Sting - 25 Years

Now that I've listened to the new box set (no I didn't personally buy it) I am convinced that it is a disappointment and quite a missed opportunity. It seems that no one took this seriously. Besides being a year late, all it amounts to is a 3 CD best of collection for $150. There is also a DVD of a performance cut down to 10 tracks, the only real new material. The Police bo set gave us five complete albums plus all the B-sides for $40, quite a difference.  The only promising material here are the remixes. The Blue Turtles tracks (Fortress, Set Them Free, Love is the Seventh Wave, and Consider Me Gone) show a considerable improvement from the original release, the bass and guitar parts are now clear and accented. The live tracks from that tour, (Driven to Tears and I Burn For You) are also much better, the remix actually making them sound live and not like studio overdubs found on the original Bring on The Night.

A Much better plan would have been something along the lines that U2 did, release a best of with a companion CD of B Side and remixes( here is my proposed tracklist).  This could have been followed up with remastered and remixed releases of each album.  The Entire Dream of the Blue Turtles album would find improvement and Bring on the Night would be a live album again and could use additional songs performed on the tour added back in (Fortress, Set Them Free, Message in a Bottle, etc).  The next three albums are probably good as they are, but his last two rock albums could use a complete makeover (the included remix of Never Coming Home is more interesting than the original release).

Along with that a lot of video could be released on DVD to make a nice overview of this 25 year span including the Tokyo 88 concert, the complete Soul Cages Live (the Peter Gabriel tracks could be included as Easter eggs), The Hollywood Bowl show from 91, a concert from 93 such as the Oslo show, and a full Broken Music show (perhaps with addition songs from other dates as this tour was fairly limited).