Rock singer Sting has said he isn’t concerned that the allegations surrounding disgraced music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs will impact his classic hit, “Every Breath You Take”.
The Bad Boy Records founder famously sampled the 1983 song by Sting’s band, The Police, for his own track “I’ll Be Missing You” featuring Faith Evans in 1997.
Combs was arrested on racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges in September and is currently awaiting a 5 May trial at a federal detention facility in Brooklyn.
He has pleaded not guilty to charges that he coerced and abused women for years while being aided by a network of associates and employees, as he silenced victims through methods of blackmail, kidnapping, arson and physical assaults.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Sting was asked whether his feelings towards “Every Breath You Take”, one of his band’s signature songs, had changed.
“No,” he responded. “I mean, I don’t know what went on [with Combs]. But it doesn’t taint the song at all for me. It’s still my song.”
“Every Breath You Take” spent eight weeks at the Billboard Hot 100 in 1983, and remains The Police’s only No 1 in the US.
Combs released “I’ll Be Missing You” 14 years later as a tribute to the Notorious BIG, who was murdered in a drive-by shooting on 9 March 1997. He also interpolated the chorus, which was sung by Biggie’s wife Evans.
Sting successfully sued Combs over the song, as he had not secured legal approval to sample “Every Breath You Take”, and received 100 per cent of the royalties – reportedly until last year.
The two musicians later made amends and performed “Every Breath You Take” / “I’ll Be Missing You” together at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards.
The Police guitarist Andy Summers was less enthusiastic about Combs’s song, revealing in an AV Club interview in 2012 that he only learnt about it from his son, who heard it on the radio.
“He actually sampled my guitar, and that’s what he based his whole track on,” Summers said. “Sting’s not on it. I’d be walking round Tower Records, and the f***ing thing would be playing over and over. It was very bizarre while it lasted.”
Combs has repeatedly been denied bail following his arrest. On Friday 8 November, a judge rejected his “unprecedented” and “unwarranted” request that a gig order be issued against his alleged victims and their lawyers, on the grounds that they were supposedly making “inflammatory extrajudicial statements aimed at assassinating Mr Combs’s character in the press”.
Last month, Combs was hit with a fresh wave of lawsuits including an accusation that he raped a 13-year-old girl at a VMAs afterparty.
Five new civil suits against Combs were filed in October in the Southern District of New York, according to NBC News.
The plaintiffs accuse Combs of sexually assaulting or raping them in separate incidents between 2000 to 2022. Two of the plaintiffs are men, and three are women.
So far, more than 120 people have accused Combs of sexually related crimes. He has denied all of the allegations against him.
