Sting, singer, songwriter
The guitarist Dominic Miller and I would get together at my house in Wiltshire every Wednesday. One week, Dom came in with four chords. I said, “I like the sound of that” – and eventually we had the shape of a song. I took it out into the garden on headphones and just walked around thinking, “What is the story this music is trying to tell?” The chords weren’t sexy – they were contemplative. So I was thinking of somebody who uses their brain.
I came up with the idea of a card-player who is also a philosopher. As a kid, I had played five-card stud. Years later, someone taught me tarot and I would do readings for people and see all this dark stuff I was apprehensive about telling them. In the end, it got so scary I gave it up, but I remained fascinated by tarot cards and their relationship with regular playing cards – the diamonds are pentacles and the spades are swords. So for the song, I liked the imagery of a kind of soldier whose weapons are his cards. The hook – “But that’s not the shape of my heart” – reflects the fact that a playing card heart doesn’t look like a human one.
By that point, I had spent a lot of time in airless studios and I just wanted to come home. So I built a studio in the kitchen. The atmosphere on the record came from that environment – we were all very happy, and the house was reverberating with music. In the video, I’m walking the dog.
I asked the legendary harmonica player Larry Adler if he’d play on it. The guy had recorded Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and had a piece – Romance for Harmonica – written for him by Vaughan Williams. It was such an honour that he agreed. David Sancious played keyboards and Vinnie Colaiuta drums. We didn’t dress it up too much.
It’s been sampled many times by rap artists: I think the descending chords inspire a contemplative kind of rap. When I hear Craig David or Juice WRLD’s versions, I think they’ve interpreted the song in the same way. In my set now, we do Shape of My Heart and Juice WRLD’s version as a mashup. There’s even a magician called Shawn Farquhar who plays the song as he shuffles cards. Every time a certain card is mentioned in the lyrics, it miraculously appears at the top of the deck. I’ve watched his video several times. I’m fascinated by all the places where the song turns up.
Dominic Miller, guitarist, songwriter
When I auditioned for Sting in 1989, I couldn’t get any sound out of my guitar. Technicians were running around, changing amps, switching power supplies. I stood there thinking: “This is really going to shit.” Then, after they’d exhausted every possibility, Sting casually walked over and turned the volume up on my instrument. The crew were in hysterics – but thinking I’d already lost the gig helped me relax. We’ve played together ever since.
The Shape of My Heart riff wasn’t something I intended to present to him. I was just playing around with some Chopin-esque descending piano chords as an exercise, but they were really nice. So, instead of naffly trying to make it sound classical, I came up with a series of notes for the right hand with a John Lennon type of rhythm.
I was sitting by Sting’s fireplace in Lake House playing it. Only the dog was listening, but then Sting said, “What’s that, mate?” I told him it was just my silly little riff and he said, “That should be a song.” We put a simple beat together on a drum machine and he went out to the garden and came back with a lyric, but I didn’t really hear the words at that point. I drove home and didn’t think more about it. We had 30-40 ideas for songs. Then later he called and said: “That thing we were working on today sounds really good.”
It was the fifth single from the album Ten Summoner’s Tales, but people started taking more notice of it after Luc Besson used it in the film Léon. Since then, it’s been sampled many, many times – and there are something like 150 covers. The 90bpm tempo and descending chord sequence seem to connect with a certain type of producer. It amuses me that people like Juice WRLD, Nas, Craig David and the Sugababes are actually playing Chopin without realising it.
• On 18 May, Sting will become an Ivors Academy Fellow, the highest honour the Academy bestows. Message in a Bottle, a dance theatre production by Kate Prince, is on tour across the UK and internationally); Sting’s My Songs world tour arrives in the UK on 24 June.
