“I get paid, so why not?": Sting says he’s fine with other artists interpolating and sampling his music, and that Every Breath You Take hasn’t been “tainted” for him

Sting has been discussing his feelings about other artists sampling and ‘interpolating’ his music, and says that the way he feels about Police song Every Breath You Take, which he wrote, hasn’t changed in the light of the serious allegations being made against Sean Combs (Diddy).

Combs, who sampled the song in his 1997 hit, I’ll Be Missing You, is currently in prison, waiting to be tried on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. However, when asked by the LA Times if this “taints” the way he feels about Every Breath You Take, Sting replied that it doesn’t.

“No. I mean, I don’t know what went on [with Diddy]. But it doesn’t taint the song at all for me. It’s still my song,” he says.

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Back in 2023, Combs suggested that he has to pay Sting the equivalent of $5,000 a day in royalties for his use of the Every Breath You Take sample, and the former Police frontman admits that the financial remuneration is a nice bonus when other artists choose to reinterpret his work.

Asked why he thinks the next generation likes to mine his back catalogue, he says: I have no idea, but when somebody wants to interpolate or whatever it’s called, I never object because I always learn something about the song that I hadn’t known or anticipated. And I get paid, so why not? It keeps them current. Songs are living organisms - you have to keep breathing life into them or giving them new bedfellows.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Sting refers to Paul Simon as “one of my teachers”, and reflects on one of his early encounters with his friend Billy Joel.

“I spent an evening with him around a piano, and Billy started to play Gilbert and Sullivan, Beethoven, the Beatles,” he recalls. “He can play anything. He’s a real mensch.”

Sting was also asked for his view on The Sphere, the much-talked-about new venue in Las Vegas.

“I saw U2 there early on,” he says. “I loved the show but I thought it was difficult for the band to really appear out of all of that. It was so much to see. I don’t want to be overpowered by visuals, so I’m not sure it’s the place for me.”