In 2007 Blender named Sting as the worst lyricist in pop music, accusing the former Police frontman of “mountainous pomposity (and) cloying spirituality”. I enjoy much of Sting’s music – The Police had a terrific run of singles and Sting records such as …Nothing Like The Sun and The Soul Cages are strong, I draw the line, however, with Sting’s 21st century releases like Sacred Love and his lute album. But there’s justification for labelling Sting as a bad lyricist – he has a tendency to drop incongruous literary references and forced rhymes into his songs.
It’s debatable what’s worse – Sting’s efforts to spice up his songs with references to Scylla, Charybdis, Mephistopheles, and a copious amount of dog metaphors? Or rote lyrics about moons, Junes, and partying? But Sting’s literary clangers make for entertaining reading. Here are ten of his most awkward lines, ranked:
#10 Walking in Your Footsteps
Hey mighty brontosaurus
from The Police album Synchronicity, 1983
Don’t you have a lesson for us?
You thought your rule would always last
There were no lessons in your past
You were built three stories high
They say you would not hurt a fly
If we explode the atom bomb
Would they say that we were dumb?
#9 De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da
And when their eloquence escapes me
from The Police album Zenyatta Mondatta, 1980
Their logic ties me up and rapes me
#8 Russians
In Europe and America
from The Dream of the Blue Turtles, 1985
There’s a growing feeling of hysteria
Conditioned to respond to all the threats
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets
#7 We Work the Black Seam
Our blood has stained the coal
from The Dream of the Blue Turtles, 1985
We tunneled deep inside the nations soul
We matter more than pounds and pence
Your economic theory makes no sense
One day in a nuclear age
They may understand our rage
They build machines that they can’t control
And bury the waste in a great big hole
Power was to become cheap and clean
Grimy faces were never seen
Deadly for 12,000 years
Is carbon 14
#6 Don’t Stand So Close To Me
It’s no use, he sees her
from The Police album Zenyatta Mondatta, 1980
He starts to shake and cough
Just like the old man in
That book by Nabokov
#5 44/876
I’m trying to free my mind, and live a life stress free
from the Shaggy and Sting album 44/876, 2018
But the politics of this country are getting to me
I have a dream that I’m swimming in the Caribbean Sea
And then my good friend Shaggy says
“Come spend some time, family”
#4 Send Your Love
Finding the world in the smallness of a grain of sand
from Sacred Love, 2003
And holding infinities in the palm of your hand
And Heaven’s realms in the seedlings of this tiny flower
And eternities in the space of a single hour
#3 Conversation With A Dog
I asked my dog what he thought the best in man
non-album b-side, 1987
He said, “The love you dispense to me twice daily from a can.”
#2 Perfect Love…Gone Wrong
This doghouse never was the place for me,
Runner up and second best just ain’t my pedigree
I was so happy, just the two of us
Until this alpha male
Turned up in the January saleHe won’t love you
from Brand New Day, 1999
Like I love you,
It won’t be long now before that puppy goes astray
And what I like about this guy the most?……….
He’d be my favourite lamppost
Devil take the hindmost
#1 Love is Stronger Than Justice
Of blood we lost a dozen litres
from Ten Summoners Tales, 1993
A small price to pay for las senoritas
Do you have some least favourite lines from Mr Gordon Sumner? Or some favourites? Please share!
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Aphoristic Album Reviews is almost entirely written by one person. It features album reviews and blog posts across a growing spectrum of popular music.
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Graham Fyfe has been writing this website since his late teens. Now in his forties, he's been obsessively listening to albums for years. He works as a web editor and plays the piano.
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Da doo do do is bad, but not just the lyric you happened to choose.
Actuality there are some bad l lyrics all over “Zenyatta”.
BUT I don’t agree with your number 6. “Don’t stand” is a mesmerizing song (ya it’s insanely creepy!) but the song is not the same without the Nabokov line.
The Nabakov line is interesting – it does fit the song, but Nabakov/cough is a pretty awkward line. I remember a critic saying that he slipped it in to show he’d read some clever books.
“So I see you sent my letters back, and my LP records, and they’re all scratched…”.
Q. Who else has that ?
A. – nobody.
So we need to take the good with that bad in life, and also music.
He’s capable of some really good lines, for sure. Which maybe makes the bad ones worse?
Yeah they’re bad , but are they really worse than most lyrics by all the other big “serious” stars with their “important” songs? I don’t know. ha ha
Neil Peart is kind of in the same boat, I think – trying to express big ideas in short songs and sometimes coming across a bit pretentious.
I’ll tell you one lyric that I do like by him though. Demolition Man. I like it.
He definitely has some very good lyrics too. I love King of Pain – there’s a dead salmon frozen in a waterfall.
I like 8, 7, 6, but the rest are crappy, I agree. Some of his song lyrics I do like are on Dream of the Blue Turtles and Nothing like the Son. I love “Fortress Around Your Heart.” I also love, “The Secret Marriage.” I also love the lyrics in “Soul Cages.” I’m sure there are more.
I really like …Nothing Like the Sun and Soul Cages – lots of great songs, and nothing from those albums made the bad lyrics list (except a b-side from the era).
I like much of Sting’s music. When I look at some of these lyrics you called out, I guess I’m glad I generally don’t pay much attention to them. 🙂
I know it’s probably somewhat ignorant. My lame excuse is I started listening to English language music long before I ever spoke or understood a word of English. When it comes to most music, to me, it’s first and foremost about melody, vocals, sound and groove.
It also depends on the type of music. If it’s a political or protest song where the lyrics are key I pay attention to the words.
Interesting points! I think Brit pop/rock was instrumental in exporting the English language long after the British Navy controlled the seas.
One funny story is of a Beatles fan in another country who thought “Can’t Buy Me Love” was “Ken/Barbie Love”
“Ken/Barbie Love”, that’s great!?
I can see how a non-native English speaker could hear this.
In my early days of listening to English language, I would phonetically sing songs I liked. As I started to study English in school, suddenly, some of that phonetic gibberish would start to make sense!?
How about “Ken/Harry Love?”
I often don’t catch lyrics in songs, but Sting’s voice is often up pretty high in the mix. Does ‘Russians’ count as a political song?
I suppose it does. At the time this came out, there was lots of debate about nuclear missiles in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, and whether Europe/NATO needed more midrange missiles to balance the Russian arsenal, even though each side already had the capability to kill each other multiple times over!
I just realized that my favorite song by The Police only has four words in the entire song, other than repeating the title Voices in my Head over and over. I think that song is the greatest thing he ever did. He should have done more like that one.
“Message in a Bottle? “
It does repeat “sending out an SOS” a lot.
Early in his career, Sting figured out that once you had a great song and hooked everyone, you could put it to bed with the same simple lyric over and over again: “sending out an SOS” and “Roxanne, put on the red light”.
Each line appears 20/30 times at the end of each song.
It’s legendary!
Maybe he lost track of his own lesson in the end,
I can’t say either way.
Yeah, The Police had a good skill-set for a semi-instrumental piece like that – three very good musicians.
Conversations with a Dog is so profound and telling that there is no depth in man. I wish my dog could talk.
Your dog would probably phrase his answer in a simpler way. Like “I love that canned dog food”.
I do like some of his music but man…one word comes to mind… pretentious.
There are many awkward lines… he seems to go out of his way to write them.
He likes to rearrange sentences in unnatural ways so that they rhyme.