Sting vs. Elvis Costello in a race to betray their punk roots

1987: Costello begins a songwriting collaboration with Paul McCartney, the man whom Glen Matlock got kicked out of the Sex Pistols for liking (-1).

1991: Sting beats Costello to the classical music label Deutsche Grammophon by 10 years with his recital of Peter and the Wolf (-1). Punks, resist the urge to call this a Deutsche bag!

1996: Costello teams with Burt Bacharach on "God Give Me Strength," and the pair write a whole album together in 1998, infuriating the network of Dionne Warwick psychic friends who felt she should've gotten a crack at these songs first (-1).

1999: Sting's chart fortunes are back on the rise with "Desert Rose" a song he collaborates on with Algerian-born raï singer Cheb Mami (-1), a man who is currently under an international arrest warrant after being indicted in October 2006 for "voluntary violence, sequestration and threats" against an ex-girlfriend, and failing to answer a court summons (+1).

2003: Costello announces his engagement to jazz singer Diana Krall (-1) and releases North, an album of piano-based love ballads dedicated to his Canadian bride and dirges about his former marriage going south (-1).

2006: Sting releases Songs from the Labyrinth, an album of Elizabethan lute music (-1). The following year, Deutsche Grammophon will release a live album of this, featuring a lute-driven reworking of "Message in a Bottle" (-1).

Final tally: Sting: -4, Costello: 1.