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Sting: "So Lonely"

 A broken heart is the greatest gift to a songwriter; suffering is the subject of "I Had Myself a True Love," "The Man That Got Away," "But Not for Me," "She Used to Be Mine," "Blue Christmas," "Fire and Rain," "When You Were Mine," "You Oughta Know," I Can't Make You Love Me," "All I Ask," "Rolling in the Deep," "Without You," "My Man's Gone Now," "Dear John."


In the pantheon, I'd include Sting, who writes a kind of letter to the lover who has deserted him:

Well, someone told me yesterday
That when you throw your love away--
You act as if you just don't care.
You look as if you're going somewhere.

Sting understands that a stiff upper lip is the goal to strive toward. However, he can't get there:

I just can't convince myself...
I couldn't live with no one else.
And I can only play that part.
And sit and nurse my broken heart....

Poor Sting can't wear a mask; he has to be his woeful self.

Now no one's knocked upon my door--
For a thousand years or more.
All made up and nowhere to go.
Welcome to this one-man show...

The idea of "playing a part" leads to this wonderful theater metaphor. The house is empty. Sting--coated in (clownish?) makeup--sits in silence, "for a thousand years or more."

Sting's mopiness yields other rewards: the little black spot on the sun ("that's my soul up there"), the rejection of optimism ("I've lost my belief in science, or progress"), the image of the castaway ("rescue me before I fall into despair...")

I love this honest, whiny writer.
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