Sting and reggae superstar Shaggy won a Grammy in 2019 for their reggae album 44/876. Now they’re back with a new single, “Til A Mawnin,” which they’ll perform live Thursday at St. Petersburg, Florida’s Reggae Rise Up Festival. Sting says in a world full of “misery,” he’s happy to sing a song so “joyful.”
“Shaggy came to me a few months ago with it,” Sting tells ABC Audio. “I said, ‘Man, this is not only a great vibe and a great beat, but actually, it’s a beautiful melody he’s asking me to sing.’ So I was more than happy to join him again in our little partnership, which … I love.”
“I think it’s a very joyful song,” he adds. “I mean, let’s face it — the world needs some joy at the moment. It’s nothing but misery out there.”
While Sting and Shaggy may seem like an odd pair, the “It Wasn’t Me” artist says crowds seem to “really love” their “banter” onstage.
“We do a couple of new songs together, and sometimes he sings a little bit of mine, I sing a little bit of his, but it’s just the energy with both of us going back and forth that people seem to enjoy,” he notes.
And for Sting, reggae’s not a new thing, of course: it was part of many songs by The Police. He notes that most British people his age grew up with that musical genre.
“We’ve had a very influential West Indian community in England since the end of WWII, so it’s part of our culture … it’s something that we consider to be ours, as much as it’s Jamaican,” he says.
As for a new joint album, Shaggy tells ABC Audio, “He actually suggested the other day, he says, why don’t you just write it and I sing it? I was like, ‘Nah.’ I kind of want to sit with him on it because there’s so [many] things that he brings to it that [are] so unique, y’know?”
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