Sting & Shaggy: The 44/876 Tour

Sting and Shaggy prove an unlikely but winning pair...

The collaborative tour featuring Sting and Shaggy that played Monday at the Pageant was a potent reminder of how one measure of an artist's best songs is the way they reveal themselves over time. They speak to the age in which they were written and performed only to re-emerge later, perhaps in different and wholly unexpected ways.

You know we're talking about Shaggy here, right?

No, seriously. Maybe historical events are simply bending to his purposes, but the dancehall reggae star performed some songs that dated from the dawn of this century, yet they seemed more like timely responses to recent headlines.

Topically, "Strength of a Woman" is an evergreen, but it seems particularly apt now, thanks to the political muscle being flexed by women in this election year.

"Don't you underestimate the strength of a woman," Shaggy warned.

And then there's "It Wasn't Me," the bawdy, comical tune about a two-timing man. It was reimagined earlier this year by TV host James Corden and Shaggy himself as a dialogue between President Donald Trump and special counsel Rob- ert Mueller.

Politics didn't play that big of a role in Monday's two-hour show, which mostly was packed with hits and favourites by each artist with scarcely a pause between them. But there was a pointed message in “Dreaming in the U.S.A.," from the pair's recent album, "44/876." Shaggy dedicated the song "to all the DREAMers."

"No matter where you're from, we're all brothers and sisters here," he said.

Shaggy is an immigrant and veteran of the Gulf War, having served in the U.S. Marines.

Shaggy also turned in one of the show's most impassioned performances, covering Bob Marley's activist anthem "Get Up, Stand Up."

And as for that Sting guy? He's still pretty sharp, too.

At 67 he celebrated his birthday a few hours early as fans serenaded him with "Happy Birthday" - the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer (as a member of the Police) and long-time solo artist is still in great shape and good voice. He per- formed songs from throughout his de- cades-long career, many of them given a fresh spin by Shaggy's patois-laced interjections.

The pair established the pattern with the opening song, Sting's "Englishman in New York," which Shaggy took over briefly and turned into "Jamaican in New York."

They also fitted some of their songs together, matching the fat groove of Shaggy's "Oh Carolina" to Sting's "We'll Be Together?" During Sting's already reggaefied "Love Is the Second Wave," Shaggy closed the deal with a spoken/chanted dancehall toast.

The show featured eight songs from "44/876" including the pulsing, laid- back single "Don't Make Me Wait" and "Crooked Tree," which found the duo engaged in a bit of silly stagecraft: Sting donned jailbird stripes to play a man on trial as Shaggy appeared as a judge in robe and powdered wig. "Lock him up!" he declared at song's end.

Of course, it was each of the performers' classic material that drew the big- gest response: Sting's Police hits "Message in a Bottle," "Every Breath You Take" and "Roxanne," which was matched with Shaggy's "Boombastic" There were also Sting solo numbers including "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free," "Fields of Gold" and the show's musical high- light, a gorgeous, textured take on "Desert Rose." Shaggy, meanwhile, offered "Angel," "Habibi (I Need Your Love)" and "It Wasn't Me."

After more than two dozen songs, many of them upbeat and light-hearted, Sting ended the evening on a quiet, contemplative note, singing "Fragile," his poignant song about the senselessness of violence.

Nothing wrong with a show that makes you dance and smile and sends you home with something to think about.

(c) St Louis Post-Dispatch by Daniel Durchholz