Sting was honored at Sweden's annual Polar Music Prize awards last month.
As part of the show, José Feliciano was set to lead the tribute to Sting with a cover version of The Police's 1983 hit "Every Breath You Take."
To be fair to Feliciano, there's a lot that can go wrong during a musical performance for a live television show, between faulty monitoring, a bad cue or other types of equipment failures, (Metallica could tell you that). But the tribute was doomed early on.
Before he begins playing you can hear Feliciano express confusion as to why he can't hear his guitar. After righting himself, the band begins.
But things are not OK. The first chord Feliciano plays contains a very sour note, then he loses the beat. The camera pans to Sting who, just about four measures into the song, appears to be sweating and in complete agony.
"It looks like Sting for one second regretted ever writing that song," wrote YouTube user Fernando Bolaños in the comments.
The performance improves markedly once singer Jelena Krstic joins in. But honestly, Sting is so cringy throughout the song, you have to wonder whether or not he was truly ill before the show.
If he wasn't sick before, he certainly was after.
Photo: YouTube / TV4