Sting looks like he’s never going to die

About fifteen minutes into Sting’s recent performance at the Wiltern in Los Angeles, I thought to myself, “Man, for a guy who must be in his sixties, Sting looks great.” I then happened to look to my left where one of my fellow concertgoers had their phone out – because they had clearly been thinking along the same lines – except I could see in big bold text on their screen: 73 years old.

Age is nothing but a number when it comes to the English-born music icon, formerly of The Police and now himself. And Sting didn’t have to do much to command the stage; wearing a T-shirt and jeans that perfectly suited his slim but burly frame, he looked as fresh and healthy and engaged as any twenty-something rocker.

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The revelation of how old he is came as a shock, but a lovely one. All the jokes about Sting’s very possible immortality are obvious, from dealings with the devil to haunted portraits in the attic to the highly demonstrable benefits of eating vegetarian and exercising regularly. (You might as well throw in some comments about tantra while you’re at it.) But watching him on stage that night felt like to was the real secret – being a musician playing his bass and guitar to an audience that truly loves his music.

Sting 3.0 delivered all the hits you’d hope to hear at a Sting concert, including a little trip into his “cowboy phase” (as Krysta, my friend/plus-one that night, put it) with the track “I ‘ from 1996 I’m so happy I can’t stop crying.” He also went back in time with the first song he ever wrote – “I Burn for You”, which he first recorded with the band Last Exit in the 1970s. The track sounded as fresh and original as “Desert Rose”, released in 1999, despite the difference in decades and “Desert Rose’s” world music influences.

Sting performed a little over a week after Election Day 2024 and avoided being too political with his banter on stage, though the audience was more than game to find their own meaning in the lyrics; during the second song of the night, “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You,” people had one strong reaction to the lyric “You could say I had lost faith in our politicians.”

Sting didn’t feed it, though—in fact, after rocking through his first four songs, he flat out told the crowd that “I don’t want to talk about the election.” From the back of the theater, an audience member shouted for him to, but instead Sting went on to talk about his house – “more of a castle, really” – and how it’s surrounded by wheat fields, which look golden in the sunlight. … You can guess where things went.

Sting, photo by Pooneh Ghana

Sting sat down on a stool for “Fields of Gold” and a few songs afterward, but quickly got back to his feet, as fresh as before. Perhaps the key to Sting’s energy on stage is the spontaneity baked into the show – the opportunities to flex and explore and improve. It’s not just playing the hits for him – towards the end of “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You”, the second song of the night, he and guitarist Dominic Miller were happy to deconstruct the song into a series of extended riffs before closing out with a bang.

Additionally, there is a segment of the Sting 3.0 show where Sting approaches Miller to choose what they want to play next for a few songs, choices that seem to surprise Sting: When Follow‘s own Spencer Kaufman saw Sting in Port Chester, New York last month, Miller chose the songs “Wrapped Around Your Finger” and “Can’t Stand Losing You.”

In Los Angeles a month later, Miller chose “It’s Probably Me”, which Sting originally wrote before Lethal Weapon 3 soundtrack. (If you’re not familiar with the latter song, the definitely sounds like the perfect background score for a scene where Mel Gibson is trying to seduce a suspect.)

Sting ended the night with “Every Breath You Take,” followed by a hard-rocking encore of “Roxanne” and a much softer, introspective rendition of “Fragile.” It was the same set of songs he’s used to end previous tour stops—by design, he told the audience: He wanted to “end with something quiet and thoughtful, so you leave here quiet and thoughtful.” It was a choice that spoke to Sting’s passion for yoga, the concert equivalent of Shavasana. Of course, one of the world’s most famous yoga practitioners would choose to end his concert on a similar note.

Watching Sting perform live feels like hardcore scientific validation of the way he’s spent the last seven decades of his life – that through a combination of clean living and total commitment to his craft, he’s somehow stumbled upon the secret of immortality. This is of course an exaggeration; Even Sting is made of mortal flesh, kept alive by muscles and organs that all have expiration dates. Just like the rest of us. But just because science is real doesn’t mean magic isn’t, at least when it comes to Sting. And as long as he keeps breathing, I will choose to believe.

See photos from Sting’s show at the Capitol Theater below.