Mercury Falling (Remastered) Sting

• 1The Hounds Of Winter05:27
• 2I Hung My Head04:40
• 3Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot06:42
• 4I Was Brought To My Senses05:48
• 5You Still Touch Me03:46
• 6I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying03:56
• 7All Four Seasons04:28
• 8Twenty Five To Midnight04:07
• 9La Belle Dame Sans Regrets05:17
• 10Valparaiso05:27
• 11Lithium Sunset02:38
• Total Runtime52:16

Info for Mercury Falling (Remastered)

Sting’s fifth studio album ‘Mercury Falling’ turns 26 today! Celebrate by listening to all your favourite hits including ‘Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot’, ‘You Still Touch Me’, ‘I Was Brought To My Senses’ and ‘I’m So Happy I Can’t Stop Crying’. Originally released in 1996, ‘Mercury Falling’ was nominated for two Grammy Awards: Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for ‘Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot’.

"This was the second album written and recorded in Lake House. I was enjoying these long periods at home with the family. I'd spend so much of my life in hotel rooms and concert halls. I felt that at last I was living a real life. The kids would come home from school in the afternoon and we'd all have dinner together like a normal family. I suppose the album title suggests, among other things, that my mercurial life was beginning to find some balance, like I'd finally put down roots. I'd always believed that "settling down" was anathema to creativity, but I wanted to give it a shot.

‘Mercury Falling’ was the first lyric I wrote, the first line of the first song called 'The Hounds Of Winter'. There are so many styles on this record and it darts around from genre to genre and back again. It's a very mercurial record, and it seemed to be the right thing to call the record. And at the end of the record I return to this idea of mercury falling - only to rise again." (Sting)

"Falling somewhere between the pop sensibilities of Ten Summoner's Tales and the searching ambition of The Soul Cages, Mercury Falling is one of Sting's tighter records, even if it fails to compel as much as his previous solo albums. Though he doesn't flaunt his jazz aspirations as he did in the mid-'80s, Mercury Falling feels more serious than The Dream of the Blue Turtles, primarily because of its reserved, high-class production and execution. Building from surprisingly simple, memorable melodies, Sting creates multi-layered, vaguely soul-influenced arrangements that carry all of the hallmarks of someone who has studied music, not lived it. Of course, there are many pleasures in the record -- for all of his pretensions, Sting remains an engaging melodicist, as well as a clever lyricist. There just happens to be a distinct lack of energy, stemming from the suffocating layers of synthesizers. Mercury Falling is a record of modest pleasures; it's just not an infectious, compulsive listen." (Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AMG)

Sting, vocals, bass
Kenny Kirkland, keyboards
Gerry Richardson, Hammond organ (3)
Dominic Miller, guitars, arrangements (8)
B. J. Cole, pedal steel guitar (6, 11)
Vinnie Colaiuta, drums
Andrew Love, saxophones (2, 3, 5, 7, 8)
Branford Marsalis, tenor saxophone (3), soprano saxophone (4)
Wayne Jackson, trumpet (2, 3, 5, 7, 8)
Kathryn Tickell, fiddle (4), Northumbrian pipes (9)
Lance Ellington, additional vocals (3, 4)
Shirley Lewis, additional vocals (3, 4)
Monica Reed Price, additional vocals (3, 4)
Tony Walters, additional vocals (3, 4)
East London Gospel Choir, (3, 4)
Graeme Perkins, vocal session coordinator (3, 4)

Digitally remastered

Please Note: We offer this album in its native sampling rate of 48 kHz, 24-bit. The provided 192 kHz version was up-sampled and offers no audible value!

Sting
Born 2 October 1951, in Wallsend, north-east England, Gordon Sumner's life started to change the evening a fellow musician in the Phoenix Jazzmen caught sight of his black and yellow striped sweater and decided to re-christen him Sting. Sting paid his early dues playing bass with local outfits The Newcastle Big Band, The Phoenix Jazzmen, Earthrise and Last Exit, the latter of which featured his first efforts at song writing. Last Exit were big in the North East, but their jazz fusion was doomed to fail when punk rock exploded onto the music scene in 1976. Stewart Copeland, drummer with Curved Air, saw Last Exit on a visit to Newcastle and while the music did nothing for him he did recognise the potential and charisma of the bass player. The two hooked up shortly afterwards and within months, Sting had left his teaching job and moved to London.

Seeing punk as flag of convenience, Copeland and Sting - together with Corsican guitarist Henri Padovani - started rehearsing and looking for gigs. Ever the businessman, Copeland took the name The Police figuring it would be good publicity, and the three started gigging round landmark punk venues like The Roxy, Marquee, Vortex and Nashville in London. Replacing Padovani with the virtuoso talents of Andy Summers the band also enrolled Stewart's elder brother Miles as manager, wowing him with a Sting song called 'Roxanne'. Within days Copeland Senior had them a record deal. But the hip London music press saw through The Police's punk camouflage and did little to disguise their contempt, and the band's early releases had no chart success. So The Police did the unthinkable - they went to America.

The early tours are the stuff of legend - bargain flights to the USA courtesy of Freddie Laker's pioneering Skytrain; driving their own van and humping their own equipment from gig to gig; and playing to miniscule audiences at the likes of CBGB's in New York and The Rat Club in Boston. Their tenacity paid off though as they slowly built a loyal following, got some all important air-play, and won over their audiences with a combination of new wave toughness and reggae rhythms.

They certainly made an odd trio: guitarist Summers had a career dating back to the mid-60s, the hyper-kinetic Copeland was a former prog-rocker, and Sting's background was in trad jazz and fusion. The sound the trio made was unique though, and Sting's pin-up looks did them no harm at all. The band returned to the UK to find the reissued 'Roxanne' single charting, and played a sell-out tour of mid-size venues. The momentum had started. The debut album 'Outlandos d'Amour' (Oct 78) delivered three sizeable hits with 'Roxanne', 'Can't Stand Losing You' and 'So Lonely' which in turn led to a headlining slot at the '79 Reading Festival which won the band some fine reviews, but it was with 'Reggatta de Blanc' (Oct 79) that the band stepped up a gear.

Reggatta's first single, 'Message In A Bottle', streaked to number one and the album's success was consolidated further when 'Walking On The Moon' also hit the top slot. The band was big, but about to get even bigger. 1980 saw them undertake a world tour with stops on all continents - including the first rock concerts in Bombay - and the band eventually returned to the UK exhausted, for two final shows in Sting's hometown of Newcastle. Much of this groundbreaking tour was captured on the 'Police Around The World' video and a BBC documentary entitled 'The Police in the East'

Within weeks, the band were in a Dutch studio recording new material but Sting's stock of pre-Police songs and ideas were wearing out. When 'Zenyatta Mondatta' was released (Oct 80) although it sold well and produced another number one single in 'Don't Stand So Close To Me' and a top five hit with 'De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da' a rethink was required. Sting later admitted that he felt 'Zenyatta' was the band's weakest album but by the end of 1980 the band were undoubtedly the biggest-selling band in the country selling out two shows in a huge marquee on Tooting Bec Common in London. For more please visit www.sting.com

This album contains no booklet.