Sting's "Symphonicities" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic

Though "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" was considered "pop brilliance", as described by Chris True, a journalist for "Allmusic", it certainly had its detractors, including the other two members of The Police. Andy Summers writes in his 2006 book "One Train Later" that he never really thought of this song as a "Police song." Stewart Copeland, in a 2000 "Revolver" interview states that he kept attempting to change the track and described Sting's demo as "crummy". Nevertheless, the song would climb to number one in the UK and number three in the US. Sting wrote the song away back in 1976, and an acoustic version of it is played by Sting on a 1977 Strontium 90 album (Strontium 90 was a Mike Howlett Band that included Sting and Summers with guest appearances by Copeland before The Police formed). In his 2007 book "Lyrics", Sting writes with verbal irony that 1976 "was the year of The Sex Pistols, punk rock, aggressive loud music, violent lyrics, and 'Anarchy in the UK.' And I wrote this song, which tells you how in touch with the times I was."

Anthony DeCurtis, the American author and music critic, writes the following in the liner notes accompanying the "Symphonicities" album: "[T]he song's wide-eyed sense of wonder at the intoxicating power of love finds fuller, dreamier realization here. Even more impressively, the song has lost none of its buoyancy. For all its delicacy, for all the ways in which new facets of its melody are deftly teased out, it still swings like a gorgeous girl in a flirty summer dress".

Answer: Cold Mountain

The "Cold Mountain" soundtrack version of "You Will Be My Ain True Love" was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. Of particular critical acclaim was Sting's choice to use a bass to create a drone, which is the effect created when a single note or chord is sounded continuously throughout most if not all of an entire piece of music. The song seems to be a mystic prayer or enchantment uttered, in the first two stanzas, by a woman longing for her lover to return from war, and its resulting sound fits most appropriately with the mood evoked by the film itself. The song's last two stanzas are the words of the soldier himself whose life is forever altered by the horrors he is experiencing around him during a battle. In his 2007 book "Lyrics", Sting writes the following about his song: "My intention was to write in the style of a nineteenth-century ballad, all muskets and cutlasses and flying cannonballs".

As of 2019, Alison Krauss has released fourteen albums, not counting compilations, and is celebrated for having greatly contributed to society's renewed interest in bluegrass. Not only can she be heard on the "Cold Mountain" soundtrack but also on that of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" Currently, again as of 2019, she has won twenty-seven Grammy Awards.

On the "Symphonicities" album, the melody is carried by Jo Lawry, who provided vocals and backing vocals for the entire album as well as for the resulting tour to promote the album.

Answer: Jo Lawry

Jo Lawry has studied jazz at Adelaide University and the New England Conservatory of Music. She has performed with Fred Hersch and his Pocket Orchestra as well as with James Shipp's Nos Novo quartet. In addition to being a vocalist, she is also an instrumentalist, playing such as the violin, the mandolin, and the melodica.

By 2017, she had released four albums of her own, and her debut, "I Want to Be Happy" (2004), was awarded a 4.5 of a 5-point rating system by "Down Beat" magazine, which also selected it as one of the "Best CDs of the 2000s".

Jo Lawry toured with Sting from 2009 to 2015 and provided vocals on the following of Sting's albums: "Live in Berlin" (2010), "Symphonicities" (2010), "25 Years" (2011), and "The Last Ship" (2013).

The only song for which Jo Lawry does not contribute vocals on Sting's "Symphonicities" album is "We Work the Black Seam". For "You Will Be My Ain True Love" and "She's Too Good for Me", she shares full credit for the vocals with Sting.

Answer: Englishman in New York

"Englishman in New York" is a song very often associated with Sting. It was released in 1988 as the third single from ". . . Nothing like the Sun". However, it has fared much better in live concerts and on tours than it has on the radio, where it climbed to only number fifty-one on the UK Singles Chart and only number eighty-four on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Within the liner notes of ". . . Nothing like the Sun", Sting wrote the following about this song: "I wrote 'Englishman in New York' for a friend of mine who moved from London to New York in his early seventies to a small rented apartment in the Bowery at a time in his life when most people have settled down forever. He once told me over dinner that he looked forward to receiving his naturalization papers so that he could commit a crime and be deported. 'What kind of crime?' I asked anxiously. 'Oh, something glamorous, non-violent, with a dash of style' he replied. 'Crime is so rarely glamorous these days.'"

