The Last Ship (Expanded Edition) Sting

• 1 Island Of Souls (2025) 05:59
• 2 And Yet 03:52
• 3 August Winds 03:17
• 4 Practical Arrangement 03:16
• 5 Shipyard 06:07
• 6 Ship Of State 02:25
• 7 If You Ever See Me Talking to a Sailor 04:02
• 8 Language Of Birds 03:30
• 9 Dead Man's Boots 03:29
• 10 The Night The Pugilist Learned How To Dance 04:13
• 11 What Have We Got? 03:34
• 12 The Last Ship 03:50
• 13 It's Not The Same Moon 02:54
• 14 So To Speak 04:06
• 15 What Say You Meg? 04:22
• 16 I Love Her But She Loves Someone Else 03:41
• 17 Hadaway 03:18
• 18 Show Some Respect 04:51
• 19 The Last Ship (Reprise) 03:27
• 20 Ballad Of The Great Eastern 05:14
• 21 Sky Hooks And Tartan Paint 03:35
• 22 Peggy's Song 02:38
• 23 Jock The Singing Welder 02:48
• 24 O’Brien’s Hymn 01:57
• Total Runtime 01:30:25

Info for The Last Ship (Expanded Edition)

Featuring Five New Recordings to Celebrate the Upcoming International Performances of The Last Ship!

The Last Ship (Expanded Edition), is an updated, 24-track version of his acclaimed album featuring five new recordings, including “Island of Souls (2025),” "Shipyard (featuring Joe Caffrey, Brian Johnson, and Jo Lawry),” "Ship of State (featuring Renée Fleming),” “If You Ever See Me Talking to a Sailor (featuring Frances McNamee),” and “O’Brien’s Hymn.” The album will be released on December 5, 2025, ahead of a series of highly anticipated international performances of Sting's celebrated musical The Last Ship, in which he will also star.

As a collection, these songs underscore the enduring power of The Last Ship’s narrative and Sting’s deeply personal connection to its themes of home, community, and resilience.

Inspired by the shipbuilding community of Sting’s native Wallsend in northeast England, The Last Ship explores the challenges faced by a town grappling with the loss of its historic industry. The musical premiered on Broadway in 2014, earned a TONY Award nomination for Best Original Score and has since been staged to critical acclaim around the world.

“I literally grew up in the shadow of the yard,” Sting says. “I dreamed of escaping – and I succeeded. But later I realised I had to give something back. THE LAST SHIP is my tribute to the people and the place that shaped me.”

With this expanded edition of The Last Ship, including newly penned liner notes by the 2026 stage production’s book writer Barney Norris, Sting, managed by Martin Kierszenbaum/Cherrytree Music Company, invites listeners to rediscover the album that helped inspire the stage production, now enriched with fresh interpretations and collaborations.

Produced by Sting and Rob Mathes, mixed by Donal Hodgson and 4-time Grammy Award winner Robert “Hitmixer” Orton, The Last Ship (Expanded Edition) will be released globally on December 5, 2025.



Sting, vocals, acoustic guitar, bass, orchestral bells, cymbals
Rob Mathes, piano, keyboards, acoustic guitars, background vocals
Dominic Miller, electric and acoustic guitars (Gut String Solo Guitar on It’s Not The Same Moon)
Ira Coleman, bass
Joe Bonadio, drums, percussion
Peter Tickell, violin, mandolin (Solo on What Have We Got?; Show Some Respect)
Julian Sutton, melodeon
Kathryn Tickell, violin, Northumbrian pipes (Solo on The Last Ship; Sky Hooks And Tartan Paint)
Jo Lawry, vocals (on Shipyard), background vocals
Special Guests:
Jimmy Nail, vocals (on What Have We Got? and Shipyard), background vocals
Brian Johnson, vocals (on Shipyard; Sky Hooks And Tartan Paint)

Digitally remastered

Please Note: We offer this album in its native sampling rate of 44.1kHz, 24-bit. The provided 96kHz version was up-sampled and offers no audible value!

Sting
Born 2 October 1951, in Wallsend, north-east England, Gordon Sumner's life started to change the evening a fellow musician in the Phoenix Jazzmen caught sight of his black and yellow striped sweater and decided to re-christen him Sting. Sting paid his early dues playing bass with local outfits The Newcastle Big Band, The Phoenix Jazzmen, Earthrise and Last Exit, the latter of which featured his first efforts at song writing. Last Exit were big in the North East, but their jazz fusion was doomed to fail when punk rock exploded onto the music scene in 1976. Stewart Copeland, drummer with Curved Air, saw Last Exit on a visit to Newcastle and while the music did nothing for him he did recognise the potential and charisma of the bass player. The two hooked up shortly afterwards and within months, Sting had left his teaching job and moved to London.

Seeing punk as flag of convenience, Copeland and Sting - together with Corsican guitarist Henri Padovani - started rehearsing and looking for gigs. Ever the businessman, Copeland took the name The Police figuring it would be good publicity, and the three started gigging round landmark punk venues like The Roxy, Marquee, Vortex and Nashville in London. Replacing Padovani with the virtuoso talents of Andy Summers the band also enrolled Stewart's elder brother Miles as manager, wowing him with a Sting song called 'Roxanne'. Within days Copeland Senior had them a record deal. But the hip London music press saw through The Police's punk camouflage and did little to disguise their contempt, and the band's early releases had no chart success. So The Police did the unthinkable - they went to America.

The early tours are the stuff of legend - bargain flights to the USA courtesy of Freddie Laker's pioneering Skytrain; driving their own van and humping their own equipment from gig to gig; and playing to miniscule audiences at the likes of CBGB's in New York and The Rat Club in Boston. Their tenacity paid off though as they slowly built a loyal following, got some all important air-play, and won over their audiences with a combination of new wave toughness and reggae rhythms.

They certainly made an odd trio: guitarist Summers had a career dating back to the mid-60s, the hyper-kinetic Copeland was a former prog-rocker, and Sting's background was in trad jazz and fusion. The sound the trio made was unique though, and Sting's pin-up looks did them no harm at all. The band returned to the UK to find the reissued 'Roxanne' single charting, and played a sell-out tour of mid-size venues. The momentum had started. The debut album 'Outlandos d'Amour' (Oct 78) delivered three sizeable hits with 'Roxanne', 'Can't Stand Losing You' and 'So Lonely' which in turn led to a headlining slot at the '79 Reading Festival which won the band some fine reviews, but it was with 'Reggatta de Blanc' (Oct 79) that the band stepped up a gear.

Reggatta's first single, 'Message In A Bottle', streaked to number one and the album's success was consolidated further when 'Walking On The Moon' also hit the top slot. The band was big, but about to get even bigger. 1980 saw them undertake a world tour with stops on all continents - including the first rock concerts in Bombay - and the band eventually returned to the UK exhausted, for two final shows in Sting's hometown of Newcastle. Much of this groundbreaking tour was captured on the 'Police Around The World' video and a BBC documentary entitled 'The Police in the East'

Within weeks, the band were in a Dutch studio recording new material but Sting's stock of pre-Police songs and ideas were wearing out. When 'Zenyatta Mondatta' was released (Oct 80) although it sold well and produced another number one single in 'Don't Stand So Close To Me' and a top five hit with 'De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da' a rethink was required. Sting later admitted that he felt 'Zenyatta' was the band's weakest album but by the end of 1980 the band were undoubtedly the biggest-selling band in the country selling out two shows in a huge marquee on Tooting Bec Common in London. For more please visit www.sting.com

This album contains no booklet.