How a Fancy Car Helped Sting’s Last Top 40 Hit Reach Its Chart Potential

There comes a point in every artist’s career, even the most innovative and successful artists, when they age out of hit singles. As the new millennium dawned, it seemed that Sting had reached that point.

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But then he delivered a song that made it to the US Top 20 in 2000. You can credit it partially to a new sound, but a clever bit of marketing didn’t hurt.

Sting’s Success

In terms of the ability to cross over to the pop charts while still making challenging, forward-thinking music, few artists of his era did it as well as Sting. He demonstrated that skill again and again as a member of The Police. When he released his 1985 solo debut, The Dream Of The Blue Turtles, he picked up right where he left off in that regard.

Sting’s first four solo albums each delivered at least one song that went to the US Top 20. That’s not to mention the LPs that spun off multiple big hits, along with success with singles from movies, and those that were tacked on to compilations.

But in 1996, Sting’s fifth solo LP, Mercury Falling, failed to produce a single that went higher than No. 60 on the pop charts. Considering the tepid response to that record’s singles and that he was 47 years old when his follow-up, Brand New Day, arrived in 1999, the smart betting money was on him never scoring another Top 40 hit.

A Fruitful “Desert”

Sting chose the title track of Brand New Day as the first single. The song, pleasant but somewhat uneventful, didn’t even crack the Top 100. For the next single, he went with something that was a bit more out there from what people expected of him.

“Desert Rose” emerged from a hypnotic, exotic groove that Sting and his band worked up in the studio. It proved the perfect track for Sting to invite a desired collaborator to perform with him. He had seen the Algerian musician Cheb Mami in concert around the time that he was devising the album and had been mesmerized.

Sting invited Mami to improvise some vocals on “Desert Rose”. Neither man knew what the other was singing due to language differences (Mami was singing in Arabic). But they ended up both coming up with lyrics about a deep, unquenchable longing.

“Rose” Gold

“Desert Rose” is the kind of track that demands your attention and holds it, exotic and catchy all at once. But even with that going for it, it still didn’t do much at radio when it was released at the beginning of 2000. That’s when a unique marketing opportunity elevated the song to the next level.

In the video for “Desert Rose”, Sting tools around in a Jaguar. Sting’s manager, Miles Copeland, saw an opportunity. He contacted Jaguar and let them know they could use the song in their commercials. The company obliged, thrilled to have a star like Sting giving them his implicit stamp of approval.

Jaguar trotted out several different ads with bits of “Desert Rose” playing in the background. Suddenly, the song ascended the charts. When all was said and done, it peaked at No. 17 in the US. That made it Sting’s biggest hit in seven years, and his last Top 40 hit to this date.

(Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns)