A few years ago, Sting found himself in a position that was unique to his experience, though perhaps familiar to certain others: He had grown sick and tired of Sting. For three decades, Sting had been not just one of the world's most famous musicians but one of its preeminent musical confessors: a singer-songwriter who, through all of his incarnations - spiky white reggae man, stadium rock star, sleek fixture of adult­-contemporary radio - had kept the music coming by, he says, "scraping the barrel of my soul." The result was a prolific output: five LPs with the Police and a string of hit solo albums, a run that concluded in 2003 with his eighth solo release, Sacred Love. Then, abruptly, the songs stopped. Sting has released three albums in the years since, all on the classical label Deutsche Grammophon; none were pop records, per se, and none included new songs ­written by Sting. Eventually, he realized he was blocked...