As a long time fan I found this a great read! I rarely get into books unless I'm really interested in the subject and the way it is written. I was hooked and it didn't take me long to finish it which, in itself, is a miracle!! It covers the early years - there is so much more to come in Sting's life and I wished I could have kept reading more! Wonder if Sting will write more later. An amazingly talented guy. One of the best concerts I ever attended - the Police, Live in Edinburgh on or near New Year's eve in the 80's!! ( )

I was a Police fan as a kid so this was a fun biographical read especially when Sting meets Stewart, I found his description of that time in his past hilarious. ( )

An iteresting and honest autobiography from an intelligent and honest musician. From the early days till the first glimpses of the great success wilth the Police. ( )

On huomattavasti mukavampaa lukea ihmisten itsensä kirjoittamia muistelmia, sillä olkoon teksti totta tai tarua, se tulee kirjoittajan omasta tahdosta. Sting kirjoittaa mukavasti ja vetävästi miten muusikon ura lähti liikkeelle. Kirja keskittyy lapsuus- ja nuoruusvuosiin, aikoihin, joista oikeasti juuri kukaan muu ei voi tietää mitään, paitsi Sting itse. Muistelma ei etene niinkään kronologisesti vaan Sting kertoo anekdootteja elämänsä varrelta, tärkeistä ihmisistä ja tapahtumista. Viihdyttävää luettavaa. ( )

Born to working class parents in the English port town of Wallsend, Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner was a smart, quiet boy with good grades who would become a teacher, get married and have a couple of children. This is the person we don’t know. The person we do know is a Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, activist, actor and philanthropist – who’s stage name is Sting.


Broken Music is Sting’s autobiography of his life leading up to the moment of his first real commercial success with The Police in 1978. The book takes us through the loneliness of his youth, the contentious marriage of his parents and the failings of his relationships. Sting is very open about his upbringing as well as his shortcomings, including his propensity to be seen as arrogant. It is a charge he doesn’t try very hard to dispute. What does become apparent is how his upbringing and experiences shaped not just his life, but his music as well. Success was not the product of overwhelming talent, but rather single-minded, dogged determination. And while he was never the best pure musician, Sting’s strength was in storytelling and performance. This probably forms from his love of literature.

“For to sit in a room full of books, and remember the stories they told you, and to know precisely where each one is located and what was happening in your life at time or where you were when you first read it is the languid and distilled pleasure of the connoisseur.”

I found Sting’s story very interesting in and of itself. The writing is solid, if not great. There are also a lot of distractive asides and jumps back and forth in time that make it difficult to follow the narrative. However, the biggest letdown is the incomplete nature of the autobiography. While Sting wrote Broken Music in 2003, he essentially ends the narrative at the end of the 1970’s just as The Police were hitting it big. Knowing that there are so many fascinating parts of his life left unmentioned – his break with the Police, his role in the movie Dune, his solo career, the 9/11 concert in Tuscany, and many more – it is a letdown to not get to experience his personal take on these watershed moments in his life.

So while I enjoyed what I did get to read in Broken Music, I was disappointed in what I didn’t get to read. It is a good, but incomplete look at a fascinating individual in popular culture. I just wish there could have been more. ( )