Sting: How ‘Every Breath You Take’ went from a ‘stalker’ song to beloved wedding track

nypost.com:

the Police to his solo career, Sting says it never gets old when one of his songs gets a brand-new spin.And the timeless tunes of the artist born Gordon Sumner get a fresh flip in the new dance theater production “Message in a Bottle,” which is “sending out an SOS” from New York City Center through Sunday.“I always love to see someone else’s interpretation of one of my songs,” said the 17-time Grammy winner in a talkback following Sunday’s matinee performance. “I love it when rappers take a piece of my song and they create another art form from it as a basis.“I always love when people have a different interpretation to the meaning that I put into it myself, because it widens the song.

I never contradict people who have a totally different opinion.”Take Sting’s signature song “Every Breath You Take,” which took the Police to No.

1 in 1983 — and then was famously sampled on Puff Daddy’s 1997 chart-topper “I’ll Be Missing You.”“A lot of people think it’s about a stalker,” said Sting. “Some people get married to that song.”For the record, when Sting wrote “Every move you make/Every step you take/I’ll be watching you,” he was imagining himself as Big Brother.The O.G.

King of Pain said that he connected with “Message in a Bottle” — choreographed by five-time Olivier Award nominee Kate Prince — through “the ability of dancers to express pain.”“To dance is to know pain,” said Prince during Sunday’s talkback.