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Sting delivers a rousing show on My Songs tour with fan favorites: 'I am a very lucky man'

VIENNA, Va. – Never mind when Sting talks about tantric sex .

His stamina as a performer and musician should be celebrated mightily.

At the scenic Filene Center at Wolf Trap Sept. 1, Sting played the first of two sold-out shows to kickstart the new North American leg of his My Songs tour , an outing that has circled the globe since 2019 – excepting a 2020 pandemic sidelining – and detoured as a Las Vegas residency.

Without pausing for a breath or break, the 71-year-old craftsman of some of the most sophisticated pop-rock in modern music barreled through an opening quintet of chestnuts that seesawed between Police mainstays (“Message in a Bottle,” “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic”) and his storied solo career (“Englishman in New York,” “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free,” “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You”).

These are not three-minute radio hits. They’re songs packed with challenging lyrics, complicated rhythms and serpentine codas. Intermingled elements of jazz, pop, rock and reggae. Poetic expressions of soul searching, quixotic love and yearning.

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And yet, there was Sting, his voice as muscular as his biceps, headset firmly locked to allow him to roam the stage, bass neck titled upward as he leaned into his nimble finger work, rolling through his repertoire with ease.

In a field of graying rock icons, Sting is a platinum-topped torch bearer.

Which hits is Sting playing on his My Songs tour?

With a resume spanning nearly more than 45 years of material, Sting’s musical cup overfloweth with options.

But the point of the tour is to spotlight hits – still an impossible task given his dozen Top 40 smashes as a solo artist and another nine with the Police – while also paying remembrance to a few meaningful album tracks.

The precise musicianship of his excellent band, including longtime musical partner Dominic Miller on guitar, Zach Jones on drums and Kevon Webster on keyboards, provided “Fields of Gold” with a silky warmth (the stage, naturally, bathed in a burnt-orange hue) and pushed the soaring melody of the erudite “All This Time.”

Jam sessions: Steve Miller recalls late '60s San Francisco music having 'a dark side' but 'so much beauty'

Sting teased ace harmonica player Shane Sager that he couldn’t match the proficiency of Stevie Wonder’s original playing on “Brand New Day,” but the twentysomething Sager met the challenge with his soulful squawking throughout the song’s lackadaisical sway.

The well-paced, 19-song set list is bookended with some of Sting’s most recognizable singalongs, including Police favorites “Walking on the Moon” (no one “eeh-yoh-oh”s like Sting) and “So Lonely,” which dovetailed into its spiritual mate, Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry,” a showcase for Sting’s fluid bass work.

One of the most dynamic aspects of Sting’s music is its broad-minded sensibilities. Not many pop-rock stars could fashion a hit out of a pairing with an Algerian singer, as Sting did in 2000 with Cheb Mami. Their worldwide hit, “Desert Rose,” still stimulated with its collection of chanting, atypical cadence and Sting’s suggestively jutting right hip.

Likewise, the pair of pre-encore tracks from the Police’s final album, the landmark “Synchronicity” from 1983, reminded of that band’s inimitable magic.

“King of Pain,” its lyrics stacked with elegantly bleak imagery, its bridge both puzzling and profound, proved emotionally searing (Sting’s son, Joe Sumner, who opened the show, returned to trade verses with his dad).

And of course, the song most associated with Sting and the Police , “Every Breath You Take,” elicited the expected roar from the crowd as they sang along to this speedier live version over Sting’s haunting bass line.

While the radio favorites are certainly worth commemorating, the chosen album tracks and smaller hits that Sting has curated for the show also warrant attention. Background singer Melissa Musique slayed during a joyful spotlight moment on “Heavy Cloud No Rain,” while fellow backup vocalist Gene Noble infused “Shape of My Heart,” its chiffon melody as gorgeous as ever, with meaningful soul.

Early in the show when he finally paused, Sting graciously offered, “I am a very lucky man to be standing here right now.”

Indeed, he is. But his fans share in that good fortune.

How long will Sting be on tour in North America?

