Happy Birthday, Sting! Newcastle’s very own Gordon Sumner turns 68 today, which seems impossible. No one of that age is hipper, smarter, funnier, more of a family man, and a brilliant musician. Let’s hope he’s taking a few days off from writing and recording, and from championing great causes.
Whether it’s the Rainforest Foundation or Amnesty International or a dozen other good works, Sting (with his movie producer-director actress wife Trudie Styler) stands tall for so many important causes. They will celebrate three decades of raising money to protect the Amazon rain forests this December with another all-star concert at Carnegie Hall.
Sting has six children (four with Trudie) and six grandchildren. Their actress daughter Mickey Sumner appears in Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” (she co-starred in his ‘Frances Ha’), and stars in the TBS series “Snowpiercer.” All of the Sumner kids are successes (and damn nice people) including another actress, Kate, filmmaker Jake, two rockers (Joe, and Eliot aka Coco), and college student Giacomo. Sting, who has two sisters and a brother, is known for being a family man, and the warm leader of circles within circles of friends. (When he celebrated his 60th, half of Newcastle arrived in New York.) He’s also been madly in love with Trudie for longer than most of his fans have been alive!
Real geniuses never stop creating, and that’s true enough for Sting. He will appear this winter in his stage musical, “The Last Ship,” in Los Angeles and San Francisco. He and Shaggy won Best Reggae Album last January. He’s been touring his wonderful “My Songs” album all summer and fall. There are rumbles of a new solo album some time next year. Earlier this year, in a live streamed interview, Paul McCartney said the one song he wished he’d written was Sting’s “Fields of Gold.” That’s like being knighted! And in April, BMI announced that “Every Breath You Take” was their most played song ever– 15 million times– beating the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.”
So happiest of birthdays. With all that, still the best is yet to come!
