On the 5^th of November 2002, Johnny Cash released what would be his final album American IV: The Man Comes Around. The album was mostly covers, the most notable of these being Cash’s take on Hurt by Nine Inch Nails. When Trent Reznor, the song’s writer, was interviewed by Geoff Rickly for the Alternative press, had this to say:

I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn’t mine any more.

Johnny Cash’s cover of the song seemed to be better known than the original these days and while it’s not unheard of for a cover to overshadow the original, there’s something very interesting to me about how that might affect an artist. It was that interest that ultimately led me to buy this:

I paid £5 for this, £4 of it was postage.

So I make the discovery that track 5 of American IV, I Hung my Head, wasn’t a cover of an old country classic but rather a song by Sting. Not even Sting and the Police, just Sting. I wasn’t that familiar with Sting, the only song I really knew by him was another cover, namely Roxanne from the 2001 film Moulin Rouge. I haven’t actually seen the film, I just like weird covers.

Anyway, I was curious what Sting may have thought about Johnny Cash’s cover. Well, there’s a small bit on the Wikipedia page about that:

The Cash cover changes “salt lands” to “south lands”, and “stream” to “sheen”. Sting supposed the latter was due to a misprint in the lyrics Cash was using.

I thought, that’s kind of underwhelming? Surely there’s more. So I follow the citation to Lyrics by Sting. I wasn’t intending to buy it, but then I read the reviews. This one has always stuck with me:

Can’t help feeling a little short changed by this . supposedly the lyrics of Sting , but it’s incomplete. For instance, “Roxanne” in which the line “Roxanne (put on the red light)” is repeated 26 times, in this book it’s only printed 13 times. Similarly “Can’t Stand Losing You” on record has the line ” I can’t, I can’t, I can’t stand losing” repeated 22 times, in the book we only get it 11 times. What good is a book with only half the lyrics of each song printed? I could go on and on, but then I’m not Sting,

That’s a good review. There was another one which was an odd reminiscence about someone thinking Sting was full of himself and how he and his friend used refer to this book as “Leereeks” because the lyrics reeked. Also a great review but since this person made a point that they didn’t actually buy the book their review has been deleted.

So, temptation won out. I bought Lyrics by Sting. He didn’t really have much more to say on Johnny Cash’s cover of I Hung My Head but about the song itself he said this:

I wrote my version of the song in 9/8; the guitar riff just occurred to me that way and reminded me of the gait of a galloping horse dragging a corpse. The story of a terrible accident, guilt, and redemption materialized out of the title and out of the haunting image of the riderless horse.

I’d never really thought about it before the music dictating the lyrics really interested me. Sting didn’t have a story he wanted a tell, instead he tells the story the music wants to tell. Sting pretty much says this outright in an interview with Rick Beato (I love this interview) and I think it’s a really interesting aspect of his craft. However, it’s not the most interesting part. This is:

Songwriting can be a little like fishing: There are times when you land something in the net, and other times when you get “nowt.” The frustrating thing was, it sounded like a hit to me even at this early stage. There must have been a few days of this frustration. The crows began mocking me audibly, and the sheep in our top meadow started to look at me with sad concern.

“Nine syllables is all I need,” I would say to myself.

“Faith, have faith. If I ever, if I ever… lose my faith. Two syllables to go.”

A crow at rest in the high treetop gave out a bisyllabic cry in the sardonic laryngitis that is crow song.

Did he really say, “In you”?

“That’s it: If I ever lose my faith in you.”

I ran home, with the cawing derision of the crows in my ears while the sheep resumed their grazing.

That’s right, a crow helped write the song If Ever I lose My Faith in You. Sting was trying to figure out the lyrics and then a crow listened in and made a suggestion. That’s why I’m writing this. I want you to know this. I want everyone to know this. I could have just said this at the beginning but you needed the journey. That crow is a co-writer Wikipedia won’t tell you the crow did the lyrics, instead it tries to distract you by saying the song uses flattened fifth, the tri-tone banned by the Pope for being wicked. Sure, that’s cool (Although it doesn’t appear to be real) but where is crow? Why no crow? Crow needs some credit on this.

So yeah, a crow helped Sting write a song. They’re a cool bird.