Given the length of the My Songs outing, it’s no surprise Sting and his band present a taut, 100-minute production.

They’ll continue to unfurl this sleek outing through Oct. 15 – including Sting’s One Fine Day festival in Philadelphia Sept. 9 that will reunite him with unlikely musical buddy, Shaggy – before returning overseas.

Set List: Sting’s My Songs Tour

The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer continues to surprise himself on his ongoing My Songs world tour, which showcases the most iconic songs from The Police as well as Sting’s solo career. “Every night on this tour feels fresh, and the set list is ever evolving,” the singer-songwriter tells Apple Music. “I’ve been performing some of these songs for 40 years and I still find new aspects to discover within them. I have the same passion and curiosity as if I’d written them yesterday.” With support from special guest Joe Sumner, who is the lead singer of Fiction Plane and Sting’s son, the tour picks back up in September at the Wolf Trap in Virginia before making its way through North America and Europe. You’re probably long familiar with hits like “Message in a Bottle” and “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” but hearing them live can offer fresh perspectives. “These songs are organic—living, breathing things,” Sting says. “Listening to the recorded versions is like looking at a photograph. You’re experiencing them at a particular moment in time. With a live show, you can hear how they’ve adapted over the years, and even how they change in real time.” Whether you’re preparing for an upcoming show or revisiting one you recently attended, explore the set list and put yourself in the crowd.

22 Songs, 1 hour, 36 minutes

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Here Is Sting’s ‘My Songs Tour’ Setlist

Sting is busy. The singer of The Police sold his solo catalog and The Police catalog for an estimated $300 million last year. More recently, he shared his hot take about AI : “It doesn’t impress me at all.”

Now, the legendary musician is on his My Songs Tour . It kicked off in Toronto on September 5 and it’ll be all over North America throughout the month, and it’s packed with his own hits as well as highlights from The Police.

Check out his setlist from his performance at Hard Rock Live at the Etess Arena in Atlantic City, New Jersey, according to setlist.fm .

1. “Message in a Bottle” (The Police) 2. “Englishman in New York” 3. “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” (The Police) 4. “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” 5. “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You” 6. “Loving You” 7. “Fields of Gold” 8. “Brand New Day” 9. “Heavy Cloud No Rain” 10. “Shape of My Heart” 11. “Why Should I Cry for You?” 12. “All This Time” 13. “Mad About You” 14. “Walking on the Moon” (The Police) 15. “So Lonely” (The Police) (With Snippet of “No Women No Cry”) 16. “Desert Rose” 17. “King of Pain” (The Police) (with Joe Sumner) 18. “Every Breath You Take” (The Police) 19. “Roxanne” (The Police) (encore) 20. “Fragile” (encore)

• Every Breath You Take

Sting Brings My Songs Tour to North America in 2023 with Son Joe Sumner

by Tina Benitez-Eves April 12, 2023, 7:39 am

In late 2023, Sting will bring his My Songs World Tour to North America with his son Joe Sumner as the opening act.

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Following a run of European shows during the summer, the North American leg of the My Songs Tour will kick off on Sept. 1 in Vienna, Virginia, and continue through Canada and the U.S., before wrapping up on Oct. 12 in Rogers, Arkansas.

The My Songs World Tour previously hit Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Japan with a set list spanning some of Sting’s biggest hits with The Police as well as from his solo career, including “Englishman in New York,” “Message in a Bottle,” “ Roxanne ,” “Demolition Man,” “Fields of Gold,” and “Shape of My Heart,” among many others.

Sting recently hit the news after rapper Diddy revealed that he pays the former Police frontman $5,000 per day for sampling the band’s 1983 hit “ Every Breath You Take ” on his 1997 single “I’ll Be Missing You.” Diddy later said that he was “joking” and that the two of them have been friends for a long time.

“I want y’all to understand I was joking,” wrote Diddy . “It’s called being facetious. Me and [Sting] have been friends for a long time. He never charged me $3K or $5K a day for ‘Missing You.’ He probably makes more than $5K a day from one of the biggest songs in history.”

