Sting: My Songs Tour: International

Sting oscillates between just good and good...

Sting's music carries – for better or worse – an eternal bass case on its back. Those who can stand the queue long enough to get into Grönan catch him in his most crowd-pleasing form.

Killinggänget's TV series "Percy Tårar" in 1996: studio musician "Backa-Olle" (Henrik Schyffert) strolls into a music store on Söder. He and the denim vest behind the counter are internally chewing about pedals and gig-related hangovers.

Sting has long been an artist who, especially music journalists, frowned upon. Musicians, however, have embraced him. No wonder. Although Gordon Sumner is known as the ex-bassist and singer in the new wave band The Police and for his successful solo career, he is, with his origins as a jazz musician, more of a musician than anything else.

In recent years, Sting has devoted himself to nautical shipbuilding musicals and Shaggy collaborations. He comes to Gröna Lund with “My songs”, an album where he records covers of his own hits for the second time in his career.

Gröna Lund is packed to the brim. Many people have to take half-empty ferries back to Slussen. In steps the lanky man in a tight T-shirt that reveals a 67-year-old in good shape. He throws his shrill, unmistakable voice out into the warm June evening. It is the eighteenth concert in Stockholm since 1979.

– I can't do the math, I wasn't even born then, says Sting.

He has a motley band with him, not unlike the happy rocking of a school auditorium – just listen to the lush take of "Roxanne".

This is Sting, the one encouraging the sing-along. One backbeat favourite follows another: "Message in a bottle". "Englishman in New York". "Walking on the moon" (in which Bob Marley's "Get up stand up" is blasted in). A contrast to the Sting who sometimes sits in a bark boat in the stream and plays the lute – naked.

I usually have no problem with good music. But the concert is sometimes a powerhouse of studio musicians. If "Backa-Olle" had stuck his way all the way to the front, he would have been satisfied.

The evening reaches its highs instead when the band lowers the amps to 7. A tenderly dynamic “Fields of Gold” – with seagulls surfing in front of the stage as if directly imported from a British coastal town – is perhaps the prime example. The jealousy drama “Every breath you take” also deserves a mention. It is the crown jewel in the Englishman’s, after all, sensitive song treasury.

(c) Aftonbladet by Per Magnusson