ABC/Paula LoboSting and reggae star Shaggy kick off their joint North American tour Friday night in Jacksonville, FL. Just like Sting’s previous treks with Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel, the tour features both artists and their bands sharing the stage and collaborating on each other’s hits, as well as songs from their joint album, 44/876. Shaggy says the tour will be “a nice reggae party,” while Sting compares it to “making soup.”
“We just wanna have fun playing these records, man…and we don’t care what kinda audience we’re in front of,” Shaggy tells ABC Radio. “We just wanna go out there and turn whatever venue we’re in into a party.”
Discussing the process of combining their talents to perform each other’s hits, from “Every Breath You Take” to “Angel,” Sting says, “It’s experimental. It’s like making soup — y’know, you throw something in and if it fizzes, it’s good…it’s fun, in a way, because we don’t really know what’s gonna happen.”
One thing we know will happen, though, is that Sting will sing the chorus of Shaggy’s #1 hit from 2000, “It Wasn’t Me.” Despite telling ABC Radio earlier this year that he’d never deliver those raunchy lyrics about his girl catching him in the act with another woman, he now admits, “Well…I preface it with a little speech about how it is a moral parable. Which, in fact, it is!”
He laughs, “So I just need to point that out before I launch into, ‘Banging on the bathroom floor!'”
And there’s also one thing you definitely won’t see on this tour: Sting attempting to rap like Shaggy does.
“That ain’t gonna happen,” he laughs. “I know my limitations!”
The North American leg of the tour wraps up October 15 in Los Angeles.
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