Sting, 71, released his 14th album My Songs , a collection of new renditions of previously released songs from his catalog, in 2019, followed by The Bridge in 2021.

Singer, songwriter, and bassist, Joe Sumner, has released five albums with his band Fiction Plane since 2003 and is also working on his own solo material.

Sting, My Songs 2023 Tour Dates Sept. 1 – Vienna, VA @ Wolf Trap Sept. 2 – Vienna, VA @ Wolf Trap Sept. 3 – Atlantic City, NJ @ Hard Rock Live at Etess Arena Sept. 5 – Toronto, ON @ Budweiser Stage Sept. 7 – Boston, MA @ MGM Music Hall at Fenway Sept. 20 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre Sept. 23 – West Valley City, UT @ USANA Amphitheatre Sept. 29 – Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena Oct. 2 – Concord, CA @ Concord Pavilion Oct. 4 – San Diego, CA @ Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre at SDSU Oct. 7 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl Oct. 9 – Phoenix, AZ @ Arizona Financial Theatre Oct. 12 – Rogers, AR @ Walmart AMP

Photo by Don Arnold/WireImage

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Sting Confirms 2023 North American Tour

Sting will take his acclaimed My Songs World Tour across North America in September and October, The Cherrytree Music Company and Live Nation confirmed on Tuesday.

Sting’s My Songs show features songs from throughout the 17-time Grammy Award winner’s career, both as a member of  The Police and as a solo artist. On tour, Sting will be accompanied by “an electric, rock ensemble.” Special guest Joe Sumner will be appearing at all newly announced performances.

Following recent performances in United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore, Sting’s My Songs will return to North America on September 5th for a performance at Budweiser Stage in Toronto, ON. The tour will continue from there to Boston, MA’s MGM Music Hall at Fenway (9/7), Morrison, CO’s  Red Rocks Amphitheatre (9/20), Vancouver, BC’s  Rogers Arena (9/29), Los Angeles, CA’s  Hollywood Bowl (10/7), and more. The announcement notes that additional shows will soon be added in Wantagh, Hollywood, Atlanta, Portland, Seattle, Reno, Dallas, Houston, and Austin.

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Tickets for the newly announced Sting  My Songs North American tour dates will go on sale to members of Sting’s Fan Club starting Wednesday, April 12th. Additional pre-sales will run throughout the week. Remaining tickets for the  My Songs tour 2023 North American leg will go on sale to the general public on Friday, April 14th at 10:00 a.m. local venue time here .

Click below to view the initial list of 2023 Sting North American tour dates. For more information and ticketing details, head here .

Sting  My Songs 2023 North American Tour Dates

Sept. 05 – Toronto, ON – Budweiser Stage Sept. 07 – Boston, MA – MGM Music Hall at Fenway Sept. 20 – Morrison, CO – Red Rocks Amphitheatre Sept. 23 – West Valley City, UT – USANA Amphitheatre Sept. 29 – Vancouver, BC – Rogers Arena Oct. 02 – Concord, CA – Concord Pavilion Oct. 04 – San Diego, CA – Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre at SDSU Oct. 07 – Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Bowl Oct. 09 – Phoenix, AZ – Arizona Financial Theatre Oct. 12 – Rogers, AR – Walmart AMP

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All Setlists

• All setlist songs  ( 2652 )

Years on tour

• 2024  ( 34 )
• 2023  ( 114 )
• 2022  ( 114 )
• 2021  ( 24 )
• 2020  ( 47 )
• 2019  ( 123 )
• 2018  ( 11 )
• 2017  ( 127 )
• 2016  ( 55 )
• 2015  ( 41 )
• 2014  ( 12 )
• 2013  ( 66 )
• 2012  ( 94 )
• 2011  ( 103 )
• 2010  ( 99 )
• 2009  ( 24 )
• 2008  ( 3 )
• 2007  ( 1 )
• 2006  ( 46 )
• 2005  ( 52 )
• 2004  ( 144 )
• 2003  ( 8 )
• 2002  ( 8 )
• 2001  ( 91 )
• 2000  ( 174 )
• 1999  ( 54 )
• 1998  ( 2 )
• 1997  ( 43 )
• 1996  ( 186 )
• 1995  ( 11 )
• 1994  ( 68 )
• 1993  ( 122 )
• 1992  ( 11 )
• 1991  ( 192 )
• 1990  ( 5 )
• 1989  ( 1 )
• 1988  ( 169 )
• 1987  ( 19 )
• 1986  ( 55 )
• 1985  ( 95 )
• 1981  ( 4 )

