I have listened to a recently released new album of Sting, “THE BRIDGE”. The songs are successful integrations of Sting’s music together with old folk songs, classics, jazz, rock, pops and so on. Starting with powerful self-harmonized vocal choruses of Sting in “Rushing Water”, it proceeds to a pop song “If It’s Love”, and then to “The Book of Numbers”, a song of a haunting soul of J.R. Oppenheimer, a father of nuclear weapons. It moves to controversial “Loving You”, and then to “Harmony Road”, which is not a harmony at all. After that, it proceeds to vowing “For Her Love”, and then to historical “The Hills on the Border”, which describes the border of England and Scotland, and reminds me of our journey through Hadrian’s Wall by bus. The next song “Captain Bateman” is a kind of a scary story, and then a religious song of a suspicion, “The Bells of St. Thomas” appears. Finally, “The Bridge”, which is a ghostly appearance of the bridge integrating anything, appears as a conclusive remark. Bonus tracks are “Waters of Tyne”: a folk song of Newcastle upon Tyne, where Sting was raised; an instrumental song of various interpretations: “Captain Bateman’s Basement”; “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay”, which reflects our stuck in the societies; and the people’s acts against it, “I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City”. This album is a nice integration of the musical senses in Sting’s career.
