The Police album Sting called the best they ever made: “It had to be good”
There was no chance that The Police were ever going to go the distance the same way that The Rolling Stones did. Any power trio is bound to be tough to hold together, and when everyone’s musical ideas started clashing with each other, it was a no-brainer for Sting to take his future classics and fold them into his solo career half the time. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t still look back and admire the fantastic songs that the band did make over the years.
There’s a reason why many Police songs are still firmly in Sting’s setlist to this day. Fans would feel cheated if they went to one of his concerts and didn’t hear tracks like ‘Roxanne’ or ‘Message in a Bottle’, but all along their career trajectory, you can hear the band slowly growing up on every single record.
Regatta de Blanc could have easily been the moment they began treading water after their first record, but aside from ‘Message in a Bottle’, Andy Summers created an entire world with his guitar on ‘Walking on the Moon’. There were bound to be moments where things didn’t work, like bringing in Stewart Copeland’s meagre songs into the mix, but as they moved into the 1980s, things started to get a lot more interesting.
The pop fans may have liked to sing along to ‘Every Little Thing She Does is Magic’, but there are also many more sophisticated moments in their albums. Sting would be drip-feeding his fans some great hooks, but when they heard the rest of the album, there would be tunes like ‘Demolition Man’ that turned into a jam or some of the more interesting rhythms that Copeland would put into some of their finest material.
And for Sting, he knew he could rest easy knowing that they went out on top with Synchronicity, saying, “The last two Police albums were about me wanting to write more personal songs and the framework the Police created wasn’t exactly the right one. It was really a power struggle between three massive egos about who would do what, who’d be who. Yet the best record we made was the last one – if an idea was going to get through this process it had to be a good one.”
It might seem a little strange talking about the same record with ‘Mother’ on it, but if we ignore that monstrosity, the rest of the album is one of their most adventurous. The singles are always going to be immortal like ‘King of Pain’ and ‘Every Breath You Take’, but the harmony in both of the title tracks is fantastic, and the B-side ‘Murder By Numbers’ is among the most sophisticated chords to be featured on a pop song.
In fact, the reason why Synchronicity sounded so good is because they were reaching the absolute apex of their band chemistry as well. There would still be the occasional fight here and there, and the band didn’t have to necessarily agree on everything, but it had reached the point where they practically spoke their own language when they got behind their instruments when playing ‘Wrapped Around Your Finger’.
So while it was heartbreaking to see them break up at the peak of their powers, leaving things off on Synchronicity was probably one of the smartest moves any rock band has ever made. They had accomplished some of the greatest feats that any band could dream of, so why bother waiting around for when everything starts crashing down a few albums later?