Show all tours

• 57th & 9th  ( 114 )
• A Conspiracy of Hope Tour  ( 1 )
• All This Time Tour  ( 13 )
• Amnesty International Concert  ( 1 )
• Back to Bass  ( 130 )
• Brand New Day  ( 274 )
• Broken Music  ( 71 )
• Buchanan's Forever 2010  ( 3 )
• Dream of the Blue Turtles  ( 144 )
• Human Rights Now!  ( 18 )
• If On a Winter's Night  ( 8 )
• Mercury Falling 1996/97  ( 221 )
• My Songs  ( 276 )
• My Songs: The Las Vegas Residency  ( 22 )
• Nothing Like the Sun  ( 166 )
• Sacred Love  ( 158 )
• Soul Cages  ( 199 )
• Sting 3.0  ( 17 )
• Summer Tour 2012  ( 35 )
• Summer Tour 2015  ( 24 )
• Summer Tour 2016  ( 10 )
• Symphonicity  ( 134 )
• Symphony Show  ( 4 )
• Ten Summoner's Tales  ( 178 )
• The Last Ship (Benefit Shows)  ( 16 )
• The Last Ship 2019  ( 37 )
• The Last Ship 2020  ( 43 )
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Songs played by tour: My Songs

This table lists how often a song was performed by Sting during the tour "My Songs". Multiple performances from the same setlist are also counted towards the total.

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Sting: My Songs Tour: 2021 - 2023

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Sting Hits Canada on My Songs Tour

His upcoming North American tour includes six shows in Canada

BY Kaelen Bell Published Feb 18, 2022

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September 21, 2024

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The 10 Best Movies of 2024 (So Far)

It would be hard to think of another time when the film industry cooed over every box-office hit like a lost prospector holding up a gold nugget (and for a while this year, finding those hits was starting to feel like panning for gold). It all makes sense, though. Each week, the movies that open in theaters now have to prove the viability of movies as a popular form. That’s why the entire future of cinema can seem like it’s hanging on one blockbuster opening weekend. But, of course, it’s not — it’s hanging on whether people will go out to the movies because they’re drawn by movies entertaining and artful enough to see. On that score, we think 2024 has already been a bonanza. Variety’s chief film critics have found much to love: studio knockouts, independent standouts, international gems, documentary landmarks, underground breakouts. Here are our picks for the 10 best movies of 2024 so far.

Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy

It’s scarier than any horror film. It’s scarier than any other contemporary political documentary. And it’s scary because it’s all happening, which is why you need to see it. Stephen Ujlaki and Chris Jones’s epochal exposé is about how the forces of Christian nationalism have become far more powerful than most people realize in their crusade to transform America into a theocracy. (The vacation-home flag choices of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. are a tip of the iceberg.) This is exactly the kind of totalitarian political/cultural movement that the American system was built by the Founders to repel. But the film reveals the links, both upfront and hidden, between Christian nationalism and the rise of Donald Trump (the Jan. 6 insurrection was fueled, in large part, by Christian nationalists), making the prospect of a second Trump presidency take on a whole new meaning. — Owen Gleiberman

