Sting & Shaggy: The 44/876 Tour

Sting and Shaggy on stage: Englishman in New York was performed at Bratislava Castle...

After the quartet of handsome operatic pop stars Il Divo and the Welsh tiger Tom Jones, the Englishman Sting and the Jamaican Shaggy were the next famous performers to reign at Bratislava Castle.

The Slovak metropolis was one of the stops on their joint Sting & Shaggy: The 44/876 Tour on Tuesday evening (June 26).

The Englishman Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, that is Sting's civil name (*October 2, 1951) is already well known to domestic fans, it was his sixth performance in Slovakia. And Shaggy, according to his Jamaican birth certificate Orville Richard Burrell (*October 22, 1968), sang under the Tatras for the fourth time. The concert tour was preceded by the release of their joint album 44/876 on April 20. The number 44 in the title stands for the area code for calling England and 876 for calling Jamaica from within North America. They performed songs from their new album, as well as hits from the Police era and Sting's solo career. Shaggy also performed a few hits from his own work.

The packed western terrace of Bratislava Castle reacted immediately to the first song, the famous hit Englishman in New York. The second was the song 44/876 from the joint album of the same name, the third song Morning is Coming was also from the new album, during the evening they played and sang five more, To Love and Be Loved, Gotta Get Back My Baby, Don't Make Me Wait, Dreaming in the U.S.A. and Crocked Tree. From the Police era, they offered the song Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic, Shaggy's famous Oh Carolina, the others were Love Is the Seventh Wave, the famous Message in a Bottle, the megahit Fields of Gold, If You Love Somebody, Shaggy's hit Angel, Shape of My Heart, Walking on the Moon, So Lonely, Hey Sexy Lady and finally Roxanne with half of the song Bombastic in the middle of it.

The dignified premises of the Bratislava Castle indirectly encouraged the audience to adopt a similar attitude. The environment was different from that at summer music festivals. The mood rose with each song, both singers had fun on stage and their positive mood was transmitted to the entire audience. They sang, whistled, waved their hands, and even danced, if they found at least a little space for dancing.

You can't leave Bratislava without an encore. Sting could personally see this more than once. He and Shaggy and the band returned to the stage twice to add the songs Desert Rose, It Wasn't Me, Every Breath You Take and Fragile to finish. While still on stage, after the last one, Sting disconnected from the monitors and it was clear that there would be no more encore. The combined backing band, which includes Sting's guitarists Dominic Miller and Rufus Miller, drummer Josh Freese, and Shaggy's vocalists Monique Musique, Gene Noble, and keyboard player Kevon Webster, also contributed to the success of the musical evening.

The album 44/876 is also the thirteenth studio album in their discography for Sting and Shaggy, who is 17 years younger. It offers 12 new songs, the first single is the song Don't Make Me Wait, which did not make it into the singles chart. However, the album reached a comfortable ninth place.

They started the European part on June 19 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, continued in Athens, Bratislava was the third stop. From the city on the Danube, their route leads to Sankt Margarethen, Austria, where they will play on Wednesday, June 27, and two days later they will perform in Brouwersdam, Netherlands at the Sea Festival. The string of 31 European concerts they have planned will end on August 5 in the Italian city of Cattolica. After that, they will move on to America.

(c) Pravda by Marko Erd