Sting

Gordon Sumner taught school in the northeast of England and played jazz around Newcastle, in a group called Last Exit, until a black-and-yellow striped sweater earned him a nickname that stuck for life. As Sting, he became the bassist, lead singer and chief songwriter of The Police, the band he carried from 1977 to over 100 million records sold before walking away in the mid-1980s. His solo career opened in 1985 with The Dream of the Blue Turtles, and the first thing he did with his new freedom was strange: he built the touring band out of jazz musicians rather than rock players, saxophonist Branford Marsalis and keyboardist Kenny Kirkland among them, and let that harmonic language run through everything that came after. From there it refused to sit still. Pop records through the 1990s, then a hard turn into early music: a whole album of John Dowland lute songs, four centuries old, cut for a classical label. Rock again in his sixties. A reggae-pop collaboration with Shaggy after that. Twelve solo studio albums, and no two of them want quite the same thing from you. Pick one and find out which Sting you get.