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The post cartoon Sting appeared first on Monica Gupta.

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We've all been there. So close, but not yet. Passed by, again. Promised, but the promise floats off, vanishes on the horizong. The hard work, the high hopes, the quiet.

We make music. Others star. No matter where we are, in our work out here, it can feel like we've missed the boat called "Big Time."

Is it the boat we want to be on? Can we even answer that question?

Is it our fault? Is it anybody's fault? Is it talent? Is it timing? Is it luck?

Last night I watched the 2014 Oscar winning documentary, "Twenty Feet from Stardom." Didn't expect as much depth as I encountered. Didn't think I'd cry; I did. Merry Clayton, Darlene Love, Claudia Lennear, Lisa Fischer. Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Stevie Wonder, Sting. The distance between the back-ups and the spotlight. The barriers—the right song or luck (not the talent, in these cases)—that stand between. The things that happen to those who press ahead and those who step aside. The regrets, in both cases, the need for grace in it all.

This is an important story for the artists it introduces (again). For the superstars we already know, but who speak (not surprisingly, in all these cases) from a magnanimous place. For us, wherever we are, whatever we want, whichever doubts we entertain. For the music that, nonetheless, got made.

Twenty Feet from Stardom. 

And?

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On this day in 1984, musical aficionados from the worlds of pop and rock came together to record the iconic ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ single for Band Aid. The single has gone down in history as an example of the power of music to help right the wrongs in the world. The song leapt to the number one spot over the Christmas of 1984, selling over a million copies in under a week and totalling sales of three million by the end of that year. The Band Aid super-group featured the cream of eighties pop, including David Bowie, Phil Collins, George Michael, Sting, Cliff Richard and Paul McCartney.

The sales target for the single was £70,000, all of which was to be donated to the African famine relief fund. With support from Radio 1 DJs and a Top of the Pops Christmas Special, sales sky-rocketed and Geldof, feeling the strength of public opinion behind him, went toe-to-toe with the conservative government in an attempt to have tax on the single waived. Margaret Thatcher initially refused the plea, but as public outcry grew, Thatcher caved-in to public demands and the tax on sales worth nearly £9 million was donated back to charity.

Bob Geldof and a host of artists old and new have re-recorded the single to help raise funds to stem the Ebola crisis. Our infographic marks the 30th anniversary of the original recording and illustrates the movers and shakers that made this monumental milestone in pop history possible.

To view free articles examining the cause, the people, and the music, you can open the graphic as a PDF.

Headline image credit: Live Aid at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, 1985. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Band Aid (an infographic) appeared first on OUPblog.

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Most celebrity musician memoirs amount to not much more than an inevitable litany of the excesses that come with the dubious position of rock star. Sting, however, makes the interesting (and refreshing) choice to stop his memoir right before The Police hit it big. While the opening recollection of his first experience with the entheogen [...]

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, we found a video featuring pop star Madonna and her reading of the poem “If You Forget Me.” Pablo Neruda originally wrote this poem in Spanish and called it “Si Tu Me Olvidas.”

Madonna’s reading is featured on The Postman (Il Postino) movie soundtrack. It also contains poetry recitations delivered by Oscar-winning actress Julia Roberts, UK musician Sting, and The Avengers actor Samuel L. Jackson.

Neruda, a celebrated Chilean writer, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. You can read more pieces written by Neruda at The Poetry Foundation’s website. What’s your favorite Pablo Neruda poem?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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First off, I should note that I set out to write a Poetry Friday post related to it being National Wear Red Day here in the U.S. (an initiative designed to raise awareness of heart health issues that causes everyone to wander about looking like a Target employee). And I'll get there, I promise. Just stick with me for a few minutes.

The post title came to mind because I've been watching the movie Music and Lyrics repeatedly since it's in heavy rotation on HBO and I love-love-love the movie, which holds up extremely well to repeat viewings. Some of you (I'm looking at you, Christy, Liz and Colleen!) may recall that I said I was going to purchase Sting's latest book, Lyrics, back in October. And I bought it. And I read it. And I enjoyed it. And I totally forgot to blog about it, which is odd because due to some lucky happenstance involving a coupon plus a percentage off, I got the book for dirt cheap, which would've been worth mentioning on its own. But I digress.

