IT MIGHT AS WELL BE STING!

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

STING, UNLIKE BOY GEORGE AND David Lee Roth, will never be an answer to such trivia questions as, "Name a lead singer from an '80s megaband who went on to have a disappointing solo career." Sting has managed to stay relevant--and popular--by continuing to create gently innovative music that borrows from other sources so wisely and so well that the resulting sound is truly his own. "I'm interested in impure music," says Sting. "Pure rock, pure jazz or pure anything just doesn't interest me. This is the game I play." In that spirit, his new CD, Mercury Falling, draws on country, gospel and even Celtic music to create smooth, genre-blending, articulate pop. It's another bright entry in what has proved to be Sting's brilliant career as a solo artist.

Given his more than 20 years in the music business, there is little on vinyl or CD that Sting has not already had a chance to be inspired by. "I have teenage children, and I hear their music in the house, by accident--I'm intrigued," says Sting, comfortably domesticated at age 44 (a wall in his huge getaway apartment in New York City is covered with pictures of his six children and his second wife, actress and film producer Trudie Styler). "But with new pop music, it's very rare that I hear music that I can't recognize its source. Oasis are the Beatles, basically. Blur are the Kinks."

Sting, however, is Sting. In 1985, after almost a decade fronting the reggae-tinged rock band the Police, Sting launched a solo career with the release of The Dream of the Blue Turtles, a slickly adventurous album that featured saxophonist Branford Marsalis and keyboardist Kenny Kirkland. All Sting's six solo albums have been distinctive: The Dream of the Blue Turtles, with its anti-cold war rant Russians, was the most pointed; the 1991 release The Soul Cages, much of which concerns the death of Sting's father, was the most personal. Mercury Falling stands out as his most consistently entertaining effort. The lyrics are smart but not ostentatiously cerebral. The instrumental work of Kirkland, who performs on all the new tracks, and Marsalis, who plays on two, adds shading and sophistication. These are songs that hit a little harder than the typical Top 40 tune: the clever I Hung My Head, with its commanding horns and elevating keyboard work, tells the story of an accidental shooting, and could also be read as a plea for gun control; I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying is a countryish tune that clomps along with a steady beat but is also a well-observed look at a divorced man dealing with the fact that he has lost custody of his kids. Indeed, most of Mercury Falling deals with loss, longing and epiphany. On its best cut, I Was Brought to My Senses, Sting sings, "...And inside every turning leaf/ Is the pattern of an older tree ...Every signpost in nature/ Said you belong to me."

Sting claims he is still sorting out the meanings of the songs on Mercury Falling. "I write unconsciously," he says. "It's only after I've finished the songs that I'm able to tell you what they're about. It's a form of therapy really--'What am I talking about here? Why am I worried about this?' It's a cheap form of psychiatry." That uncertainty beneath the cool is the key to Sting's appeal. Absolute certainty is boring; once you're cocksure of your meanings and your sound, you may as well go on tour with Kiss--or David Lee Roth for that matter. Appropriately enough, given the title of the new album, Sting remains mercurial.

--By Christopher John Farley