The Bikeriders

Maybe it’s the look of reckless rebellion in their eyes, or the way they’re ready to brawl at a moment’s notice. With half the guys in the (fictional, but fact-based) Vandals Motorcycle Club, you just know they’re going to die behind the wheel one day — a tragic fate that hovers over Jeff Nichols’ vibrant chronicle of that mid-’60s moment when American biker culture shifted from “The Wild One” cool to the drug-addled anarchy of Roger Corman’s “The Wild Angels.” A wild stallion bucking against straight society, Austin Butler’s Benny clearly has a death wish, which makes it all the more wrenching to observe Jodie Comer’s Kathy trying to tame him. But who can blame her? This astonishingly well-acted saga presents an odd sort of love triangle, with Tom Hardy’s charismatic gang leader taking up the third corner. The outcome seems inevitable, and yet, Nichols surprises, delivering the best ending in ages. —  Peter Debruge

Challengers

By all rights, Luca Guadagnino’s tennis-world love story should have been a sporty piece of romantic eye candy. It’s about three sexy young tennis pros: cool, diffident Art (Mike Faist), rapacious bad boy Patrick (Josh O’Connor), and fierce, elegant Tashi (Zendaya), who comes between them. On paper it sounds like “Twilight” with aerodynamic rackets. But Justin Kuritzkes’ screenplay and Guadagino’s wizardly direction elevate it into something closer to the tennis love-triangle equivalent of three-dimensional chess. The movie doesn’t just leap around in time, charting how Tashi first hooked up with Patrick, then wound up marrying Art and becoming his coach. It surveys the rules of attraction from every side of the court; it reveals the unconscious surge of love’s push and pull. Each of the two men love Tashi, and they also, beneath their hellbent rivalry, love each other. Homoerotically or just platonically? The film says: You decide, but the difference may not be as big as you think. — OG

A decade ago, Tom Hardy’s “Locke” pulled off an incredible feat, spinning a tense, three-dimensional relationship drama around a man taking calls in his car. In her tricky, keep-’em-guessing debut “Daddio,” writer-director Christy Hall does one better, eavesdropping on two strangers (played by Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson) in a cab ride from JFK airport back to Manhattan. Penn plays the chatty taxi driver, who fancies himself an expert on human nature, attempting to psychoanalyze the understandably wary young woman in the back seat. Ever so slowly — and with just the right amount of creepiness — he draws out details about her situation. Johnson’s body language speaks volumes in a performance so good it more than absolves her for “Madame Web.” Hall has crafted a juicy artichoke of a movie, peeling away the passenger’s daddy issues one layer at a time to get at what really matters to her character: trust. — PD

Dune: Part Two

There’s a moment in the original “Star Wars” when Luke Skywalker looks out on the desert horizon of his home planet and sees two suns setting in the distance. It’s a simple detail, but one that says so much about how his world is at once just like ours and unknowably different. Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” is the first sci-fi franchise to make us tingle in the same way, and this three-hour follow-up brings it all together. In the first blockbuster back after last year’s industry-stopping labor strikes, we were transported to another world as only Hollywood can. There’s a formidable new adversary in Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha (the Sting role in David Lynch’s impossible-to-follow version), blue Kool-Aid drinking tests of Timothée Chalamet’s chosen-oneness, and the incredibly satisfying payoff of Paul Atreides’ sandworm-surfing lessons. Still, it’s the relatable human moments amid Villeneuve’s awe-inspiring vision that bring “Dune: Part Two” down to earth, so to speak. Frank Herbert purists are obsessed with telling you what’s missing, but the real feat here is how dramatically the film simplifies all that arcane plotting into clear story beats, making the mythology feel almost intuitive, the way witnessing a double sunset did half a century earlier. —  PD

In a twist few born in the relatively conservative 20th century could have anticipated, gay representation has gravitated so far into the mainstream that it’s lost much of its capacity to shock. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in terms of the cultural conversation (“Milk” helped defeat Prop 8, after all, and once-punk Pedro Almodóvar is now one of your mom’s favorite filmmakers), and yet, “Femme” boldly leans into the edgier aspects of queer lust, unpacking the twisted attraction between a drag performer (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) and the closeted scally lad (George MacKay) who brutally attacks him outside the club. Several months later, they cross paths at a gay sauna and begin hooking up in secret. Who has the power now? It’s deeply uncomfortable, psychologically rich and mad-sexy territory to explore, which first-time feature directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping approach with the confidence of career-high Brian De Palma. —  PD

