Sting has reissued his 2021 album The Bridge with four studio bonus tracks and six live selections. The Bridge, which was Sting's first original album in five years, was released on November 21st, 2021 and peaked at Number 15 on Billboard's Top Rock Albums chart.
The new version collects three international bonus tracks — the traditional “Waters Of Tyne,” the original “Captain Bateman’s Basement,” and a cover of the Otis Redding chart-topper, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay.”
The bonus disc also includes six tracks played live last October 6th in Paris at The Pantheon, as well as “Por Su Amor,” the Spanish version of Sting's track “For Her Love,” in duet with the Latin American artist KURT.
Sting told us that due to pandemic, which forced him and band off the road mid-tour, The Bridge came as a way to survive the shutdown: “I got my crew and myself back home to England and said, 'Well, now what? Okay — we'll just move the cycle. I'll just go in the studio.' So, I'd start at 10 in the morning and work through dinner every day, and that kept me sane. My heart went out to people who couldn't do that, who were stuck in a high rise with three kids and no work. That must've been virtually impossible. So I was very fortunate.”
Although by no means a concept album, Sting maintains that the songs on The Bridge have a common thread: “When I realized, when I looked at them all individually, they were connected somehow; they were all about characters in transition. All of the characters were looking for a bridge to the future that was somewhere different, somewhere safer, somewhere happier. And I think the whole planet is looking for a bridge at the moment. I am. It's such an anxious time. So 'The Bridge' seemed a useful metaphor that would resonate with people.”
Sting kicks off his European summer tour tomorrow (June 21st) in Gothenburg, Sweden at Tradgardsforeningen.
