Sting's "Brand New Day" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Desert Rose

According to Sting's explanation in his 2007 book "Lyrics", he collaborated with Cheb Mami after seeing him perform in Paris in the late 1990s. He writes, "I was enthralled by the unique quality of his voice--unsettlingly androgynous, birdlike, exotic, and technically dazzling". After learning that Sting wanted to work with him on this song, Mami showed up one day at Sting's studio in Tuscany, Italy, and "listened intently" to "Desert Rose" as it had evolved thus far. He learned that Sting wanted him to write a few lyrics that Mami would sing at different points in the song and then left, promising to return in a month. However, he oddly never asked what the song was about. Sting writes the following: "Mami does not speak English, nor did I tell him what I was singing about. . . . If he'd bothered to ask me . . ., I suppose I would have told him it was probably about spiritual longing or sexual longing, or maybe a bit of both, but he seemed happy enough with his task and flew back to Paris". When Mami returned weeks later, Sting was thrilled with what Mami had created. When he asked Mami, what Mami's lyrics were about, Mami replied, "Le grande desire". Somehow, he had known from the sound of the music what the song must be about.

"Desert Rose" peaked within the top ten in several international charts: for example, #2 in Canada, #3 in the United States and Switzerland, #4 in Italy, #6 in France and Austria, and #7 in Germany and Belgium.

Rai is a form of Algerian folk music that evolved among Bedouin shepherds and includes a mixture of not only Arabic influence but also African, French, and Spanish as well. Before its popularity in Europe, it was associated with seedy Algerian clubs and with the poor, who often used its lyrics to sing about unfair and tragic social situations in Africa.

If you watch the DVD that accompanies Sting's "All This Time" live album, you learn that the recorded concert for this album occurred immediately following the events of September 11. Sting and his accompanying musicians struggled with the decision to perform "Desert Rose" because of their concern of how the audience that night might respond to the song's Arabic qualities. Ultimately, the belief in the transcendent nature of art and the concern for the discriminatory message that would be sent against Arabic people rather than terrorists won out over their fears.

Answer: A Thousand Years

While Sting wrote the lyrics to "A Thousand Years", much of the music was created by Kipper, the producer of the "Brand New Day" album. In his 2007 book "Lyrics", Sting explains, "Kipper was playing a lovely sequence of elegiac chords one morning in the studio. I soon became obsessed with trying to unearth a song from this bedrock. I locked myself away for days, appearing only briefly at dinner, before scurrying back to my rooms, hollow-eyed and largely uncommunicative. Some songs are a walk in the park, while others are more difficult quarry".

As the question explains, the song is a testament of the power and eternal truth of love, and as such, it delivers quite a beautiful message, as do many of the other songs on the album. Sting explains this tendency of the lyrics on the album, again in his book "Lyrics". He writes, "At the time that we were working on this album, there was a lot of premillennial hokum about the 'end being nigh,' doomsday, and Y2K. I wanted to go against all that and sing something optimistic. Optimism, I've always thought, is the best strategy. Who but the most cynical of us would want to be right about the end of the world? No, I think we make the world every day. Collectively, individually, by intention or accident, we dream our world into being. We just have to be careful what we dream".

One of the verses of the song contains these words:
A million roads, a million fears
A million suns, ten million years of uncertainty
I could speak a million lies, a million songs
A million rights, a million wrongs in this balance of time
But if there was a single truth, a single light
A single thought, a singular touch of grace
Then following this single point, this single flame
The single haunting memory of your face
I still love you
I still want you
A thousand times the mysteries unfold themselves
Like galaxies in my head

Answer: Kipper

Kipper is not only known for his production work and keyboarding but also for his guitar playing. His band One Nation composed two studio albums in 1990 and 1991, "Strong Enough" and "Big Life, Big Tears". He worked closely with Gary Numan on four of his albums: "Machine and Soul" (1992), "Dream Corrosion" (1993), "Sacrifice" (1994), and "Dark Light" (1995).

Kipper's work on "Brand New Day" contributed to its becoming Sting's best-selling solo studio album. It not only achieved triple platinum status in the United States after selling 3.5 million copies, but it also peaked at number nine on the US "Billboard 200" album chart. Furthermore, it won a Grammy award in 2000 for Best Pop Vocal Album. Kipper went on to assist with Sting's next two critically acclaimed albums, the live "All This Time" (2001) and the studio album "Sacred Love" (2003).

