The Police – ‘Synchronicity’
It was coronation time for The Police. The British-American new wave outfit had been kicking around for just over half a decade, starting out in the burgeoning London punk scene. The trio were never really punk, bringing in elements of reggae, new wave, rock, and world music to their sound as quickly as they could. As they progressed, the band’s arrangements, melodies, and composition style became increasingly more complex, folding in time signature changes, new synthesiser technology, and futuristic philosophical concepts.
Strangely, the more The Police pushed the boundaries of what they could be, the bigger they became. By the start of the 1980s, The Police had graduated out of clubs and into much larger venues. By 1983, they were a stadium band. The band had four UK number one singles and had just missed out on topping the American charts with 1980’s ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’. If they could pull together some quality material for their fifth studio album, there’s no reason why Sting, Stewart Copeland, and Andy Summers couldn’t be one of the biggest bands in the world.
1983’s Synchronicity didn’t make The Police one of the biggest bands in the world – it made them the single biggest band in the world. At a time when solo artists like Michael Jackson and David Bowie were dominating the airwaves, The Police were the only band that could stand on equal ground with those legends. A number one album on both sides of the Atlantic, Synchronicity was the peak of all peaks.
The album wastes no time in throwing you into the deep end. With the frenetic 3/4 drive of ‘Synchronicity I’, Sting’s verbose lyrical style remained intact, as did Copeland’s aggressive offbeat attack. But swirls of sci-fi synthesiser noise dominate the track. It was a long way from the stripped-back sound of Outlandos d’Amour, but it was perfect for the arena-sized stages that the band would soon play.
Throughout the early 1980s, Sting became fascinated with Carl Jung’s concept of synchronicity, the idea that there can be a relationship between events, circumstances, and actions without ever having a direct connection. The idea that seemingly random things, like the choices that people make, can somehow line up and benefit each other was both scientific and metaphysical, appealing to Sting’s combined love of fictional storytelling and real-life consequences.
As it happened, ‘Synchronicity I’ was largely a one-off. Synchronicity as a whole would remain reliant on fewer overdubs and more direct musical contributions. ‘Walking in Your Footsteps’ and ‘Tea in the Sahara’ are both reliant on world beat rhythms with little in the way of traditional rock instrumentation. The former finds Sting contemplating evolution and the progression of life through the totality of the earth’s existence, while the latter brings reggae back to the fore for perhaps the final time in The Police’s history.
Before The Police get into the meat of Synchronicity, there are some lesser songs to burn through. ‘O My God’ continues Sting’s preoccupation with the open spaces and connections between humans, while Summers’ ‘Mother’ resembles an Arabic-influenced otherworldly nightmare that borders on being downright Oedipal. Copeland’s ‘Miss Gradenko’ is a necessary respite – a goofy tale of a photography session that proved Copeland’s ear for pop melodies was just as strong as Sting’s.
The push and pull between the three members of The Police helped shape their sound, but it was increasingly difficult to reconcile everyone’s point of view. The songs were largely dominated by Sting, with Summers often getting experimental, atonal and aggressive, while Copeland brought in rhythms from around the world, filtered through a keen new wave sensibility. The results were always dependent on all three, even as the band’s tenuous relationship clashed with the synergy and synthesis at the heart of the Synchronicity concept.
‘Synchronicity II’ brings back the sci-fi preoccupations of ‘Synchronicity I’, now buoyed by a killer pop hook from Sting and one of Summers’ signature guitar lines. The connection between a man on the verge of a mental breakdown thanks to his unsatisfying life and the emergence of the Loch Ness monster might seem random on paper, but it circles back to the idea that different circumstances can somehow be working on the same wavelength.
Whereas the front half of Synchronicity leans hard into the central philosophical concept and some of the more aggressively experimental material the band had produced, side two is an absolute pop music delight. That all starts with ‘Every Breath You Take’, the one song that The Police will forever be known for.
Nowadays, just about everything relating to ‘Every Breath You Take’ has been made clear. There’s the fact that it’s not a love song (quite the opposite, in fact). There’s the blow-up between Sting and Copeland regarding the song’s groove – or lack thereof, according to Copeland. There’s the fact that it went to number one in the United States, giving the band their one and only chart-topper in the States. It’s the song that puts The Police over the top into rarified air.
But ‘Every Breath You Take’ can still surprise you if you’re not ready for it. Summers’ airy guitar line is nothing short of genius, a single uninterrupted burst of creativity that’s as central to the song’s success as Sting’s instantly-recognisable melody. Is the song’s bridge section necessary? Could Copeland have been given more of an opportunity to stretch out? Could Sting have toned down the stalker-centric lyrics? Yes to all of the above, but I’m not convinced any of these would be “improvements”. ‘Every Breath You Take’ still has a strange kind of magnetic pull to it, bringing you closer even when you know you should recoil in terror.
‘King of Pain’ keeps the feel-bad energy going. Of course, the song is as catchy and energetic as anything else on the album, but Sting’s darker moments strangely dominate Synchronicity. Whether it’s through stalking, domestic anxieties, manipulation, evolutionary uncertainties, maternal strife (courtesy of Summers), or murder, Synchronicity doesn’t seem to have any of the hallmarks of a classic summer pop record.
That feeling is solidified on the album’s best track, ‘Wrapped Around Your Finger’. Bringing in the spacey echoes that the band had employed on ‘Walking on the Moon’ and making them more sophisticated, The Police found the perfect setting to spin a tale of a young apprentice learning, taking notes, and eventually usurping his master in a Faustian narrative. No one could ever say that Sting wasn’t well-read, and his take on The Sorcerer’s Apprentice proves his literary background.
‘Wrapped Around Your Finger’ can only be described as hypnotic. At different points, it’s nearly impossible to tell what instrument is playing at any given time – keyboards, bells, guitars, strings, and sitars all sound like they come from the same source. As the song unfurls, Sting gives one of his most committed and enthralling vocal performances. Although he was still capable of hitting glass-shattering high notes, most of Synchronicity finds Sting in a lower register. When ‘Wrapped Around Your Finger’ makes its turn from hazy psychedelics to driving rock, thanks to Copeland’s expert command of the drum kit, it’s Sting who stays in the pocket by subtly turning the song’s narrative around.
‘Murder By Numbers’ closes out most versions of the album. The nefarious mix between nursery rhymes and blood-thirsty art is a wonderfully down note to end Synchronicity on, accentuated by Summers’ jazz chords and Copeland’s nearly-indecipherable polyrhythmic drumming. If ‘Murder By Numbers’ proves anything, it’s that The Police were in full command of their music chops and were ready to show them off to the world.
Synchronicity allowed The Police to do whatever they wanted to do. And what they really wanted to do was break up. Sting and Copeland had been at each other’s throats for years, with Summers unsuccessfully attempting to play mediator. The massive success of Synchronicity convinced both Sting and Copeland that they didn’t need The Police to be successful. Why negotiate with two other people when you can call all the shots yourself?
It officially took another three years for The Police to call it quits. After a mammoth show at Shea Stadium, Sting opted to focus on his solo career, although plans were still in place for the band to reunite after a brief hiatus. After Copeland suffered a broken collarbone right before sessions on the band’s sixth album were set to begin, tensions boiled over, and The Police were no more. A remix of ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me’ was all that they could manage, and The Police were defunct by 1986, only three years after becoming a world-dominating force thanks to Synchronicity.