Inside Out 2

All hail the triumphant creative return of Pixar. Nine years ago, the glory of “Inside Out” is that it was a prankish digitally animated fairy tale that really did present an astonishing model of the human personality (our emotions in a tug-of-war, even as we need each one of them). It was a profoundly moving story of the universal passage out of childhood innocence. The beauty of “Inside Out 2” is that it comes close to matching the high of “Inside Out.” With Riley, now 13, ruled by new emotions as she tries to fit in with the cool kids at hockey camp, the movie is a roller-coaster that asks primal questions: When happens when our Anxiety becomes greater than our Joy? And what does it mean, in the age of social-media competition, to be “embraced by our peers” if we have to lose who we are to do it? — OG

Kinds of Kindness

With the exception of “The Favourite,” I’ve never been a fan of the director Yorgos Lanthimos. I found “Dogtooth” drab. I didn’t even like “Poor Things,” a movie that, to me, was overlong and didactic. So you might take it with a grain of salt when I say that “Kinds of Kindness,” a theater-of-the-absurd allegorical Twilight Zone mind game about our brave new world of power and deception, is the best movie that Lanthimos has made. Yet for two hours and 46 minutes, I watched it in a state of spellbound amazement. Each of the film’s three episodes, with the same cast members floating through them like figures out of a dream, is a puzzle that we slowly fill in, whether it’s Jesse Plemons as a dweeb whose boss (Willem Dafoe) makes quixotic demands that are a logical extension of corporate fascism; Plemons as a cop whose wife, played by Emma Stone, resurfaces as a subtly different person; or Stone as a distraught woman who has left her family to follow a kinky cult leader (Dafoe) in a tale that tracks our obsessive compulsion to belong. I’m astounded by all the critics who crusade for adventurousness in mainstream cinema yet have greeted a movie this visionary in its radical storytelling bravura with a collective “Eh.” But don’t take my word for it. Buy a ticket, check yourself into the Hotel Lanthimos, and see if you can ever leave. — OG

The People's Joker

An underground/midnight/guerrilla-cinema sensation. Vera Drew, who directed and co-wrote this scandalous IP-on-acid comic-book psychodrama, plays the title character, a mentally fractured aspiring stand-up comedian who bills herself as Joker the Harlequin. She’s the maniacal Joker of DC legend, as well as an outlaw parody of the Joker and also a discordantly sincere trans heroine who’s using the Joker’s persona to present who she is to the world. The movie takes place in a diabolically playful free-associational media zone that suggests the channel-surfing hall of mirrors of “Natural Born Killers” crossed with a public-access knockoff of “Network.” It toys with the notion that those who are driven to extremes of cosplay are truer to the spirit of comic books than anyone else. Drew’s performance is her own variation on Heath Ledger’s cuckoo pain-freak depravity and Joaquin Phoenix’s miserablism-turned-prancing-homicidal-clown vengeance. The movie is about Joker the Harlequin saying, “This is how far I’m forced to go to express who I am.” It’s about the demonization of trans consciousness creating a criminal. — OG

Sweet Dreams

There was never much suspense about what would win last year’s international feature Oscar (“The Zone of Interest” was nominated in five categories, including best picture, after all). And yet, there were at least half a dozen other masterpieces among the other countries’ submissions: Bhutan’s “The Monk and the Gun,” Mexico’s “Tótem,” Denmark’s “The Promised Land” and Wim Wenders’ Japan-set “Perfect Days” were all standouts that held off till early 2024 to play U.S. theaters. Slipping quietly beneath the radar was director Ena Sendijarević’s sly critique of Dutch colonialism, which examines the spectacular implosion of a white-owned sugar plantation in the East Indies after the patriarch dies, leaving his property not to his “legitimate” heirs, but to the servant woman who bore him a love child. Named one of Variety’s Directors to Watch, Sendijarević represents a bold new voice, like a cross between Ruben Östlund and Wes Anderson, but with fangs. —  PD

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