Sting opens up about songwriting — and that Diddy tweet

Sting may not be cranking out hits such as “Roxanne,” “Every Breath You Take” and “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” anymore.

But the former Police frontman isn’t about to go chasing the charts in his golden years.

“I’m 71 now, so my music has to reflect who I am, so I’m not desperately trying to get on the K-pop charts,” Sting told Music Week. 

“But there’s something about being a young musician, a young songwriter; it’s just kind of balls to the wall, let’s go for it. That energy is something that you can’t discount.”

The English rock icon will become an Ivors Academy Fellow in London on May 18, receiving the highest honor from the songwriting organization.

“Songwriting is a craft, and the Ivor Novello is its guild, if you like, so to be invited to be part of the fellowship is a great honor and one I don’t take for granted at all,” said Sting, who was born Gordon Sumner.

Despite no longer trying to keep up with the BTS’s of the world, the 17-time Grammy winner still knows a great song when he writes — or hears — it.

“Well, we all know it when we hear it,” said Sting. “If it was a formula, it would be one thing and then we’d just keep repeating it, but it’s not. It’s something much more mysterious. I don’t know, and I don’t suppose I ever will, but I know it when I hear it. And I know it when I’ve written one.”

Even before receiving the Ivors Academy Fellow honor, Sting had already been gifted the ultimate props from another foundation fellow, Paul McCartney. The Beatles legend named Sting’s 1993 hit “Fields of Gold” as the song he wishes that he’d written.

“I can’t tell you how many songs of Paul McCartney’s I wish I’d written,” he said. “So that was a lovely thing for Paul to say.

“But again, he’s one of those people who inspired me to become a songwriter. He’s from Liverpool, a working class guy who conquered the world with his songs, so he gave a whole generation of people behind him the permission to attempt to do the same. And we did.”

Recently, Sting made noise for his lucrative pen powers when Diddy quipped that he pays the King of Pain $5,000 a day for sampling the 1983 Police smash “Every Breath You Take” on his 1997 hit “I’ll Be Missing You” without the songwriter’s permission.

“Well that’s not true,” said Sting, who sold his catalog last year to Universal Music Publishing Group. “But anyway, he’s paying Universal. He’s not paying me anymore.”

And Sting isn’t done with writing more timeless tunes himself. His days as a master musician are far from over.

“I’m curious about music itself. I’m still a student of music. I still practice every day, I still study. I sit at a piano or with a guitar and I’m learning still, and I find things that I haven’t found before, so you can’t get to the end of it.

“That’s the wonderful mystery of it – the enigma of music – but also I’m willing to learn. So if that’s why I’m still hanging on by my fingernails, then it’s a good reason.”

And he isn’t worried about songwriting competition from artificial intelligence.

“A lot of music could be created by AI quite efficiently,” said Sting. “I think electronic dance music can still be very effective without involving humans at all.

“But songwriting is very personal. It’s soul work, and machines don’t have souls. Not yet anyway …”