Pop Song 470 of 500 'Shape of my heart' Sting 1993

Pop Song 470 of 500 'Shape of my heart' Sting 1993

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."

Sting: "We wrote a song together — “Shape of My Heart”. Dom came in with this fantastic riff — beautiful cadence, sort of Bach-like descending bassline. So we spent the morning structuring it, making it into a song. Here's a verse here and a verse there and there's 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 I’ve got at least the concept of what the song is telling me, which is about a gambler. And Dom said, 'Where’d you get this shit from?' I said, 'I don’t know.' It just occurs to me but the music tells me the story."

Dominic Miller: "Well it's 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 it's 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 wasn't really articulating the third so much — it's 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, I'm kind of smiling at myself, first of all thinking that unbeknownst to them they're actually playing classical music from Europe. I can't really claim it as my own really because that's that was the source and I just reorganized that idea. And then it was Sting's imagination as a songwriter to — this is a perfect example of collaboration — he was the one who said well that is a song. And I'm going, “It’s 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 didn't take three months, and sometimes songs are like that, you know? So I'm very flattered, but I don't really claim total ownership with it because I know where it came from, and it came from classical music."

He deals the cards as a meditation
And those he plays never suspect
He doesn't play for the money he wins
He don't play for respect
He deals the cards to find the answer
The sacred geometry of chance
The hidden law of a probable outcome
The numbers lead a dance
I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier
I know that the clubs are weapons of war
I know that diamonds mean money for this art
But that's not the shape of my heart
He may play the Jack of diamonds
He may lay the Queen of spades
He may conceal a King in his hand
While the memory of it fades
I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier
I know that the clubs are weapons of war
I know that diamonds mean money for this art
But that's not the shape of my heart
That's not the shape, the shape of my heart
And if I told you that I loved you
You'd maybe think there's something wrong
I'm not a man of too many faces
The mask I wear is one
But those who speak know nothing
And find out to their cost
Like those who curse their luck in too many places
And those who fear a loss
I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier
I know that the clubs are weapons of war
I know that diamonds mean money for this art
But that's not the shape of my heart
That's not the shape of my heart
That's not the shape, the shape of my heart