LONDON - British singer-songwriting legend Sting finds the multiple genres and streaming platforms of the modern music scene "quite odd", but still believes in the power of song to unite people.
In an interview with AFP, the 74-year-old with 17 Grammy Awards and sales of over 100 million albums also spoke about his worries about AI as a tool for repression, as well as politicians "whose idea is to separate us all".
The former frontman of The Police was speaking in Paris ahead of the French debut of his partly biographical musical "The Last Ship", which is set in his hometown of Wallsend in northeast England.
It tells the story of the decline of shipbuilding on the River Tyne and is intended as a tribute to the working-class area that Sting left to pursue his music career.
"My entire life has been about escaping from what was offered to me. At a certain point, I realised that what I was given as a child was very valuable: a community, a family, a town with a purpose, and that had been taken away.
"My way of repaying the debt to my community was to tell a story of an industry that was shut down by the government, and the betrayal, but also to weave in a love story," he said.
"I also think it's about many universal problems we face in society. Many communities are losing work because of technology, AI, and so I think it's highly relevant to what's going on politically.
"It's an act of resistance for people, and I think we need to resist what's happening. So the play is a kind of political statement."
Sting believes that there are separate ecologies in music.
"Whereas before, the number one song in France or England, everybody knew it. Now there are so many genres and so many different streaming systems. It's quite odd," he said.
"I'm lucky in that I came up at a time when it was a monoculture. Everybody knows The Police. So I still trade on that. I'm famous because of that. But now you can be successful in a niche and nowhere else. It's not better or worse, it's just different."