The friend Sting is referring to was Quentin Crisp, who lived from 1908 to 1999. Throughout his life he was considered an authority on social manners and style, wrote several books, acted in several films and documentaries, and performed live in several one-man shows mostly as a raconteur. Perhaps, what brought him the most fame was his autobiographical book "The Naked Civil Servant" and the subsequent TV film adaptation starring John Hurt. Crisp was noted for his courage to express his being gay freely as well as his courage to express himself freely in general. His life was frequently surrounded by controversy in that as a younger man he worked as a male escort and as an older man he often frustrated several people with his criticism of Princess Diana and the gay liberation movement. For instance, according to a Wikipedia article, Crisp remarked, "I always thought Diana was such trash and got what she deserved. She was Lady Diana before she was Princess Diana so she knew the racket. She knew that royal marriages have nothing to do with love. You marry a man and you stand beside him on public occasions and you wave and for that you never have a financial worry until the day you die."

Answer: When We Dance

"When We Dance" was recorded as a new song for Sting's compiliation of hits entitled "Fields of Gold: The Best of Sting 1984-1994" and was released as a single during the last months of the year 1994. It climbed to position nine on the UK charts and peaked at number thirty-eight on the US "Billboard" Top 100 chart.

During an "Independent On Sunday" interview, Sting said the following about this song: "I wanted to bookend the Greatest Hits album with two new songs [the other was "This Cowboy Song"]. It's presumptuous, because you don't know if a song's going to be a hit, but 'When We Dance' seems to be going in the right direction. I'd never 'tried' to write a hit before, a song intentionally designed to be played on the radio. This is basically a generic ballad, but it took me a year to write. I had no main idea for the song, so I came up with this love triangle. I love you and you love him. It has a flattened fifth at the end of the first line. It's an unusual, uncomfortable sound, which suits the situation in the lyrics".

One of the more powerful parts of the song is the song's bridge, when the singer rails against fate:

If I could break down these walls
And shout my name at heaven's gate
I'd take these hands
And I'd destroy the dark machineries of fate
Cathedrals are broken
Heaven's no longer above
And hellfire's a promise away
I'd still be saying
I'm still in love

Answer: The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

On the 2010 "Symphonicities" album, the Royal Philharmoic Orchestra is credited for the following recordings: "I Hung My Head", "You Will Be My Ain True Love", "When We Dance", and "The End of the Game". However, the RPO would play all of the album's songs in addition to many others as live performances on tour with Sting. The orchestra also peformed for the recording of "Live in Berlin", Sting's concert film and live album released in November 2010 after the "Symphonicities" album. While on tour, Sting often remarked jokingly, "This is the biggest band I've ever had".

The 2010 "Symphonicities" album and the accompanying tour are not the first ventures into orchestral music for Sting. In 1990, he narrated Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" for the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

Answer: I Burn for You

Sting wrote "I Burn for You" a couple of years before the The Police's third studio album "Zenyatta Mondatta", released in 1980. Sting presented the song for inclusion on the album, but Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers, the other two Police members, rejected the song because they didn't feel it fit with the sound of the album or The Police sound in general. They felt it was too much of a love song. However, in 1982, when Sting and, by extension, The Police were offered an opportunity to contribute to the soundtrack of the film "Brimstone and Treacle", the band reworked the song and it ended up fitting appropriately with the mood of the movie. "I Burn for You" was later released as an accompanying song for the twelve-inch maxi-single UK release of "Wrapped around Your Finger" in 1983.

Later, after Sting left The Police, he re-arranged the song so that it had a more jazz/pop sound for his tour promoting his first solo album "Dream of the Blue Turtles". This version can be heard on the 1986 live album "Bring on the Night". "Bring on the Night" is also the title of the documentary made to record some of the moments during Sting's beginning of his solo career.

In the liner notes accompanying the 2010 "Symphonicities" album, the music critic Anthony DeCurtis writes the following about the new re-arrangement of "I Burn for You": "A tense rhythmic pulse maintains the song's ardency below, while the eloquent textures on top all but moan with desire".

