Songs from the Labyrinth
Songs from the Labyrinth is the eighth studio album by British singer-songwriter Sting. On this album, he collaborates with Bosnian lutenist Edin Karamazov. The album features music by John Dowland (1563–1626), a lutenist and songwriter. It entered the UK Official Albums Chart at #24[5] and reached #25 on the Billboard 200, strong charting peaks for a classical record on the pop album charts. The release was a slow seller for a Sting album, his first since 1986's Bring on the Night to fail to break the UK top 10.[6]
Songs from the Labyrinth
The album was released and re-released in several versions: LP vinyl and CD editions with 23 tracks, a CD/DVD edition with 8 tracks on the CD and a DVD documentary, The Journey and the Labyrinth (released in both "CD size" and "DVD size" packaging), and a CD re-release with 26 tracks (including live versions of Sting's own "Fields of Gold" and "Message in a Bottle", originally recorded with The Police). In late August 2013, a "Dowland Anniversary Edition" was released, which includes 32 tracks on one CD (the full original album, six live versions of album tracks and Sting's non-Dowland live songs), as well as a DVD with the original documentary.[7]
For the original CD program, the music was that of the 16th century British composer John Dowland, except for "Have You Seen the Bright Lily Grow", a song by Dowland's contemporary Robert Johnson. The 2008 re-release adds two live recordings of Sting-penned songs performed on lutes, as well as a live recording, in the same style, of "Hellhound on My Trail" by another Robert Johnson - the Delta blues musician, and an alternate version of "Have You Seen the Bright Lily Grow". The latter is omitted from the 2013 "Dowland Anniversary Edition" of the album, which, however, includes all of the live recordings. The track list includes readings from a letter by Dowland to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury. The lyrics to many of Dowland's songs are anonymous.