The Storyteller

In my travels with Adam going to record stores, I purchased a Sting CD that I didn't think I'd heard. It was pretty old and a few of the songs sound a little familar, but not really. I've had it in playing the last few days in the car (surprise, surprise I'm tired of election coverage on the news). This morning I was struck by two of the songs and how Sting can weave a really rich and intricate story with so few words. I mean it's a given that I really like the music and his style. He has a great sense of rhyming and timing, but the story in his songs are really good. There's one about a woman who wants to leave her marriage and in two lines, you feel the betrayal and mundaneness that she is trying to escape. The husband comes into the song at the end and you feel how trapped he also feels in so few words "she never lets me sleep this late, I need coffee, her make up bag is on the floor, this room is just so messy, in his imagination she's a million miles away." Then there's the music and the interplay of harmony with overlapping themes. What a great song.

The second song was about a car thief--a poor man with a skill in a rich man's car. Then he imagines the rich man's life and there's a mistress and a wife, who's no fool. The mistress wanted to go dancing, and what I felt was a statement about how the rich treat the poor and the longing to be with the rich. "Please take me dancing tonight, like you promised on the phone" was the tag line interweaved through the story. Listening to this CD was like reading a great book of short stories.