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Shape of My Heart (Sting song)

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Wikipedia article




"'Shape of My Heart'" is a song by British musician Sting. It was released in August 1993 as the fifth single from the album 'Ten Summoner's Tales'. The song was co-written by guitarist Dominic Miller. It was used for the end credits of the film 'Lon' starring Jean Reno, Gary Oldman and Natalie Portman, and within the 1993 film 'Three of Hearts'.

Despite failing to reach the top 50 in the UK upon its release, it has become a pop classic and one of Sting's works most closely associated with his solo career. It currently has more than 220 million plays on the streaming platform Spotify.

Larry Adler played the harmonica section in the song. The song was sampled in many songs over the years, most notably on "Shape" (2003) by Sugababes, "Rise & Fall" (2003) by Craig David, The Message (1996) by Nas, and also Sting himself.

The song's guitar riff was also interpolated by Juice WRLD on the worldwide hit "Lucid Dreams" (2018) and on "Youre Mines Still" (2020) by rapper BLEU.

Background and writing



Sting explained that through "Shape of My Heart", he wanted to tell the story of a "card player, a gambler who gambles not to win but to try to figure out something; to figure out some kind of mystical logic in luck, or chance; some kind of scientific, almost religious law."[http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=2845 Shape of my heart by Sting] Songfacts

[Sting] We wrote a song together Shape of My Heart. Dom came in with this fantastic riff beautiful cadence, sort of Bach-like descending baseline. So we spent the morning structuring it, making it into a song. Heres a verse here and a verse there and theres a key change there. So I just go for a walk and I have it in my headphones and I just walk around. A few hours later Ive got at least the concept of what the song is telling me, which is about a gambler. And Dom said, Whered you get this shit from? I said, I dont know. It just occurs to me but the music tells me the story.

[Dominic Miller] Well its a huge compliment, I think. But I mean the truth behind that one is that that riff is that I just actually came up with that motif as an exercise for myself, just as a warm-up exercise based on sixth chords. And its like that takes inspiration from, kind of from Chopin-type chords, piano chords. I was just messing around with that, kind of like the way John McLaughlin would write chord sequences. He wasnt really articulating the third so much its much more about the sixth is what, like, tells you what it is. And so I was just having fun with that and what I think about it is when I hear rappers and an artist using that riff, Im kind of smiling at myself, first of all thinking that unbeknownst to them theyre actually playing classical music from Europe. I cant really claim it as my own really because thats that was the source and I just reorganized that idea. And then it was Stings imagination as a songwriter to this is a perfect example of collaboration he was the one who said well that is a song. And Im going, Its just an exercise, mate. And cut to he walks in the garden and comes back with a lyric, and that song was written in a day. It was just done. It didnt take three months, and sometimes songs are like that, you know? So Im very flattered, but I dont really claim total ownership with it because I know where it came from, and it came from classical music.

Music video



The video was directed by Doug Nichol and premiered in September 1993. It was filmed at Sting's Lake House in Wiltshire.

Charts



Weekly charts



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Certifications



References



Category:Songs written by Sting (musician)

Category:Sting (musician) songs

Category:1993 songs

Category:1993 singles

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