STING - FRAGILE:
"It's Probably Me" and "Fragile" (Sting). And speaking of Brits, even the Demolition Man himself, that sturdy-old stand by Mr. Gordon Sumner, a.k.a. Sting, got into the act with "It's Probably Me," taken from the soundtrack to the Mel Gibson-Danny Glover action vehicle Lethal Weapon 3, released in 1992, and boasting the assistance of Eric Clapton, on guitar, and jazz-pop staple David Sanborn, on sax. It resurfaced a year later, with a totally redone rhythm arrangement, on Sting's excellent Ten Summoner's Tales (A&M), and joins an earlier achievement, available on Nothing Like the Sun (A&M, 1987)-the achingly beautiful "Fragile" ("On and on the rain will fall / Like tears from a star / On and on the rain will say / How fragile we are")-as his two most convincing forays into this area. Mixing sincere concerns for the environment with a lovely guitar-arpeggio interlude, "Fragile" is the one to get, and his finest all-around effort to date, as it all-but incorporates the basic bossa formula I've been hinting at throughout. There's also a version for the Latin American market, sung in excruciatingly bad Portuguese, on the otherwise all-Spanish-language Nada Como el Sol., from 1988 (A&M). From there Sting wandered perilously close to "lounge lizard" territory, most of all with his Mercury Falling (A&M, 1996), a dreary affair whose few highlights do not include the risible "La Belle Dame Sans Regrets," sung en français, naturellement, and patterned after the oeuvre of the late Tom Jobim. He has yet to fully recover from that misguided conception. Let's hope his concerts with ex-Police band-mates Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers can repair the damage done to their musical integrity and turn things around for the eclectic songsmith.