Lyrics by Sting Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Lyrics
Book Review: A great book for Sting and Police fans!
Summary: 4 Stars
I received this book as a Christmas present, and I've already devoured it.
This is a handsomely produced book containing all of Sting's lyrics from the five Police albums, and his solo output up to his last disc, "Sacred Love".
The actual physical construction of the book is gorgeous. The vellum-like wrap, the gentle coloring to the photos and text...it's a pleasure to read.
The book is loosely structured according to each album. He prefaces each album with a page or so of comments and thoughts, and then about 75% of the time makes individual notes for a single song. Not every song gets a comment, but all the "big ones" do.
Being a HUGE Police (and Sting) fan, I knew about half of the stuff he says from previous interviews, but there's a lot of new stuff here, and having it collated in one place is very nice.
I am a poetry hater. I have never understood nor liked poetry, and as you can imagine, reading song lyrics can either come across as decent poetry or puerile gibberish.
As I'm so familiar with these songs, I found it, for the most part, quite pleasurable reading through some of his songs. Most interesting is the progression from his punky-pop beginnings to his literate, complex tales as a solo artist.
For fans, this not only is a no-brainer, it's essential.
Book Review: All Other Books Are Now Pointless
Summary: 5 Stars
After reading these mighty poetic works I had to pull my own ears off, so redundant has auditory communication now become.
The wit and insight into the human heart is matched only by Stang's deftness with rhyme. In his key early work Next To You, he declares, `But I just don't know what's come over me, You took me over take a look at me'.
This astonishing turnaround of the verbal and written word, astounding us by rhyming `me' with the contrasting word `me', is why he is an immortal multimillionaire rock god and we are but despicable lowly worms unfit to even think of the possibility of words let alone write them.
Poor Charles Darwin died yonks back, so he was not to see the conclusion of the Theory of Evolution, that it would one day end, having spent billions of years evolving eyes and hands so that people in these End Times can hold this book and look upon its pages and feel their very flesh melt into a fulminating pool of utter joy, oozing in one great pool of secretions and liquefied flesh all over the floor.
Now, with the caked blood barely congealed on the side of my head, I am going out to picket all bookshops. For, although they sell us The Great Word of Steng, they also blaspheme by supplying books other than this. The gall of them, when this - surely the last testament of talent we shall ever need - exists. To supply other books of any kind is an insult to the mighty Stong. All other books are just cultural pollution, distractions from this almighty wonder, the acme of the English language.
I've not sympathised all that much with Nazis before now, but from hereon forwards I dedicate myself to book-burning. All other books must perish.
Book Review: Disappointingly lightweight, even by coffee table standards
Summary: 2 Stars
I waited for considerable time for this book to appear on the shelves here in Melbourne, Australia. In hindsight that should have told me something. For several months I would look inside every bookstore I passed, to see if they had it in stock. Finally after waiting for more than six months with no luck I decided to have a specialist bookstore order this book in for me.
Now I understand why none of the bookstores had this book in stock. It's simply very lightweight, even for a coffee table book. I have read interviews by Sting where he's given more of a insight into his work than in this book. A considerable amount of songs have no background or description whatsoever - and the ones that do are deliberately vague.
Overall it feels like Sting spent no more than a couple of hours working on this book. Collecting lyrics from the songs he's written? He wouldn't have done that personally. The record companies have that on file. So what's in this book that you can't already get from looking on the CD sleeves of his music? Not a lot.
One of the few positive things I can say about this book is that it is well presented, and the photos are good. But otherwise it does have a lazy cynical marketing feel to it - given the depth of his lyrics Sting quite simply could and should have done SO much more.
And let's face it, at this stage of his career, why does Sting need to do anything for the sake of making a few quick bucks? Deliberately keeping fans in the dark regarding the basis/meaning of his lyrics, in a book specifically devoted to the lyrics, is at best misguided, and at worst lazy and unprofessional.
While I don't regret purchasing this book, it's certainly not what I'd hoped for.
Book Review: EXCELENT
Summary: 5 Stars
THE BOOK BRINGS EVERY STING LYRICS WE LOVE. THE ISSUE IS GORGEUS AND THE QUALITY IS UNIQUE!!!!Book Review: Good book, but needed more...
Summary: 4 Stars
I love this book, I love having his lyrics and all. I know the words to all his songs, at least I thought I did. I missed a word or two. I loved hearing how the songs came about, and the meaning behind them. What I wish was that he wrote a little something for EACH song. Instead he only puts stories to some, not the majority mind you, just some of the songs. Many songs got skipped that I would have loved to see more about.
Still all in all worth having though.