Shape of My Heart (Sting song)

"Shape of My Heart" is a song by British musician Sting, released in August 1993 as the fifth single from his fourth solo album, Ten Summoner's Tales (1993). The song was co-written by guitarist Dominic Miller and features harmonica played by Larry Adler. It was used for the end credits of the 1994 film Léon and within the 1993 film Three of Hearts. Despite failing to reach the top 50 in the UK upon its release, it has become a pop classic and one of Sting's works most closely associated with his solo career. It has since been sampled in many tracks since its release, including "Shape" (2003) by Sugababes and "Rise & Fall" (2003) by Craig David (with Sting credited as a featured artist). Ann-Margret sang a cover over the opening credits of her 1996 movie Blue Rodeo. 

The song's guitar riff was also sampled by Nas for his track "The Message" in 1996 and Monica on her 1998 song "Take Him Back". It was also sampled by Avicii, for his track "Forever Yours". The song was released after his death, with Sumner and Miller credited as songwriters. It was also interpolated on Hikaru Utada's debut album First Love, the best-selling Japanese album of all time; Juice WRLD on the worldwide hit "Lucid Dreams" (2018); on "You’re Mines Still" (2020) by rapper BLEU and in "Parkstone Drive" by Russ.

Background and writing
Sting explained that through "Shape of My Heart", he wanted to tell the story of a "card player, a gambler who gambles not to win but to try to figure out something; to figure out some kind of mystical logic in luck, or chance; some kind of scientific, almost religious law."

Sting: "We wrote a song together — “Shape of My Heart”. Dom came in with this fantastic riff — beautiful cadence, sort of Bach-like descending bassline. So we spent the morning structuring it, making it into a song. Here's a verse here and a verse there and there's a key change there. So I just go for a walk and I have it in my headphones and I just walk around. A few hours later I’ve got at least the concept of what the song is telling me, which is about a gambler. And Dom said, 'Where’d you get this shit from?' I said, 'I don’t know.' It just occurs to me but the music tells me the story."

Miller recalled that the guitar riff originated from a warm-up exercise centered around sixth chords akin to the music of Chopin. He opted to avoid the third degree of the chord and intended for the chord sequence to resemble the work of John McLaughlin. When approached by Sting to develop the riff into a full song, Miller insisted that it was merely a warm-up exercise, but Sting nonetheless returned with a set of lyrics to accompany the composition.

Critical reception
Alan Jones from Music Week gave the song two out of five in his review, writing, "This understated track from Ten Summoner's Tales most closely resembles "It's Probably Me". Commercially it will probably get a leg-up into the Top 40 from the addition of previously unreleased live tracks and its use as the main theme to the new William Baldwin movie Three Of Hearts." Rolling Stone described the song as "brooding".

Music video
The accompanying music video for "Shape of My Heart" was directed by Doug Nichol and premiered in September 1993. It was filmed at Sting's Lake House in Wiltshire.