The British rock star and Jamaican dance hall artist shared the stage with reggae legends and hip-hop and rock acts.

One of these years, Sting and Shaggy’s One Fine Day will be greeted with Philadelphia weather worthy of the festival’s name.

Until then, the brightness of the music and sunny Jamaican vibes will have to suffice. 

Both were in abundant supply during a seven-hour show at the Mann Center on Saturday, despite a severe weather threat that condensed the planned two stages of action into one, with all eight acts keeping dry under the roof of the Fairmount Park venue’s TD Pavilion. 

This was the second iteration of the only-in-Philly fest curated by the dynamic duo of seemingly unlikely BFFs: the self-serious British rock star born Gordon Sumner, 73, and party-starting Jamaican-dance-hall toaster née Orville Burrell, 56. 

In its 2023 debut, the fest named after an environmentally conscious Sting song from his 2016 album 57th and 9th was hit by a thunderstorm. In its return, One Fine Day was plagued only by a soft summer rain, doing little to dampen spirits. 

Before Shaggy and Sting closed the show with a teamed-up, congenial, 90-minute set that mingled their bands (and brands), they did duty as gracious hosts, moving about the crowd, posing for selfies and hopping on stage to announce the acts.

Show starters included upstart songwriters Chance Emerson and Sophie Grey., plus New Orleans bounce queen Big Freedia and boisterous Rockville, Md., reggae and ska-tinged alt-rock band O.A.R. — the acronym stands for “Of a Revolution” — who immediately preceded Sting & Shaggy on stage. 

There also was a double dose of vintage reggae, beginning with Marcia Griffiths, the “Electric Boogie” diva and former member of Bob Marley’s backup singers, the I-Threes, and the Original Wailers feat. Al Anderson.

Griffiths was fantastic with the crowd. “Philadelphia, get involved!,” the septuagenarian singer exhorted, explaining that “reggae music will make your pain go away. It’s the music of healing, whether it’s arthritis or what have you.” 

For “Electric Boogie,” her 1983 song written by Bunny Wailer that inspired the Electric Slide dance craze, she brought two dozen would-be hoofers up with her but first issued a warning: “If you don’t know how to do the dance, don’t put a foot on stage!”

Sting and Shaggy followed Griffiths on stage to introduce Anderson, the New Jersey-born guitarist who played in Marley’s late-1970s band. 

“None of us would be here without the great Bob Marley,” the former Police front man said. 

“I once had the privilege of having dinner with Bob Marley,” he added, referring to a 1979 meeting in Los Angeles, “and he was the most kingly man I ever met.” 

Shaggy, in keeping with his role as court jester and Sting’s comic foil, then turned to his friend and asked: “Besides me?” 

Anderson and the Wailers juiced up the crowd with iconic Marley songs like “Three Little Birds” and “One Love,” but also deep cuts such as the 1968 rarity, “Hammer,” during which the backup vocalists pretended to be banging on nails in synchronicity.

The night before One Fine Day, the TD Pavilion was filled up with a larger crowd for The Crooner and The Cowboy, the tour featuring Texans Leon Bridges and Charley Crockett. 

What did that show have to do with Sting & Shaggy’s? It was also a genre-blending bromance starring two pals the music industry puts in distinct categories — in Bridges’ and Crockett’s case, R&B and country, as opposed to rock and reggae — that have more in common than you might think.

And both shows attracted grown-up audiences that were refreshingly diverse and roughly evenly divided among Black and white music lovers, a refreshing sight in a great music city in which crowds are often depressingly racially segregated. 

The Sting and Shaggy show began with the latter introducing the former, who opened the show looking lean in tight black trousers and a burnt-orange T-shirt with a palm tree design. Playing bass and wearing a headset mic, he grabbed the crowd from the get-go with “Message in a Bottle.” 

He followed that with “Englishman in New York,” his 1987 solo song about living an immigrant’s life in Manhattan. That’s the centerpiece of the 2019 Tiny Desk Concert that displays the ease with which the duo work together, about which Sting told The Inquirer last month: “It’s like chalk and cheese. The surprise is that it works.” 

That it did on Saturday as halfway through “Englishman,” Shaggy reentered, now dressed in a Jamaican green shirt, with a gold crucifix around his neck and feather in his Panama hat. He strutted in toasting, proclaiming himself to be “a Jamaican in PA.”

The set that followed — with pristine sound, Sting’s sui generis voice in fine form and a dub-tastic band that gave the songs plenty of room to breathe — generally alternated Shaggy and Sting songs. 

Thus, “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” was followed by “Oh Carolina.” And the pastoral “Fields of Gold,” which Shaggy declared to be his favorite Sting song, was succeeded by the rugged “Electric Avenue,” the 2020 Shaggy remix of Eddy Grant’s original hit, which — in a neat bit of One Fine Day symmetry — was the inspiration of Griffiths’ “Electric Boogie.” 

Shaggy acted as toaster and hype man on “Can’t Stand Losing You” and “So Lonely,” and Sting sang the hooks on Shaggy hits like “Angel,” ably handling the chorus that interpolates the Chip Taylor-penned “Angel of the Morning,” which was a hit for Merrilee Rush and Juice Newton before it was Shaggy-fied. 

For the buddy movie playing out on stage, Sting had a song composed for a buddy film at the ready: “It’s Probably Me,” written for the Mel Gibson and Danny Glover-starring Lethal Weapon 3 in 1992. For that song about two macho guys getting vulnerable and expressing their love, Shaggy and Sting leaned into each other and sang in unison. 

Disappointingly, the set did not delve into Shaggy’s weird Sting-produced album of “reggae stylee” Frank Sinatra covers, Com Fly Wid Mi. 

It did, however, build to its peak with skanking bass-heavy takes on his signature songs “Boombastic” and “It Wasn’t Me.” On the latter, the younger artist seemed to take great pleasure in making his friends sing ribald lyrics such as: “Picture this, we were both butt naked, bangin’ on the bathroom floor.” If you looked closely, you might have seen Sting blush. 

The show ended with a first-class finale: All previous bands back on stage together for “Every Breath You Take,” the Police’s 1983 creepy yet seductive stalker’s love song. 

Music rights organization BMI says that Synchronicity single is the all-time most played song on the radio, and it’s currently in the news as Sting has been sued by his former bandmates Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland in a London court for “arranger’s fees” for that and other songs in the Police catalog. 

If that legal matter was on Sting’s mind on Saturday, he didn’t show it as he stood stage center amid his One Fine Day colleagues and was joined in singing  by seemingly every attendee at the Mann, before walking off stage hand-in-hand with Griffiths.

Sting and Shaggy have said they hope to make their Philly fest an annual September occurrence. They didn’t commit to that on stage Saturday, but in handling final thank-yous, Shaggy did say that this was goodbye only “until the next One Finer Day.” 

(c) Philadelphia Inquirer by Dan DeLuca