Credit: Far Out / Raph Pour-Hashemi
Sun 28 June 2026 22:01, UK
Sting was always focused on his track record every single time he made a new record.
He didn’t want to spend his life being known for only one piece of his musical career, and every single album was about him trying to make something new that no one could have imagined him making in the days of The Police. He wanted the chance to wow people, but for all of the momentum that he had after releasing his first solo album, he didn’t want to find himself falling by the wayside like so many of his colleagues who didn’t have as much staying power.
But it’s not like Sting was immune to the odd bad album here and there. He did become one of the darlings of adult contemporary music once the late 1990s kicked in, but even before making tunes like ‘Fields of Gold’, there were going to be some albums that didn’t find the same audience as everything else he did. The Soul Cages was going to be too personal for a lot of people, but Sting was more interested in having songs that would last than following the trends all the time.
He knew there was a way for him to keep the audience engaged on every album, but that wasn’t what music was focused on when The Police first started. They were born in the era when punk was first coming into its own, and half of the bands that they were working with back in the day were constantly trying to provoke the more seasoned musicians that Sting associated himself with.
Then again, he wasn’t afraid of sounding like a grown-up whenever he made one of his records. He was happy to share his gift with the world however he saw fit, and even people like Paul Simonon of the Clash would be asking him for a few tips about bass technique whenever they toured together. The bassist definitely had some secret admirers, but John Lydon was the kind of person that spit in the face of traditional musical technique on every project that he ever worked on.
Sex Pistols weren’t about being sophisticated in any way, and when Lydon formed Public Image Ltd, he wanted the chance to work with instruments that he hadn’t worked with before. The sense of discovery is what made his music interesting, and while he could make a ton of songs that could shock people with how caustic they sounded, Sting wasn’t about to say that he had the longest-lasting career that he had ever seen.
Lydon was still going throughout the 1990s, but by the time that Sting was turning a corner in his career, he felt that Lydon had fallen by the wayside, saying, “I think he’s struggling. I think it’s difficult for him. I liked what he did at the time, and I like what he’s done since. But it’s a very small part. I loved Never Mind the Bollocks, and I loved the single ‘Public Image.’ But that doesn’t make a career. I think he’s in a difficult position.”
Further reading: From The Vault
And it’s not like Lydon was exactly making the best impression among the true punks anymore, either. He was still trying to provoke at every opportunity, but there are even stories from the birth of grunge where bands like Green River were taking the piss out of him when he headlined one of their shows when he found his way to Seattle.
It was a sad reality for anyone to face around the time that Lydon was reaching the decade of irony, but Sting knew that changing with the times was the best way for him to maintain himself. He wasn’t going to become one of the biggest stars in the world by staying stagnant, and the best that he could hope for was making an album that kept people interested in where he was going next.
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