Sting had this to say about Kipper in his 2007 book "Lyrics":
Before I met Kipper, I'd been doing all my own programming. It's actually laborious. We imagine that computers help us save time, but they just present us with more options than we can deal with. I was spending more time sequencing drum and keyboard parts than I was composing.
Impulsively, I asked Kipper if he would come and work with me at our house in Italy. I'd seen how quickly he worked on "Freak the Mighty" [the song Sting composed with Trevor Jones for the movie "The Mighty" adapted from the novel "Freak the Mighty" by Rodman Philbrick]. The idea was that we would work together for a few days and see how things progressed. It went well-so well, in fact, that Kipper ended up staying for the next two albums, and together we became a kind of musical Freak the Mighty.

Answer: Big Lie, Small World

On the song "Big Lie, Small World", David "Dave" Hartley contributes as the string arranger/conductor, a role he performs also on the song "Tomorrow We'll See" and on some of the songs from Sting's next studio album "Sacred Love". He is further credited in the notes of the "Brand New Day" album liner with playing the Hammond organ.

Hartley collaborates with Sting on a couple of soundtracks--Disney's "The Emperor's New Groove" and the song "You Will Be My Ain True Love" from the film "Cold Mountain". Both "My Funny Friend and Me" from "The Emperor's New Groove" and "You Will Be My Ain True Love" were nominated for Oscars for Best Song.

Answer: Fill Her Up

In his 2007 book "Lyrics", Sting wrote the following words about this song: "Edward Hopper is such an evocative painter for me. The celebrated American realist painted 'Gas' in 1940. It is one of his most famous works. Something about that lonely pump attendant beneath the Mobil sign set me thinking".

The American painter and printmaker, Edward Hopper, lived from 1882 to 1967. Some of Hopper's most well-known pieces are "Nighthawks", "Summer Interior", "Automat", "Chop Suey", and "Office in a Small City". His style of painting typically evokes a sense of melancholy if not even despondency. Often, the subjects of his painting are large city scenes occupied by a solitary single figure.

In the song, a "big shot from the city" with a really big car and "a pretty red head" riding with him barks at the pump attendant, "Fill her up, son, unleaded / I need a full tank a gas where I'm headed". The pump attendant realizes that he's tired of dreaming about the day he'll be able to fill up his own car and head out west with his lover, so he steals some money while "the boss is sleeping" and starts out for home so he can pick up his lover and they can run away together. However, the money soon turns "cold" in his hand and he hears a voice saying to him, "Why would you wanna take that stolen thing / And what real happiness can it bring?" He begins to realize that he's going to fill up his lover with "sadness" and "shame" and decides that he should "fill her up with light", "with spirit", "with grace", and "with heaven" because he's "got the rest of life to face".

Answer: Stevie Wonder

In his 2007 book "Lyrics", Sting wrote, "As a song, "Brand New Day" captured the spirit of optimism that is so important to me, and if you can think of a more hopeful manifestation of joy than Stevie Wonder's harmonica, then be my guest".

Stevie Wonder was born Stevland Hardaway Judkins, and later his mother changed his name legally to Stevland Hardaway Morris. The combination of his being born prematurely and kept in an oxygen-rich incubator caused retinopathy of prematurity which led to the detachment of his retinas and his blindness.

Stevie Wonder is responsible for countless accomplishments in the world of music; however, many may not be aware that he was the second person (after Paul Simon) to win the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize, given as a lifetime achievement award for contributions to popular music and that in 2009 he was made a Messenger of Peace by the United Nations. Furthermore, many people aware of his songs of love like "I Just Called to Say I Love You" and "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" do not realize that he has also been a political and social force in the United States. Songs like "Misstra Know-It-All" and "You Haven't Done Nothin'" are attacks launched specifically against President Richard Nixon, and he helped lead the campaign to establish Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday as a national holiday.

Answer: The End of the Game

In "The End of the Game", the hunters and hounds pursuing the foxes are an allegorical representation of death that pursues all of us who live. While the fox couple manage to evade what chases them for awhile, the male knows that his and his lover's lives will one day come to an end. He explains, "One day we'll reach a great ocean / At the end of a pale afternoon / And we'll lay down our heads just like we were sleeping / And be towed by the drag of the moon". However, he reaches an acceptance of this reality, and if death is the price he must pay to have lived the life of joy he's lived with his mate, then he is willing to pay it: "I'm ready to answer / I'm ready to pay".

