I Hung My Head by Sting

If someone walking down the street and a drunk driver swerves off the road and kills the pedestrian, is the drunk driver wholly responsible for the death? In we assume yes, than do we ignore the choices of the pedestrian? He could have decided not go for a walk and stay home. I’m not saying that the drunk driver doesn’t deserve to be punished for his crime, but I can’t help but wonder what is it that puts that person in exactly in the place that the driver swerved off, is it “fate” or “destiny” or simply bad luck. How do we accept the consequences of our own actions while considering whatever force it is that makes situations happen? “I Hung My Head” provides one answer as a boy faces his own execution.

Sting included “I Hung My Head” on his fifth solo album Mercury Rising. As a member of one of the most influence bands of the 1980s, The Police, Sting established himself as an important musical force. His solo work continued the musical innovation he had done with The Police stretching the musical boundaries of popular music.

“I Hung My Head” is the story of a boy and one fateful day that changed his life. One morning he goes up on a hill and sees a lone rider. He decids to practice his aim on the rider and the rifle goes off accidentally, killing the rider. The sheriff arrests the boy and later in court, a jury sentences the boy to death by hanging for his actions.

Though the lyrics are straightforward, concise and beautifully nuanced. The first line of the song ends with the word “kill” foreshadowing future events. Other lines like the opening of the second verse, “I set off running to wake from the dream” combines the action of running with the feeling of wanting to wake from a nightmare.

As the story develops so does the meaning of the lyrics. The lone rider, which the boy shoots in the beginning of the song, comes back in the end of the song as a harbinger of death. The title of the song starts as a description a gesture of despair and regret. By the end of the song, “I hung my head” becomes a statement of acceptance. As the boy facing his own hanging he sees how his own actions has lead to his death.

If you read the words you probably would imagine something like Johnny Cash’s interpretation of this song. Acoustic instruments, simple instrumentation surrounded by a feeling an ominous darkness.



What Sting does instrumentally is very different. The Johnny Cash version is in 4/4 , which means that there are four main beats that you can count in each measure (what you’d naturally clap along to). Each one of these beats are divided into two smaller beats. Sting’s arrangement is in 9/8. Instead of having all four beats divided into two, one of the beats is divided in three. If you were going to count each measure, it would go 1-2, 3-4-5, 6-7, 8-9 (2+3+2+2). Try counting every note you hear in the guitar riff accented 1, 3, 6, 8 and you’ll feel what is referred to as compound meter.

The groove that Sting created adds a feeling of things coming apart. The instrumentation and the counter-melodies in the brass section and organ don’t sound especially sad but the fact that they are placed over an irregular compound meter provides an uneasy feeling that reminds us of the events in this song.

At the end of the song when the line “I hung my head” is being repeated, it appears that the boy fully accepts the consequences of his own actions, but maybe he doesn’t. Maybe the only reason he states that he hung his own head is to make sense of all that has happened. If his death is by his own actions, then that means he could have done something about it. It means that this wasn’t some random occurrence. In a weird way, it’s more comforting to take the blame yourself for your death than to face the idea of randomness of the universe.

Does everything happen for a reason? Is there such a thing as fate or destiny? I don’t have an answer to these questions. Maybe we're just asking the wrong question. Instead of looking for meaning in why things happen maybe the true meaning is how we react to the events in our lives. We can never know for sure why things happen so all we can do is the best with what we are given.