Modern Rock Tracks No. 1s - Sting and "All This Time"

Sting tops the Modern Rock Tracks chart for the first and only time with a song I'm 100 percent certain I never heard until this week

Sting - “All This Time”

Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart: 2 weeks (January 26 and February 2, 1991)

Previous Modern Rock #1 hit: Happy Mondays - “Kinky Afro”

Next Modern Rock #1 hit: Jesus Jones - “Right Here, Right Now”

Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:

• Surface - “The First Time” (1/26/91 and 2/2/91)

I’ve talked in the past about how the late ‘80s and very early ‘90s are a blind spot in my overall appreciation of the musical timeline. Heck, I may not know every song from the early ‘60s to the present day, but I can tell you more about the cultural and musical zeitgeist of the ‘60s than I could the late ‘80s, and I wasn’t even alive at the time.

Even with those blind spots, there are plenty of songs from that roughly five-year period between 1988 and 1992 that I know really well, even if I didn’t exactly discover them at the moment when their stars shined the brightest. I think of Jane’s Addiction or U2 or even Love and Rockets, and while I wasn’t necessarily listening to them in the moment, those songs were still omnipresent enough that they register in my memories even today.

And then Sting comes along and releases what would be his first and only MRT chart topper, a song that actually got to #5 on Billboard’s flagship Hot 100 chart, and I swear to you all I’ve never heard this song in my life: “All This Time.”

I’ll spare you a breakdown of Sting’s formative musical years with the Police, where he was a part of a trio of musicians who dominated the Hot 100 during the early to mid 1980s, only for the band to ultimately disintegrate and Sting to seek his fortunes as a solo artist. I still consider “Every Breath You Take” to be an all-time classic, and that verse where Sting brings it full force — “Since you’re gone, I’ve been lost without a trace …” — still gives me chills to this day when I hear it. Needless to say, I’m a big fan of Sting even if I don’t follow every step he takes from a musical perspective. I recognize the talent.

As a solo artist, he’s no less a juggernaut commercially than he was fronting the Police. Of the 14 studio albums he’s released since his solo debut “The Dreams Of Blue Turtles” in 1985, 10 of them charted in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 Album Chart, with four of them charting in the top 3, including “The Soul Cages,” which was released in 1991. The first single from that album, “All This Time,” is the subject of today’s discussion.

So given Sting’s overall greatness, his omnipresence in the musical zeitgeist for at least the first 20 years of his career, and the fact that this was not only an MRT #1 but a top-five hit in the U.S. during its run on the charts, I have to think that somehow, some way, I would have heard it before preparing this article. But yeah, doesn’t ring any bells for me.

If it was popular at the time, it pales in comparison to many of Sting’s other hits, at least in terms of streams on Spotify. “All This Time” does have a rather sizable 18 million streams as of the time of this writing, which is a number most artists would be very pleased with for a hit single. For Sting, however, that number is pedestrian at best. “Fields of Gold,” for example, boasts more than 317 million streams; “Englishman In New York” and “Shape Of My Heart” are in the 300 million stream club as well. Even painful omnipresent earworm “Desert Rose” has more than 123 million streams. Throw in some of the streaming totals for the Police’s biggest hits (1.8 BILLION streams of “Every Breath You Take,” for example), and it’s easier to understand how “All This Time” might have gotten lost in the shuffle.

But it’s remarkable to me that “All This Time” is completely lost to me, given its placement among the top songs of 1991, when so many of his other tracks stand out to me and were far less successful. I still really love “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You,” a song I remember clearly being all over the radio at the time, and it only reached #17 on the Hot 100 in 1993 and, as it turns out, his second-highest charting song on the MRT chart, hitting #4. As mentioned above, “Fields of Gold” has one of the highest streaming totals of all his solo hits, and it actually peaked *lower* than “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You,” topping out at #23 on the Hot 100 in the summer of ‘93.

Something’s wrong with this picture. Is it because music was charted somewhat differently in early 1991 than it was later? The switchover of Billboard reporting in mid 1991 to include data from SoundScan really changed the landscape of what was considered “popular music” (a really nice writeup on that change from The Ringer as a 30th anniversary retrospective can be found here), so it’s entirely possible early 1991 Billboard found “All This Time” to be the bees’ knees, but if it had come out during the SoundScan era of charting, perhaps it wouldn’t have done as well.

