In 2013, Sting sat for an hour or so interview in a small dressing room at what was then Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show.”
The veteran English musician was in town talking up “The Last Ship,” an album of songs from a musical he’d composed that was headed to Broadway, and in the course of the conversation Sting made it clear he no longer had much interest in writing the kind of first-person pop tunes that made him a star.
A year later, “The Last Ship” opened in New York — and then closed after three months, a victim of poor ticket sales that even Sting himself couldn’t save by joining the show’s cast.
Given that turn of events, it may be fair to greet the singer’s new project, “57th & 9th,” with suspicion. Released this month, it’s a collection of first-person pop tunes, similar in structure to those he created with the Police before he turned his attention to the lute (on 2006’s widely mocked “Songs From the Labyrinth”) and the theater.
Not only that, but Sting, 65, is promoting the record in precisely the manner he appeared to have lost his taste for. He performed with Ariana Grande and Shawn Mendes on the American Music Awards.
Here’s the thing, though: “57th & 9th” is good. Really good. Far from a craven about-face, it might be Sting’s best set of songs since the early ’90s — not a retreat into nostalgia but a shrewd adaptation of a familiar form.
The album’s title reflects its genesis. At a studio near the corner of 57th Street and 9th Avenue in New York, Sting corralled guitarist Dominic Miller and drummer Vinnie Colaiuta — musicians he’s played with for decades — and got to work with songs free of any overarching concept.
The sound is taut, scruffy, even punk, full of snarling guitars and hurtling tempos; Sting’s melodies are sturdy but straightforward, as though he’d worked them out while singing live with the band, pushing his voice to be heard above the din.
Yet the twist is that he didn’t take this throwback approach as an excuse to revisit old times or themes. These are songs about what’s on Sting’s mind right now: war, politics, the environment — and the challenge of songwriting itself. The last is the topic at the heart of the sexual metaphor in “I Can’t Stop Thinking About You,” in which he’s a guy driven mad by his desire to find the right words.
“One Fine Day” argues for awareness of climate change, first by appealing to the listener’s emotion (“Three penguins and a bear got drowned”), then with full-on alarm bells (“We must do something quick or die”).
Even when Sting does look back to his youth — as in “Heading South on the Great North Road,” set in his hometown of Newcastle — he opens up the scope of the song, in this case to draw a parallel with the current refugee crisis in Europe. He invokes that situation again in “Inshallah,” with its “sad boats” and “anxious eyes.”
Does the vivid writing and playing guarantee “57th & 9th” the mass audience that eluded “The Last Ship”? Hardly.
But if the album bombs and Sting again reverses himself in some way, I won’t automatically doubt him next time. He’s earned the right to change his mind.
