Sting ~ Sacred Love

Both as a solo artist and with The Police, he's written some of the best songs of our time and sold many millions of records. It's more newsworthy at this point to proclaim that he's working at the very height of his powers on Sacred Love, that, once again, he's made an album that is fun and provocative, serious and moving, a telling commentary on our lives and our times.

Among its other ambitions, Sacred Love is a bold attempt to weave meaningful connections between the struggles within the souls of individual people and the larger events wracking our social and political worlds. That goal makes perfect sense, given the album's genesis. Sacred Love was recorded during the agonizing build-up to the war in Iraq, and the urgency of that time suffuses the entire album. Still, writing songs about love hardly constitutes an artistic breakthrough--particularly for Sting, who has written some of the best, and some of the eeriest, love songs of our time. Love may be the answer, but if it is to regain its rightful power in our lives, it will need to be rescued from the clichés that have eroded its meaning. Sting sets out to do that from the very start on "Inside," the album's opening track. "Inside the doors are sealed to love," the song begins, and that fortress will need to come down for love to do its work.

1 Inside

2 Send Your Love

3 Whenever I Say Your Name (with Mary J. Blige)

4 Dead Man's Rope

5 Never Coming Home

6 Like a Beautiful Smile

7 Let's Forget About the Future

8 This War

9 The Book of My Life

10 Sacred Love