What I’m listening to’ is a weekly series of music that reigns at the top of my personal playlist. Music that I think is cool and deserves a mention and some extra attention.
This week: Sting.

Last weekend we had a little couples diner get together with my best friend and his girlfriend, who in turn is a real good friend of my own girlfriend. As our apartment was finally (FINALLY) livable after a three-months-plus renovation period that had left us waiting for a usable kitchen for that whole period of time (yaj and horay to take-away and delivery; it get’s really annoying I can tell you now) we decided to throw the party and cook for them at our place.

As my girl was busy doing her thing in the kitchen, I was looking for some good music to play during the occasion, but couldn’t really decide on something that would please all four of us. Then suddenly I stumbled upon an option that I hadn’t only listened to extensively with this best friend of mine, but had also served as a soundtrack to some of my most wonderful childhood memories, for it was not only one of my own all-time favorite artists, but my mothers’ too. I knew from experience this guys’ music is so hard to hate for anybody, it would be the perfect bet for the only person I wasn’t 100% sure of what to play for -his girlfriend- too: Sting.

Although if I’d had to name my 2-5 favorite artists of all time, Sting would definitely be in there, I hadn’t listened to his wonderful blend of pop, jazz, folk, rock for quite some time. Oh how I’d missed it. We played two of my favorite albums of his: ‘All This Time’ – Live and ‘Mercury Falling’ which again sparked my sleeping love for this wonderful artist, that has not only written music that melts hearts and souls of both layman and trained musicians (an art in itself, for it is often the ‘layman music’ that isn’t interesting to musicians and ‘musicians’ music’ that isn’t for the layman), but also succeeds in gathering the most mind-blowing crews of musicians around him to play and record at such an outstanding level of performance that it will make you shiver.

Here is a clip from one of my favorite tracks of his, the song ‘Hounds of Winter’ which is found on both albums mentioned (originally published on the ‘Mercury Falling’ studio record) played live at the ‘All this Time’ recording at Stings’ beautiful house in Tuscany – Italy (sorry I couldn’t find any better quality video of this one).

After my ‘Sting Flame’ got lit again, however, I couldn’t help but get lost in youtube again, when I found this awesome clip of the recordings of another great album of his: ‘Ten Summoner’s Tales’ that -although I could and would recommend dozens of his tracks / video’s- I instantly knew this was one I had to share here in my next W.I.L.T..
How cool to see these insanely talented musicians at work, recording the astonishing sounding atmosphere that these golden tracks each have. No words (except for those over the top compliments there), just feelings. Wonderful stuff, highly recommended to watch in it’s whole (did you see that contrabass fall!!? haha. Just play on!). Ladies and gentlemen, let me show you a behind the scenes peek of the world of my favorite artist of this moment (maybe even of all time) What I’m Listening To this week: Sting.

Cheers, Coen.