The film "Brimstone and Treacle" was a 1982 adaptation of Dennis Potter's play of the same name. Sting plays the part of a mysterious stranger who interrupts the life of a vicar whose daughter was injured in a car accident and is now essentially an invalid. Eventually, it becomes clear that Sting's angelic yet devilish character has arrived to exact justice for the sins perpetrated by the vicar.

The soundtrack for "Brimstone and Treacle" includes "I Burn for You" as well as two other songs--"How Stupid Mr. Bates" and "A Kind of Loving"--performed by The Police. Sting performs solo on five other songs, including a version of "Spread a Little Happiness", which interestingly becomes his first solo single (before he leaves The Police). "We Got the Beat" by the Go-Go's and "Up the Junction" by Squeeze are also a part of the soundtrack.

Answer: The Pirate's Bride

"The Pirate's Bride" was originally released in 1996 as one of the accompanying songs of the maxi-single "You Still Touch Me", one of the singles from Sting's fifth studio album "Mercury Falling". It was also released as a "b-side" for "I Was Brought to My Senses", a single released in the UK from the "Mercury Falling" album.

"I'm So Happy That I Can't Stop Crying" was another single released from the same album, and its maxi-single version included "Beneath a Desert Moon" as one of the accompanying songs. "Shape of My Heart", co-written by Sting and guitarist Dominic Miller, was one of the tracks from Sting's fourth studio album "Ten Summoner's Tales" from 1992.

The lyrics of "The Pirate's Bride" alternate between perspectives of the bride and her pirate lover. With words such as "The tide rolls out, the tide rolls in / Without a care for the ways of men", the song emphasizes the world''s or nature's indifference toward humankind and the foolishness of all our earthly pursuits--except for love. Tragically too late, both the pirate and his bride recognize that "Spanish gold" is truly nothing and that their love was and is all that matters in this existence.

Answer: Next to You

"Next to You" was written by Sting and recorded by The Police for their 1978 debut album "Outlandos d'Amour". It is the first track on The Police's first studio album and the last song The Police played together as their 2007 Reunion Tour came to an end. "Next to You" was played quite frequently during The Police's early tours, and at some point during the 2000s, Sting grew re-interested in the song. It became a regular during his 2005-2006 "Broken Music" tour, was re-arranged for his "Symphonicities" album and tour, and was recorded as a bonus live track for the Deluxe versions of his 2016 "57th and 9th" album (it was frequently played during that album's accompanying tour as well).

When Sting first presented "Next to You" to his Police bandmates, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland were hesitant about the song's lyrics. They felt the words were too much like those of a love song and not appropriate for the punk scene they initially were somewhat trying to fit into. In fact, Andy Summers even suggested changing the main line of the chorus from "All I want is to be next to you" to "I'm going to take a gun to you". Sting, of course, stood his ground, and the song remained unaltered.

In the "Symphonicities" album's liner notes, the critic and journalist Anthony DeCurtis writes the following about that album's version of "Next to You": "Perhaps the album's most blinding moment is its spectacular version of 'Next to You.' Straight-up rock songs are rarely given orchestral treatments, and for good reason. They almost always fail. That is far from the case here. As any great band loves to do to lead singers, this orchestra kicks Sting's butt! It's thrilling to hear him call on all his extraordinary vocal gifts to hold his own against their onrushing power. It's a breathtaking performance in all senses of the term".

Answer: Roxanne

"Roxanne" is one of The Police's greatest hits and is one of the songs most frequently associated with Sting. The April 1978 release of the single did not do well, primarily because British radio stations refused to play a song about a man in love with a prostitute. Sting originally wrote the song in 1977 during the early days of the band while they were staying in Paris for a performance; the idea came to him after seeing prostitutes around the hotel and a poster hanging there of the play "Cyrano de Bergerac", which has a character named Roxanne. Eventually, the single was re-released in April of 1979, and the song climbed to number 32 in the US and number 12 in the UK. "Rolling Stone" rated the song as number 388 in its "500 Greatest Songs of All Time."

During the recording of "Roxanne" for the 1978 "Outlandos d'Amour" album, Sting accidentally sat down on a piano keyboard. The resulting discordant noise and Sting's laughter remain preserved on the beginning of that recorded track for the album.