire. Ten Summoner's Tales was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 1993 and for the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1994. The title is a wordplay on his surname, Sumner and "The Summoner's Tale", one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Hit singles on the album include "Fields of Gold", a song inspired by the barley fields next to his Wiltshire home, with the music video featuring a silhouette of Sting walking through a village containing common features seen throughout the UK during that time such as a red telephone box and "If I Ever Lose My Faith in You", the latter earning his second award for best male pop singer at the 36th Grammy Awards.
In May 1993, he covered his own Police song from the Ghost in the Machine album, "Demolition Man", for the Demolition Man film. With Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart, Sting performed "All for Love" for the film The Three Musketeers. The song stayed at the top of the U.S. charts for three weeks, topped multiple other charts worldwide and reached number two in the UK. In February, he won two Grammy Awards and was nominated for three more.
Sting's 1996 album, Mercury Falling, debuted strongly, with the single "Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot" reaching number 15 in the UK Singles Chart, but the album soon dropped from the charts. He reached the UK Top 40 with two further singles the same year with "You Still Touch Me" (number 27 in June) and "I Was Brought To My Senses" (number 31 in December). The song "I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying" from this album also became a US country music hit in 1997 in a version with Toby Keith. Sting recorded music for the Disney film Kingdom of the Sun, which was reworked into The Emperor's New Groove. The film's overhauls and plot changes were documented by Sting's wife, Trudie Styler, as the changes resulted in some songs not being used.
On 4 September 1997, Sting performed "I'll Be Missing You" with Puff Daddy at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards in tribute to Notorious B.I.G. On 15 September 1997, Sting appeared at the Music for Montserrat concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London, performing with fellow British artists Paul McCartney, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Phil Collins and Mark Knopfler.
1998–2005: Brand New Day and soundtrack work
thumb|right|Sting on stage in Budapest in January 2000
A period of relative musical inactivity followed from 1997, before Sting eventually re-emerged in September 1999, with a new album Brand New Day, which gave him two more UK Top 20 hits in the title track "Brand New Day" (a UK number 13 hit featuring Stevie Wonder on harmonica) and "Desert Rose" (a UK number 15 hit). The album went Triple Platinum by January 2001. In 2000, he won Grammy Awards for Brand New Day and the song of the same name. At the awards ceremony, he performed "Desert Rose" with his collaborator on the album version, Cheb Mami.
In 2000, the soundtrack for The Emperor's New Groove was released with complete songs from the previous version of the film. The final single used to promote the film, "My Funny Friend and Me", was Sting's first nomination for an Academy Award for Best Song.
In 2002, he won a Golden Globe Award for "Until..." from the film Kate & Leopold. In the Queen's Birthday Honours 2003 Sting was made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire For services to the Music Industry. At the 54th Primetime Emmy Awards in September, Sting won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety Or Music Program, for his A&E special, Sting in Tuscany... All This Time. In 2004, he was nominated for the third time for an Academy Award for Best Song,
His autobiography Broken Music was published in October. He embarked on a Sacred Love tour in 2004 with performances by Annie Lennox. Sting went on the Broken Music tour, touring smaller venues, with a four-piece band, starting in Los Angeles on 28 March 2005 and ending on 14 May 2005. Sting was on the 2005 Monkey Business CD by hip-hop group the Black Eyed Peas, singing on "Union", which samples his Englishman in New York. Continuing with Live Aid, he appeared at Live 8 at Hyde Park, London in July 2005.
2006–2010: Experimental albums and the Police reunion
thumb|upright=1.4|left|Sting with the Police at [[Madison Square Garden, New York, 1 August 2007]]
In 2006, Sting was on the Gregg Kofi Brown album, with "Lullaby to an Anxious Child" produced and arranged by Lino Nicolosi and Pino Nicolosi of Nicolosi Productions.
In October 2006, he released an album entitled Songs from the Labyrinth featuring the music of John Dowland (an Elizabethan-era composer) and accompaniment from Bosnian lute player Edin Karamazov. Sting's interpretation of this English Renaissance composer and his cooperation with Edin Karamazov brought recognition in classical music. As promotion of this album, he appeared on the fifth episode of Studio 60 to perform a segment of Dowland's "Come Again" as well as his own "Fields of Gold" in arrangement for voice and two archlutes.
On 11 February 2007, he reunited with the Police to open the 2007 Grammy Awards, singing "Roxanne", and announced a reunion tour, the first concert of which was in Vancouver on 28 May 2007 for 22,000 fans. The Police toured for more than a year, beginning with North America and crossing to Europe, South America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Tickets for the British tour sold out within 30 minutes, the band playing two nights at Twickenham Stadium, southwest London on 8 and 9 September 2007.
"Brand New Day" was the final song of the night for the Neighborhood Ball, one of ten inaugural balls honouring President Barack Obama on Inauguration Day, 20 January 2009. Sting was joined by Stevie Wonder on harmonica.
