Throughout my lifetime there hasn’t been a year as devastating to music as 2016. This year alone we’ve lost Glenn Frey of The Eagles (he sang Hotel California), Prince (one of the greatest musicians in history), Heavy Metal Rock pioneer Lemmy (of Motörhead) died on December 28th just days before 2016, and we lost David Bowie, a man that I believe to be amongst the top 3 most influential musicians of the modern era. Like I said, it’s been a devastating year for the music industry.
Sting, the musician not the wrestler, just released a new single titled ‘50,000’ off of his upcoming album ’57th and 9′, and in the album he pays tribute to the fallen rockers of this year.
The lyrics give us the perspective of an aging rockstar who performs in front of a huge number of fans on a daily basis.
He compares the adulation of a massive crowd to a serious drug habit, and in his last verse, he realizes that he could be the next legend to die by the virtue of his age.
In an interview with Rolling Stone when the album was announced in July 2016, Sting talked about how he wrote the song after the death of Prince, which deeply affected him.
“Mortality does sort of rear its head, particularly at my age — I’m 64,” Sting tells Rolling Stone. “It’s really a comment on how shocked we all are when one of our cultural icons dies: Prince, David [Bowie], Glenn Frey, Lemmy. They are our gods, in a way. So when they die, we have to question our own immortality. Even I, as a rock star, have to question my own. And the sort of bittersweet realization that hubris doesn’t mean anything in the end.”
There’s a second track floating around from Sting’s upcoming album titled I Can’t Stop Thinking About You which you can check out here, but unlike the video above this one’s audio only:
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…(h/t FirstPost.com)…