Of course, the song is also a commentary on the sport of fox hunting. In his 2007 book "Lyrics", Sting writes:
Seeing a wild creature as beautiful as a fox always takes my breath away. In all the complexity of the modern world, with its roads, railways, and power lines, these animals still hunt and forage and feed their young, as they've done for millennia.
A fox broke into our chicken house one night and killed every one of them. It was bloody carnage, but could I hunt it down with a pack of dogs and watch it being torn limb from limb for being a fox? No. Such retaliation always struck me as barbaric. I built a stronger chicken house instead.

Answer: Tomorrow We'll See

In his book "Lyrics", published in 2007, Sting writes the following: "The world of transexual prostitutes is pretty far from my own life, I'll have to admit. Trudie, however, my intrepid wife, did make a documentary about the subject for the BBC. She and her film followed the journey of three hopeful Brazilians from their homes in Sao Paulo and Rio to the night streets of Paris and Rome. Theirs was a harrowing story, for in the very act of realizing their fantasy of who they were, they put their lives in mortal danger. Proud and exotic, they live in a cruel, shadowy world where all the lines of gender, sexuality, show business, and vice are blurred to the point of nonexistence. The world would be a far duller place without them, but their story is essentially tragic".

One of the verses of "Tomorrow We'll See" captures well the danger and tragedy:
A friend of mine he wound up dead
His dress was stained the color red
No next of kin, no fixed abode
Another victim on this road
The police just carted him away
But someone took his place next day
He was home by Thanksgiving
But not with the living.

In the chorus, the speaker admonishes those who would criticize her:
Don't judge me
You could be me in another life
In another set of circumstances
Don't judge me
One more night I'll just have to take my chances
And tomorrow we'll see

Answer: Chris Botti

Chris Botti was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1962. and committed to playing the trumpet when he was twelve years old after he heard Miles Davis's version of "My Funny Valentine". In 1999, Sting performed vocals on "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning" on Botti's "Slowing Down the World" album. After Sting and Botti established a professional relationship, Sting invited Botti to join his "Brand New Day" tour in support of his new album. Botti spent two years touring with Sting and helped record Sting's 2001 live album "All This Time". Botti's 2001 album "Night Sessions" includes a song written by Sting and sung by Shawn Colvin, "All Would Envy", and most of the other songs on the album were co-written by Kipper, Sting's keyboardist and producer for the albums "Brand New Day", "All This Time", and "Sacred Love". Sting also provides some vocal performances on Botti's albums "When I Fall in Love" and "To Love Again: The Duets". Dominic Miller, Sting's guitarist, also plays on a couple of Botti's albums.

Chris Botti has also performed with Natalie Cole, Roger Daltry, Aretha Franklin, Mark Knopfler, Natalie Merchant, Bette Midler, Joni Mitchell, and Steven Tyler.

The quotation from the question is from the "Chris Botti" entry in Wikipedia, which credits the February 23, 2010, publication of "The Palm Beach Post".

Answer: the piano

While Jason Rebello was born in Surrey, he grew up in Wandsworth, London, and his ancestry lies in India through his father. Rebello received a classical training in music from Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Rebello had released four albums in the 1990s when he was asked by Sting to replace his pianist and keyboardist Kenny Kirkland, who had died in 1998 from heart failure. Rebello played piano as well as clavinet on three of Sting's albums--"Brand New Day", "All This Time", and "Sacred Love"--and toured with Sting for six years.

He then toured with Jeff Beck for six years and recorded three albums with him. After growing tired of being a session musician, he has returned to solo work and releasing his own albums.

