The 1983 song that became the most-played song on the radio
Getting on the radio doesn’t really need to be as much of a priority for any mainstream artist.
Nowadays, the biggest radio stations in the world are already owned by a couple of companies, and even if they can be instrumental in breaking an artist every now and again, it’s hard to really get a foothold in the era where everything in the US is locked onto a musical grid half the time. But back in the age of MTV, bands were relying on stations just as much as their music videos to get their songs out to as many people as possible.
Then again, some of the biggest names in music could get the job done without any radio play at all. Led Zeppelin didn’t rely on having singles every single time they made a record, and since the rock industry was always an album-oriented genre, it was easier for people to go on a journey with their favourite band for a couple of minutes rather than relying on a bunch of catchy tunes in between.
But with MTV, everything was bound to change. The radio stations weren’t exactly dying out just yet, but when you look at the biggest radio stations in the world, it was more oriented towards the kind of artists that showed up on film pretty well. There’s a reason why people like Michael Jackson and Madonna dominated the channel in its heyday, but some of the biggest names of the 1970s didn’t need to change too much about their style to get what they wanted on the charts.
David Bowie was practically tailor-made for the video format when he started, but there were also bands like Van Halen that became complete naturals whenever they got in front of the camera. Everyone seemed to have the right gimmick to get to where they wanted, but Sting was still making everything work with pure music. The Police were never about the gimmicks, so every one of their videos felt more like a piss-take than anything else.
They didn’t see themselves as a teenybopper band, but when looking through some of their greatest videos, a lot of them are just them standing in the studio and goofing off rather than actually doing anything. None of their songs needed a drawn-out storyline or special effects that made them look like gods, but that did start to change a little bit with Synchronicity. ‘Synchronicity II’ is still one of the most over-the-top videos they ever made, but ‘Every Breath You Take’ was well above anything that fans had ever heard.
The song was dead simple compared to the band’s earlier work, but that’s the reason why Sting was able to make it work so well. The track is incredibly dark when you look at the lyrics too closely, but as it turns out, all anyone needs is one catchy melody and the four classic chords of pop to get their point across. And Sting has been taking that song all the way to the bank every time it came on the radio.
Despite the song being about a stalker watching over their prey, the band’s biggest hit managed to become one of the highest-played songs on the radio of all time, with over 15million plays. Some of that didn’t even need to happen over time, either, with Sting remembering getting calls that it had been played over a million times before the decade was even out.
A lot of that came down to Sting’s knack for songwriting, but it did get a boost that it really didn’t deserve when Puff Daddy tried to turn it into a tribute to Biggie Smalls. ‘I’ll Be Missing You’ is still a decent enough tune if you squint your ears a little bit, but the fact that Sting’s melody could have covered up a literal monster says a lot about his ear for hooks. He could have put almost anything into those lyrics, but even when singing about one of the darkest forms of obsession, the fact that people still use it at weddings is a testament to what he could do when he found the right notes.