Indeed, the Ringer article above refers specifically to Sting’s “The Soul Cages” and to “All This Time” as a cautionary tale that the charts at this time may not have accurately reflected the reality of Sting’s persistent greatness:

But for a certain breed of rock snob, the chart dip experienced by Sting’s January ’91 solo album Soul Cages—from no. 22 to no. 56 in that same span—was far more amusing, as the former frontman for ’80s new wave giants the Police was already exuding a certain classic-rock pompousness.

“There was a layer of music that the industry just assumes is a hit and were nudging their way up the chart,” Chris Molanphy says, noting that the 1991 Rolling Stones live album “Flashpoint” took a tumble as well. “You just assume week to week that Sting album’s just got to be selling. Well, he was, but not anymore. I go back to my movie metaphor: Albums open big and then fall off unless they are lucky enough to generate five singles. You think, ‘Well, it’s Sting. He’s just going to keep selling through the summer.’ No. Sting’s going to have about four good weeks, and then that album’s going to plummet.”

Maybe it’s a mix of all the things, including a sometimes silly music video on some kind of a boat going back and forth while priests, plumbers, custodians and scantily clad women work their way through that video’s narrative. The song itself is *fine*, insofar as it’s not something I consider to be top-five Hot 100 worthy, but definitely represents the type of musical style Sting was going for at the time. After all the song is, according to Sting, a reflection on his father’s passing, and in the narrative of the song, there’s a biting reflection on whether the father should be given traditional religious death rites or just be buried at sea.

Overall, despite the personal nature of the song and its placement high up on the respective Billboard charts, I can understand how this track became lost to time and ultimately buried beneath the larger radio hits he scored as a solo artist and his mega hits with the Police. It doesn’t do much to stand out from my perspective and since it doesn’t get a lot of repeat airplay on ‘90s alternative or pop stations these days, it’s safe to say this track will likely be forgotten again once I finished typing this article.

Of course isn’t the last the world would hear of Sting, as he had at least a dozen more tracks through the ‘90s and into the 2000s that would become Hot 100 hits, even if not as high as “All This Time.” There’s still a strong Sting fanbase that purchases and streams his work, and while this song will likely not be the one that represents his long history of musical artistry, he’s still got a seat among the all-time greats.

Rating: 3/10

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Chart Check: A look at other notable MRT chart songs from this time period

We start with the love of wicked games and end up getting downright wicked toward the end of this week’s “Chart Check.” Chris Issak kicks things off with his David Lynchian homage to love while we finish with a dance-rock beat about kisses and touches and a Celtic poem about all the things that can go wrong when it comes to booze and lascivious living.

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“Wicked Game” by Chris Issak: Here’s a song that was initially released in the summer of 1989, but found new life on the charts after it became part of the soundtrack to David Lynch’s “Wild At Heart.” This song would ultimately become part of many other movie and TV backdrops, and is easily the most popular song in Chris Issak’s catalog. The track peaked at #2 behind Sting on the MRT chart, and #6 on the Hot 100.

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“Hands Across The Ocean” by The Mission U.K.: This is a catchy upbeat rock ditty from The Mission (known stateside as The Mission U.K.), who would go on to have reasonably good success in their native land through the mid ‘90s, but topped out in America with this track. This would be the band’s last top 10 hit in the U.S., peaking at #7 behind “All This Time.”

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“Come Together” by Primal Scream: This track, off their awesomely titled album “Screamadelica,” peaked at #13 on the MRT chart behind Sting, but would not be their highwater mark with American audiences. The Scottish rockers bring a pop-minded dance edge to this track, emulating the sound of future MRT #1 artists Jesus Jones (at least to my untrained novice ear), and take a song that I thought for sure would be a Beatles cover and instead turn out a nice psychedelic rock/dance vibe about kissing and touching and coming together as one.

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“The Sunny Side Of The Street” by The Pogues: Shane MacGowan’s Celtic punk band The Pogues managed a #23 MRT chart peak with this happy-go-lucky punk homage to all things nihilism: women, booze, going to jail, and the fear of being reincarnated as a snail. I imagine this song, if sped up to typical punk-rock speeds, would sound rad as hell, but this is nice, too.

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