Boombastic! Sting and Shaggy get reggae fever
Sting has sung with jazz musicians and rappers, written a musical about shipbuilding on his native tyneside and released an album of Renaissance lute music.
But his latest escapade — a set of Caribbean-themed songs with dancehall reggae star Shaggy — is, at first glance, his most improbable yet.
the record takes its title from the telephone dialling codes for the UK (44) and Jamaica (876) and is a sunkissed mix of pop and reggae.
After being introduced by Sting’s manager, who used to work with Shaggy, the unlikely couple got together to record a duet, Don’t Make Me Wait, and were so happy with the results that other songs soon followed.
the fruits of ‘Shaggy and Sting inna combination’ are sometimes rather gimmicky, but 44/876 avoids sounding like a vanity project by making the most of the pair’s respective strengths: Sting’s meticulous songwriting; deep-voiced Shaggy’s spontaneity and flair.
the two are fairly evenly matched. Sting, 66, achieved global fame with the Police, whose early hits matched pop sensibility to reggae rhythms. Shaggy, 49, is an ex-U.S. Marine who moved from Jamaica to Brooklyn as a teenager.
Having taken his stage name after a character in the tV cartoon Scooby-Doo, he has topped the UK chart four times with hits including Boombastic and it Wasn’t Me. the duo’s initial duet sets the tone: Don’t Make Me Wait finds Shaggy playfully parading his lover man credentials. ‘it didn’t take me long to fall in love with your mind,’ he sings.
Elsewhere, bassist Robbie Shakespeare and saxophonist Branford Marsalis contribute to a set of tuneful, good-natured songs that, despite Sting’s thoughtful lyrics, refuse to take themselves too seriously.
CRooKED tree is a courtroom playlet that casts Shaggy as the Honourable Judge Burrell — his real name is orville Burrell — and Sting as a contrite defendant.
the Police-like Dreaming in the U.S.A. salutes a gallery of American cultural idols, including Elvis, Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe, before Shaggy delivers the damning kiss-off line: ‘i await the day when we will all inhabit a better America.’
there are numbers on which Sting takes the lead. With its gentle flute and lively fretwork by the singer’s touring guitarist Dominic Miller, 22nd Street could have come straight off a Sting solo project, with Shaggy’s raspy patter an afterthought.
But the songs where Mr Boombastic takes centre stage are the most entertaining. Waiting For the Break of Day is a languid piano piece lamenting the ‘falseness’ of politicians.
to Love And Be Loved is an unashamedly poppy track that finds Sting admitting he has ‘two left feet’ when it comes to dancing. Accompanied by fairground organ, it’s a bubbly, Shaggy-directed paean to good times — and all the better for that.
STING & Shaggy perform at The Queen’s 92nd birthday concert on BBC 1 tomorrow at 8pm.