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It resembled the historic Live Aid concert of 1985: a global jukebox featuring some of the world's top musicians performing for a cause. And like the original world benefit for African famine relief, the event was broadcast to an audience expected in advance to number one billion viewers in more than 100 countries.Last Saturday's multinational concert, titled Our Common Future, also reflected the new activism in rock music by focusing on an urgent global issue: the environment. The performers included Elton John in Edinburgh, Diana Ross in London, Herbie Hancock and John Denver in New York City, Midnight Oil in Sydney, Sting in Rio de Janeiro, along with artists in Los Angeles, Norway, Tokyo...

Even in the Live-Aid era of pop music, when star-studded concerts for good causes have become a fixture on the rock ’n’ roll calendar, it was a landmark event. Amnesty International brought its Human Rights Now! show to Toronto last week, with an eight-hour concert featuring six of pop’s leading artists, kicking off the North American leg of the most ambitious world tour in rock history. The six-week tour, which began in London on Sept. 2, was to touch down in Montreal last Saturday before continuing to scheduled concerts this week in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco. While pop musicians in the 1980s have increasingly adopted social concerns and appeared in concerts arou...

It’s an unlikely pairing—one is a member of English rock royalty, the other a Jamaican superstar—but it works. “We both have ridiculous names,” jokes Sting, born Gordon Sumner, while Shaggy, born Orville Burrell, cites the two musicians’ shared love of reggae music as the bond. The pair’s island-inspired album, named after the British and Jamaican dialling codes, is a sunny delight. It opens with the title track, a dancehall number featuring Shaggy, best known for hits like “Oh Carolina” and “Boombastic,” toasting about rice and peas and Sting singing about Bob Marley. There are moments of genuine fun, on the infectious “Don’t Make Me Wait,” and of pure drama, on the courtroom-themed “Crooke...

A true renaissance man—musician, actor, activist and philanthropist, Sting has been aging gracefully with his many varied projects. The former Police frontman’s latest undertaking may be his most ambitious to date. A collection of dramatic songs about the demise of the shipbuilding industry during the 1980s in Sting’s English seaside birthplace near Newcastle, The Last Ship is full of colorful characters, Geordie dialects and themes about love, fatherhood and workers’ struggles. Guests like AC/DC’s Brian Johnson, actor-musician Jimmy Nail and folk group the Unthanks join the Grammy-winning artist on a series of ballads and shanties like “Shipyard” and “So to Speak.” Not surprisingly, a relat...

Sting introduced the moving tale of life in his shipyard home in northeast England on his 2013 album of the same name, which has now inspired a Broadway musical. Soundtrack highlights include Sting’s classic “When We Dance” and two versions of his stirring ballad “What Say You, Meg,” including one sung by the man himself.