Sting entered the studio in early February 2009 to begin work on a new album, If on a Winter's Night..., released in October 2009. Initial reviews by fans that had access to early promotional copies were mixed, and some questioned Sting's artistic direction with this album. In 2009, Sting appeared at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th anniversary concert, playing "Higher Ground" and "Roxanne" with Stevie Wonder and "People Get Ready" with Jeff Beck. Sting himself was inducted in 2003, as a member of the Police.
In October 2009, Sting played a concert in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, for an arts and cultural festival organised by the Forum of Culture and Arts of Uzbekistan Foundation. Despite claiming he thought the concert was sponsored by UNICEF, he faced criticism in the press for receiving a payment of between one and two million pounds from Uzbek president Islam Karimov for the performance. Karimov is accused by the UN and Amnesty of human rights abuses and UNICEF stated they had no connection with the event.
Sting embarked on his Symphonicity Tour in 2010 and released an accompanying Symphonicities album the same year, which consisted of classical symphonic reinterpretations of his work.
2010–2016: The Last Ship and joint tours with Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel
thumb|right|upright|Sting performing in Budapest, 30 June 2011
In 2010–2011, Sting continued his Symphonicity Tour, touring South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South America and Europe. In the second half of 2011, Sting began his Back to Bass Tour, which would continue (with periodic breaks) through 2013. In October 2010, Sting played two concerts in Arnhem, Netherlands, for Symphonica in Rosso. In 2011, Time magazine named Sting one of the 100 most influential people in the world. On 26 April he performed "Every Breath You Take", "Roxanne" and "Desert Rose" at the Time 100 Gala in New York City.
Sting recorded a song called "Power's Out" with Nicole Scherzinger. The song, originally recorded in 2007, was to have been included on Scherzinger's shelved album, Her Name is Nicole. The song was released on Scherzinger's 2011 debut album, Killer Love. Sting recorded a new version of the song "Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot" as a duet with Glee actor/singer Matthew Morrison, which appears on Morrison's 2011 eponymous debut album. On 15 September 2011, Sting performed "Fragile" at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, to honour the memory of his friend, financier-philanthropist Herman Sandler, who died in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
For several years, Sting worked on a musical, The Last Ship, inspired by Sting's own childhood experiences and the shipbuilding industry in Wallsend. The Last Ship tells a story about the demise of the British shipbuilding industry in 1980s Newcastle and debuted in Chicago in June 2014 before transferring to Broadway in the autumn. Sting's eleventh studio album, titled The Last Ship, and inspired by the play, was released on 24 September 2013. The album features guest artists with roots in northeast England, including Brian Johnson, vocalist from AC/DC.
thumb|left|Sting and Paul Simon on stage at [[The O2 Arena|the O<sub>2</sub> Arena in London, April 2015]]
In February 2014, Sting embarked on a joint concert tour titled On Stage Together with Paul Simon, playing 21 concerts in North America. The tour continued in early 2015, with ten shows in Australia and New Zealand, and 23 concerts in Europe, ending on 18 April 2015. On 26 June 2015 in Bergen, Norway (at the Bergen Calling Festival), Sting embarked on a 21-date Summer 2015 solo tour of Europe in Trondheim, Norway (at the Olavsfestdagene), visiting Denmark, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Sweden.
On 28 August 2015, "Stolen Car", a duet with French singer Mylène Farmer was released. It is a cover from Sting's 2003 seventh solo studio album, Sacred Love, and will serve as the first single from Farmer's tenth studio album, Interstellaires. On its release, the song went straight to number one over French iTunes music download charts, subsequently hitting number one on the main French singles chart and giving Sting his first number one in France. In 2016, Sting performed a 19-date joint concert summer tour of North America with Peter Gabriel.
2016–2020: 57th & 9th, 44/876 and My Songs
On 18 July 2016, Sting's first rock album in many years was announced. 57th & 9th was released on 11 November 2016. The title is a reference to the New York City intersection he crossed every day to get to the studio where much of the album was recorded. It has contributions by long-time band members Vinnie Colaiuta and Dominic Miller, and Jerry Fuentes and Diego Navaira of the Last Bandoleros. The album was produced by Sting's manager, Martin Kierszenbaum. On 9 November 2016, Sting performed two shows at Irving Plaza, in Manhattan, New York City, playing songs from 57th & 9th for the first time live in concert: a "57th & 9th iHeartRadio Album Release Party" show and a Sting Fan Club Member Exclusive Show later that night. Named the 57th & 9th Tour, a world tour of theatres, clubs and arenas in support of 57th & 9th (with special guests Joe Sumner and the Last Bandoleros) began on 1 February 2017 in Vancouver at the Commodore Ballroom and continued into October.
thumb|right|Sting (left) performing with [[Shaggy (musician)|Shaggy at the 2018 Capitals playoff concert]]
On 4 November 2016, management of the Bataclan theatre announced that Sting would perform an exclusive concert in Paris on 12 November 2016 for the re-opening of the Bataclan, a year after the terrorist attack at the venue. The Police's former guitar player, French native Henry Padovani, joined the band on stage for "Next to You", one of the encores.