Sting Says Diddy Sample Hasn’t Tainted ‘Every Breath You Take’: ‘It’s Still My Song’

Sting isn’t worried about the legacy of “Every Breath You Take,” even if it is somewhat tied to Sean “Diddy” Combs forever.

In a new interview with the Los Angeles Times published Monday (Nov. 11), the Police frontman was asked whether his feelings toward his band’s iconic 1983 hit — which the disgraced Bad Boy Records founder famously sampled in his own “I’ll Be Missing You” — now that Combs is facing trial for numerous allegations of sexual abuse, racketeering and more.

“No,” Sting began. “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 original “Every Breath You Take” spent eight weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 the year it came out, and it remains The Police’s only No. 1 hit on the chart. Fourteen years later, Diddy released “I’ll Be Missing You” as a tribute to the late Notorious B.I.G. with Faith Evans and 112, featuring an interpolation of Sting’s classic; it spent 11 weeks at No. 1.

Diddy was arrested Sept. 16 on charges of abuse, sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson and bribery, after which he was immediately taken into custody and denied bail multiple times as he awaits trial on May 5, 2025. The most recent update in his case came Friday (Nov. 8), when a judge rejected his “unprecedented” and “unwarranted” request that a gag order be issued against his alleged victims and their lawyers on the grounds that they were making “inflammatory extrajudicial statements aimed at assassinating Mr. Combs’s character in the press.”

“The court has an affirmative constitutional duty to ensure that Combs receives a fair trial,” the judge wrote. “But this essential … requirement must be balanced with the protections the First Amendment affords to those claiming to be Combs’s victims.”

Meanwhile, Sting has been touring once again as part of a trio with guitarist Dominic Miller and drummer Chris Maas, a setup not unlike his three-person lineup with The Police’s Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland — and the “We’ll Be Together” singer is aware of the irony. “I never left the Police,” he said while speaking to the Times. “I’m not sure what I did. I just made a record — as the others had done — and enjoyed it more than I did being in a band.

“And here I am again,” he continued of his return to form. “My whole modus is surprise. I don’t want people to be entirely confident about what I’m going to do next. That’s the essence of music for me. And no one expected a trio at this point.”

This article was originally published by Billboard U.S.