Sting – Desert Rose

“Desert Rose” – Single by Sting featuring Cheb Mami from the album Brand New Day, released 17 January 2000.

According to Sting, the lyrics have to do with “lost love and longing”.  Cheb Mami wrote some of the lyrics in Arabic. Sting did not know what they meant, but they happened to follow the same theme as Sting’s English lyrics – “longing.”

The music video was directed by Paul Boyd, and features Sting taking a trip through the Mojave Desert in a Jaguar S-Type driven by a masked female chauffeur while recording himself on a JVC GR-DVX4 video camera, and then going to a nightclub in Las Vegas to perform the song with Cheb Mami. Scenes also feature Sting walking alone in the desert holding the camera up. It ends with a shot of Sting with his eyes shut (possibly asleep) in the back seat of the Jaguar, which is then seen driving off into the distance.

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Sting - Desert Rose

Sting - Desert Rose (Official Music Video)04:44

Sting sang this as a duet with the Algerian singer Cheb Mami, who was very popular in France and brought the Rai style of folk music to an international audience. Sting brought him in to make the song sound more authentic, and the collaboration introduced Mami to a Western audience. The violinist featured is Lili Hayden, who has played with Porno for Pyros, Sasha Lazard, and Seal.

When the video was done, Copeland thought it looked like a car commercial. Copeland sent the video to Jaguar’s advertising agency and asked them to make their car commercial look like the video in exchange for free use of the song. The Jaguar people loved the idea and ran commercials featuring the song that looked very similar to the video. This got the song heard, which resulted in radio play and a hit record. For Jaguar, they got great exposure in the video and use of a hit song in their commercial, which made people more likely to watch it. Sales of Jaguars jumped as younger buyers checked out the cars; Copeland and Sting found a new way to promote a song.

Before making the deal with Jaguar, Sting’s record company planned on selling about 1 million albums and paying $1.8 million to market it, including $800,000 to make the video. Jaguar bought about $8 million in commercial time for the ad, which promoted the song every time it ran. The album ended up selling over 4 million copies.

This was released in September 1999, but did not gain popularity until it was used in the Jaguar commercial in March 2000. It finally hit the US Top 10 in August.

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