Love is Stronger Than Just (The Munificent Seven) is the second track on Ten Summoner’s Tales. It was released as a single in some European countries, but little is known about the single, as even Sting’s website doesn’t mention it. The song is about seven cowboy brothers (the youngest one is the narrator). Sting wrote a few Western-themed songs such as I Hung My Head, as Sting liked to watch Western films.

The song is loosely based on Akira Kurosawa’s film Seven Samurai.

Sting:

Love Is Stronger Than Justice is a very odd phrase, y'know. Is-Does the end justify the means or does the means justify the end. I really got the idea for-it started when I was writing this piece in-in 7/8 time, which is actually one of m- one of my favorite time signatures because it-it’s like a-a bar of four then a wal-a-a bar of a waltz and it hits uh-catches up with itself. Very quirky w-I-I just love it. So I thought, “Well, there has to be some reason to write in 7/8, y'know you have to-be some logical reason so I thought about sevens; seven days in a week, uh, seven brides or seven brothers, uh, The Magnificent Seven, The Seven Samurai so I concocted this little, uh, story based on The Magnific-on the movie The Magnificent Seven where they’re-where they help this-this Mexican town to get rid of the banditos and-but they’re all promised a wife, and uh, unfortunately there’s only one eligible female in the whole place so, the leader of the uh, seven brothers, uh, decides to kill the other six, um, to get the woman.”

Sting also talked of the song’s odd time signature:

I think that again it’s a-it’s a humorous trick a-and a-e-if you go from one time signature another without any explanation at all, any warning, it does create a kind of humor. Y-you sort of laugh when this chorus comes in, and it’s such a-it’s such a generic country chorus, y'know it has a pedal steel guitar in it and-it was funny when we recorded it, we would use one of the top um, pedal steel players from Nashville. His name is Franklin. And uh, Paul Franklin. And he uh-brilliant player. He never played in 7/8 before. Right? And h-he thought we were from Planet, y'know, Tralfamadore or something it was like totally uh, ill at ease with this time si-until we got into 4/4 in the chorus, and then he was happy. And he’d play incredible. Then, when we were back in the 7/8 he said, “I can’t do that.” I said, “How do you think this will go down in Nashville?” He said, “It won’t.”

Source: Ten Summoner’s Tales Interview Disc

Sting wrote a sequel to this song called This Cowboy Song, released exclusively both as a single and on the Fields of Gold: The Best of Sting album.