Answer: After the Rain Has Fallen

"After the Rain Has Fallen" was released as a single on April 1, 2000. Sting got the idea for the song during a trip to the Himalayas. Sting's friend Shyam Das, a Bhakti Yogi, led him on a pilgrim trail to Gangotri, the location of the source of the Ganges where some come to cleanse themselves before they die. In his 2007 book "Lyrics" Sting writes, "One night we were near the palace of a maharaja . . . . Shyam Das suggested we pay him a visit. By the time we got there it was well after midnight. The road was dark and before us was a massive medieval fortress. I was feeling somewhat reticent, if not a little afraid. The gates, however, were wide open, and behind them in a courtyard around an open fire were a group of sleeping sentries, their rifles clutched to their chests, their turbans comically askew. . . . We took off our sandals and tiptoed past the soldiers in the flickering light, and then we mounted a long stone staircase to find the maharaja, resplendent in his sumptuous quarters. Smiling in front of an enormous portrait of his great-grandfather, he greeted us. "My security service," he began, with an almost imperceptible shake of the head, "is somewhat less than it should be, yes?" Sting's song "After the Rain Has Fallen" begins, "The palace guards are all sleeping / Their fires burn into the night . . .".

During an interview for Interscope Records, Sting said this about the song: "It sounds like something from 'A Thousand and One Nights' about a thief and a princess and how he takes her out of her set life, which is to be promised to someone she didn't know. I think you can be robbed of everything in this life--your home, your money, your self-respect--yet if you only have love, if you have a relationship, then it doesn't matter because that is really the one thing that sustains you through your whole life, and ought to. So I think love conquers all is the message I'm trying to give there. I actually believe it. I'm not just being a romantic".

Answer: Perfect Love . . . Gone Wrong

During two sections of the song "Perfect Love . . . Gone Wrong", the female responds to the male and explains to him that their affair is over and that he is going to have to get used to the way things are, for she has neglected who she is for far too long and has realized that she needs a man by her side and not a dog. On the album, the female parts are rapped in French by Ste Strausz.

In his 2007 book "Lyrics", Sting writes, "Some people claim to be cats, others are birds, and I'm a dog. I don't mean this in a pejorative way. Like a dog, I'm loyal, trustworthy, honest, and fairly intelligent. But despite all of these good points, dogs can get very, very jealous".

Answer: James Taylor

James Taylor was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1948. His album "Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon" contains one of his biggest hits, his cover of Carol King's "You've Got a Friend", which features backing vocals from Joni Mitchell. His album "Sweet Baby James" is ranked as number 103 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time chart, and the top hit from that album "Fire and Rain" is ranked as number 227 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Taylor's fame and critical success have not faded, for his 2015 album "Before This World" debuted at number one on the US Billboard 100 chart, the first studio album in his career to even reach number one on that chart.

Not only does he provide some of the vocals on "Fill Her Up" but also acoustic guitar. Taylor sings the part of the rich "big shot" who pulls up to the pump with a "pretty red head" and tells the attendant to fill up the car with gas: "Fill her up son, unleaded / I need a full tank of gas where I'm headed . . . We're going to Vegas, we're gonna get wed / So fill her up son, don't be staring / That's a real diamond she be wearing". Later, he sings back up to Sting.

In the October 1999 publication of "Bassist", Sting said the following about his "Brand New Day" album: "For this album, I wanted to pretend that I wasn't making a record, but merely to make music and have fun with various musicians, that was the idea. Just to spend some time and have some fun. Only at the last minute would I allow it be called a record, I wouldn't have anyone saying, 'This is the new record'. Instead we were just playing, experimenting, or just using time in a good way. I've spent since last June getting this far - longer than I've ever spent on an album. I usually make albums in a much quicker and more professional way. It was recorded piecemeal, a little here and there, in a casual and relaxed manner, basically in my home in Italy."

Answer: Ghost Story

The song "Ghost Story" ends, "You were my compass star / You were my measure / You were a pirate's map / Of buried treasure / If this were all correct / The last thing I'd expect / The prosecution rests / It's time that I confessed / I must have loved you".

Concerning the album "Brand New Day", Sting says the following in an interview in a September 1999 "Daily Record" article: "These are all love songs. I must have reached that romantic time in my life. I'm an incurable romantic and I'm very happy about that".

Answer: Brand New Day

In the September 1999 official press release for the "Brand New Day" album, Sting says, "I didn't set out to write lyrics just above love, yet almost all the songs have the theme of broken lives that can be mended by love. My challenge was to write a happy love song without being banal or smug. For example, 'Brand New Day', the last song, begins with a jaundiced view and then moves toward acceptance, to diving back into love. It's basically the thought that falling in love is an act of optimism--and I think if the album has that tone, for me . . . it's an optimistic one".