The Best of What's Still Around: Message in a Bottle

Sting's songs are, as he says, "muscular."  They can be done in all kinds of ways and still keep their integrity.  He's proven this point with a lot of them, by doing them in different styles and with different instruments and bands behind him. Lately he's taken to singing one of his best and most popular, "Message In A Bottle," originally recorded with The Police in 1979, with just his voice and an acoustic guitar (as at the end of his Ted Talk.)

Probably the first time he did this was as an encore to his first concerts after leaving the Police.  The gestation of the band that recorded his first two solo albums with him is chronicled in one of my favorite movies called Bring On the Night, that builds to their first concert in Paris. I saw it in a shopping mall theater when it came out in 1985 or so, watched it on cable TV, taped it off cable, bought the VHS tape on sale and most recently the DVD.  This version of "Message" --with just his electric guitar--runs with the end credits of the movie, but it's one of my favorites mostly because of the gentle French voices singing along.  The lyrics make it one of the most appropriate songs to sing along to.




From an encore to the song that began the concerts on the 2008 Police reunion tour. Its joyous power with the biggest three-piece band that's ever existed, and the bond with the audience are evident in this contrasting version.  This audience for the concert in Japan is actually a little muted compared to others, but the video is HD--and free.  

Update (sort of): There were actually two stories in the news today about messages in bottles that were found--one 21 years later, another 40 years later.