First, the technical stuff. This book is really well-made. The white hardcover is covered with a gold-hued replica of Sting's handwritten lyrics. On the front, "Message in a Bottle" and "King of Pain"; on the back, bits from "Roxanne", complete with doodles. And covering the hardcover is a tan vellum that allows those bits to peek through a bit. The book contains a foreword and the lyrics from the first Police album, Outlandos D'Amour through Sting's solo, Sacred Love. It has two indices - one by first line, one by song title; the song title stuff includes copyright info, which is cool, but should have added the album titles, I'm thinking. Also in the book? Photographs, as one might expect. And here and there, some clarification from Sting.

You can read the complete foreword over at the Barnes & Nbble site (and probably elsewhere as well). What Sting notes first is that separating lyrics from their music can be a dicey thing, as they are mutually dependent beings.

The two, lyrics and music, have always been mutually dependent, in much the same way as a mannequin and a set of clothes are dependent on each other; separate them, and what remains is a naked dummy and a pile of cloth. . . . I have set out my compositions in the sequence they were wrritten and provided a little background when I thought it might be illuminating. My wares have neither been sorted nor dressed in clothes that do not belong to them; indeed, they have been shorn of the very garments that gave them their shape in the first place. No doubt some of them will perish in the cold cruelty of this new environment, and yet others may prove more resilient and become perhaps more beautiful in their naked state.

As one might expect, a song like "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" does not hold up well. Others, such as "You Still Touch Me" and "The Wild Wild Sea" seem richer to me having read them without the music playing. And some of my favorites are, as I expected them to be, fantastic when read as text. One that I played in near-continuous loop when The Soul Cages came out was "Why Should I Cry for You?", which is a spectacular song, and the lyrics, read alone, are heart-breaking. I recommend this book highly for Sting fans.

But they lyrics I'm putting up as today's poem are from the following album, Ten Summoner's Tales, which came out in 1992.

Shape of My Heart
by Sting

He deals the cards as a meditation
And those he plays never suspect
He doesn't play for the money he wins
He don't play for respect

He deals the cards to find the answer
The sacred geometry of chance
The hidden law of a probable outcome
The numbers lead a dance

I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier
I know that the clubs are weapons of war
I know that diamonds mean money for this art
But that's not the shape of my heart

He may play the jack of diamonds
He may lay the queen of spades
He may conceal a king in his hand
While the memory of it fades

I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier
I know that the clubs are weapons of war
I know that diamonds mean money for this art
But that's not the shape of my heart

And if I told you that I loved you
You'd maybe think there's something wrong
I'm not a man of too many faces
The mask I wear is one

Well, those who speak know nothin'
And find out to their cost
Like those who curse their luck in too many places
And those who fear are lost

I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier
I know that the clubs are weapons of war
I know that diamonds mean money for this art
But that's not the shape of my heart
That's not the shape, the shape of my heart
That's not the shape, the shape of my heart

Structurally: the verses are rhymed ABCB, the chorus is in couplets (with slant rhyme between soldier and war). Tarot afficianados will recognize the source of the chorus's lines. In Tarot, spades are swords (which correspond to "air" and represent intellect), clubs are wands (which correspond to "fire" and represent work/career), diamonds are coins/pentacles (which correspond to "earth" and represent material concerns like wealth and goods), and hears are cups (which correspond to "water" and represent emotion).

The cards of a regular deck are related to the minor archana in Tarot. They can be used to play card games, of course, but they can also be used for personal meditation, with meanings attributed to various cards. "Jack of diamonds" signifies patience; "queen of spades" signifies vulnerability. The kings of diamonds, clubs and spades have positive meanings: contentment, foresight and victory, respectively; the king of hearts is known as the "suicide king", and represents the throwing away of oneself for selfish or worthless causes. Whether Sting considered these meanings in selecting the specific cards referenced is doubtful, since the book contains a note stating that he went for a walk and came back with the whole thing written in his head; still, fun to ponder/add on there, I think.

To watch the video, which contains the haunting tune that accompanies this poem:

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