A surefire concert. Those three words alone would suffice to describe the evening headlined by Sting at Les Nits Occident, on a night when iconic songs from his solo career were interwoven with anthems by The Police in the gardens of Barcelona’s Palau de Pedralbes.
It wasn’t even a minute past ten when, right on time, with his bangs hanging low and a headset microphone around his head, Sting took the stage with “Message in a Bottle,” a “bona nit,” and hand gestures urging the audience—who had been on their feet from the very start despite the chairs lined up along the floor—to echo that SOS that The Police sent out to the world in 1979.
The heat, trapped between the palace facade and the bleachers set up for the festival, had everyone waving fans, while the British artist launched into the first songs under his own name: the rock number “I Wrote Your Name (Upon My Heart)”; “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You,” a track leaning more toward the blues, and the melancholic “Englishman In New York.”
Since The Police broke up in the mid-1980s, Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner—Sting—has released quite a few solo albums and embarked on dozens of tours, but the band’s discography remains as relevant as ever, so right from the opening notes of “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” a collective sigh swept through the gardens of Pedralbes before erupting into thunderous applause.
Sting in Concert at “Les Nits Occident”: A Mix of His Own Songs and Songs by The Police
With humor and a desire to interact with the audience, the Englishman performed the nostalgic “Fields of Gold,” talking about his small house near Stonehenge, where he invited one of the women in the audience for a cup of tea—a promise sealed with a handshake on stage.
After a “water break”—“We’ll be back in three minutes,” he joked—the show immediately continued with “Never Coming Home,” a song in which Dominic Miller, the guitarist accompanying Sting on this tour alongside drummer Chris Maas, really shone; followed by “Mad About You” and some impeccable bass playing.
After a first half filled with songs from his solo albums, the evening picked up rock energy with “Wrapped Around Your Finger,” ‘Driven to Tears,’ and ‘Can’t Stand Losing You’—a brief, reverse-chronological glimpse into The Police’s musical evolution, thanks to performances of ‘Synchronicity’ (1983), ‘Zenyatta Mondatta’ (1980), and ‘Outlandos d’Amour’ (1978), respectively.
In excellent physical and vocal shape—Sting turns 75 in October—the musician has expressed his doubts about reincarnation in that declaration of love that lasts into eternity, “A Thousand Years,” while “Shape of My Heart,” one of the most recognizable songs from his solo career, has led us to sense that we were witnessing the beginning of a grand finale.
A final stretch filled with anthems
And that’s exactly what happened, because the frenzied rhythm of the rock song “So Lonely” got the crowd at Les Nit Occident on their feet, and they finished off the song by clapping along to the finale of “Brand New Day”—and without letting anyone even sit back down, the bassist launched into the Middle Eastern-inspired “Desert Rose.”
“Every Breath You Take” deserves special mention; sung along word for word by the 2,400 attendees gathered today in the gardens of the Palau de Pedralbes, it is a prime example of those songs that transcend bands and become part of the cultural heritage as something more than just a song—perhaps even a prayer.
After greeting Barcelona—to a long ovation—the trio returned with another smash hit: “Roxanne,” one of the early hits that began to forge The Police’s legend way back in 1978, performed today with overwhelming vitality, laid the groundwork for “Fragile,” the song with which Sting—guitar in hand for the first time all night—finally bid farewell to the city after a concert lasting just over an hour and a half, according to Agencia EFE.