Sting’s “best song” was ruined by The Police’s “worst arrangement”
The Police are not for everyone, and Sting doesn’t care one iota about that. “You have to be yourself,” he once wrote, “Stay true to who and what you are. And if people still like you, that’s great. If they don’t, that’s their problem.”
Thankfully for the band, they were so much themselves that they never even cared for each other, yet enough people still liked them to make them one of the biggest groups of all time. By and large, this is also because they were one of the most talented.
As Pete Townshend’s corroboration of working with Sting aptly put it, “The only guy I know who doesn’t have any shade of self-doubt is Sting,” he argued, “and therefore [he] is very difficult for us to deal with because of that. We all find him difficult because he is so immensely talented and writes beautifully. But there’s something about this man that is so self-assured.”
The rest of the group were of a similar ilk and had the session credits to prove it, creating a rather unusual mix within the band. So, most of the time, despite an undercurrent of acrimony, they were still able to muster masterpieces, but Stewart Copeland thinks that on one occasion a would-be classic went awry, and he’s regretted it ever since.
In 1983, The Police had been going for six years, and they were at the peak of their powers. In fact, with the release of Synchronicity, they were crowned ‘The Biggest Band in the World’. That is a lofty title with its own inherent set of problems, and staying on that perch, in some ways, may well have hamstrung their efforts as they rushed to stave off the competition and their personal lives felt the pressure.
Sting’s marriage was falling apart under the intense public scrutiny. However, he took this pain and made it into the band’s biggest hit: ‘Every Breath You Take’. If you imagine the following lyrics without the musical accompaniment read by Liam Neeson in some gruff and gritty thriller, then the true intention of the song is immediately apparent: “Every breath you take, and every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take, I’ll be watching you.”
Sting wrote the song in a paranoid state during a period when he suspected his wife might have been having an affair. Clear hints spring to the fore with lines like “Every smile you fake”, but overall, the message seemed to be masked for some as they were blinded by the sanguine sound of chiming guitars.
This is a sign of how melody can twist our psychology. In truth, I could’ve plucked any single lyric from the song, and you’d agree that it sounds creepy enough to call the real police over if the context of a love song is stripped away. In fact, Sting likened his state of paranoia to that of “Big Brother” in George Orwell’s 1984, and the notion of “surveillance and control”.
This missed meaning has given it a comical edge in retrospect. As Sting once recalled: “One couple told me ‘Oh we love that song; it was the main song played at our wedding!’ I thought, ‘Well, good luck’.” His own first marriage ended a year after the song was released. But now he lives happily ever after with Trudie Styler in a massive house with a massive drive, and the online surveillance is for safety.
Drummer Stewart Copeland sees the song as being not only laden with missed meaning but also missed opportunity. “In my humble opinion,” he reflected, “this is Sting’s best song with the worst arrangement. I think Sting could have had any other group do this song, and it would have been better than our version – except for Andy’s brilliant guitar part. Basically, there’s an utter lack of groove. It’s a totally wasted opportunity for our band.”
With a silver lining, he concluded, “Even though we made gazillions off of it, and it’s the biggest hit we ever had.”
