It's enough pressure sharing your birthday with the Father of a Nation, but it seems like Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, better known as the musician Sting, is holding his own quite well. The similarities between Mahatma Gandhi and Sting end at the long names, but Sting has had a career ever since picking up the guitar as a child. He was a bus conductor, a building labourer, a tax officer and a teacher at a university before discovering that his passion for music could lead to greater roads than just playing jazz in the evening wearing a yellow and black jumper (how he got the nickname). All this happened before he met with his future bandmates Stewart Copeland and Andy Summer, with whom he would go on to form the legendary rock group The Police. Even though they weren't your traditional boy band – maybe because no one really knew what a boy band was back then – the group didn't last for long. But in just 5 years, they released 5 albums that took the world and music charts by storm. They won 5 Grammy Awards and 2 Brit Awards during this time. ALSO READ: Lucky Ali can be credited for indie-pop music, but he cannot be blamed for Anuv Jain By far, The Police's most influential and famed track was 'Every Breath You Take', and as if on cue to make some profit out of something impactful and legendary, record producer P Diddy sampled the song for Notorious BIG's track 'I'll Be Missing You'. Diddy never wrote to the band or Sting about using the sample until the song was already out, and that led to a lot of legal drama. A few years ago Sting made an appearance on The Breakfast Club and was asked whether it was true that Diddy had to pay him $2000 (Rs 1.77 lakh) every day because he didn't ask for permission before sampling 'Every Breath You Take'. Sting said, "Yeah, for the rest of his life. He asked me for permission after the fact. I wasn't upset or anything; in fact, I was very happy." During a 2003 interview with Rolling Stone, Sting recalled the whole episode and said, "Those guys just take your sh*t, put it on a record and deal with the legality later. Elton John told me, ‘You’ve got to hear [“I’ll Be Missing You”]; you’re going to be a millionaire!’ I said, ‘I am a millionaire!’ He said, ‘You’re going to be a millionaire twice over!’ I put a couple of my kids through college with the proceeds, and I and P Diddy are good pals still." Those feelings of friendship might have changed later on, though, as Sting was asked last year about Diddy facing trial and whether that will alter the legacy of his song. "No. I mean, I don't know what went on [with Diddy]. But it doesn't taint the song at all for me. It's still my song." The trial of Diddy around ended in July 2025, where he was found guilty o charges relating to prostitution, but was acquitted on counts of sex trafficking and racketeering.
