Sting, Glasgow review: 'polite and occasionally perky'

Sting, Bellahouston Park, Glasgow ★★★

“You know this song,” Sting reassured his audience with a grin, three songs into his outdoor set at Bellahouston Park, having already warmed up with a bubbling Message in a Bottle, the decidedly low-key I Wrote Your Name (Upon My Heart) and If I Ever Lose My Faith in You, one of his most honestly romantic songs.

Sting | AFP via Getty Images

The song was Englishman in New York, the acme of his pleasant, coffee table reggae solo sound, but it didn’t need the preamble. The main reason that Sting, at the age of 73, can feasibly take on a gig of this scale (clearly not sold out, but still very substantially attended) is that he really does have loads of songs that people know.

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These fall into two categories - songs by the Police and songs not by the Police - and the former were very much the ones which drew cheers of recognition and dance moves from the crowd. The joyful Every Little Thing She Does is Magic kicked things up several gears, and the second half of the main set was packed with what in Sting’s catalogue might be termed bangers; Can’t Stand Losing You, Walking on the Moon, So Lonely and Every Breath You Take.

These highlights were performed confidently as just a Police-like trio, and extended by various instrumental adornments. Sting delivered well-practiced links which ran between the corny (hellos to “bonnie Scotland” and “’Glasgee’, as you call it”, and explaining how Fields of Gold is about the view from “my house in the country… it's more of a castle, actually”) and the affectionate, like his memories of the Glasgow Apollo in 1979 and his dedication of Why Should I Cry For You? to “my daddy”, who always wanted him to be a sailor.

As the late evening mizzle broke through, his lesser-known solo songs didn’t gee the crowd as much as his earliest work. An encore of the inevitably well-received Roxanne was upstaged by a sit-down, acoustic finale of Fragile, and it felt like this polite, occasionally perky set would have been better served were it played indoors to an entire audience in seats.

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