Awesome Music / The Police

Although their studio output consists of just five albums released across five years, The Police packed plenty of awesome into those albums and their live performances. This IGN article counts down 25 of their best tracks.

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Outlandos d'Amour (1978)

• The Police announced themselves to the album-buying world with "Next to You", an adrenaline rush that encapsulates the punk that permeated the band's early sound, anchored by Sting's angry rendition of the lyrics.
• "So Lonely" (7" single edit) is a perfect herald of the reggae-flavoured sound that many listeners associate with the Police, its plaintive lyrics (which make for a case of Lyrical Dissonance with the upbeat refrain), close harmonies, and energetic guitars and drums making for an enduring classic. The Police - Live! contains a performance at Boston's Orpheum from 1979 with even more raw vocals and an extended instrumental jam that captures the sheer energy of the band's early live gigs.
• "Roxanne" may be mocked for the Drinking Game-inspiring repetition of its title in the lyrics, but Sting's vocal performance and the sudden surge of energy in the refrain are just two of the reasons why it has become one of their most popular tracks.
• The cynical, bitter "Can't Stand Losing You" hooks the listener in immediately with its rhythm guitar riff, and the Spurned into Suicide theme of the lyrics ensures that the song sticks in the memory. And if the studio version of the song is too short for you, early live performances, such as the version from the 1979 Boston Orpheum concert included on The Police - Live!, featured an extended instrumental jam between the second and third verses that later became its own track, "Reggatta de Blanc".
  Guess this is our last goodbye
  And you don't care, so I won't cry
  You'll be sorry when I'm dead
  And all this guilt will be on your head
• The album closer, "Masoko Tanga", is an excellent showcase of the band's general sound.

Reggatta de Blanc (1979)

• The Police's second studio album hits the ground running with "Message in a Bottle" (7" single edit), the lyrics about a lonely man seeking companionship and discovering that there are "a hundred billion" people out there just as lonely as he is anchored by first rate guitar work from Andy Summers.
• The album's Grammy-winning title track shows that the Police didn't need lyrics to be awesome; an instrumental that grew out of extended jams during early performances of "Can't Stand Losing You" (see corresponding entry), it sends the listener on a glorious musical journey courtesy of Andy Summers' guitar, Sting's bass, and Stewart Copeland's drums, every one a winner.
• The enigmatic "Walking on the Moon" uses its ethereally sparse instrumentation to great effect, conveying the otherworldly majesty of, well, a walk on the moon. Between Sting's heavily echoed vocals, the guitar chord that punctuates each line, the simple yet memorable bass riff, and some expert cymbal work by Stewart Copeland, it is masterfully assembled at every level.
• "The Bed's Too Big Without You" features top notch performances by all three band members, and serves as a perfect example of the band's signature sound, fusing reggae with new wave. The section where the guitar and vocals fall silent, leaving just Sting's bass riff and Stewart Copeland's drum work, is a particular highlight. And if you want that part of the song to go on for longer, try the eight-minute version from their 1979 Boston Orpheum concert on The Police - Live!.

Zenyattà Mondatta (1980)

• Not for nothing was the album opener, "Don't Stand So Close to Me", the best-selling single of 1980 in the Police's home country, as well as the winner of the first of the Police's two Grammies for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. The lyrics' depiction of the complicated attraction between a male teacher and a female student is brilliantly matched by another reggae-meets-new wave tune and instrumentation with a sudden spike in energy (and shift from G minor to D major) for the chorus, and a haunting guitar synthesiser solo by Andy Summers adds just the right amount of weight to the song's last third. If you would rather hear a more sober arrangement that dials back the Lyrical Dissonance, try the 1986 re-release.^note  The infighting that had caused the band to break up three years earlier doomed any plans to follow this remake with similar updates of their other greatest hits.
• "Driven to Tears" shows Sting becoming more political in his songwriting, attacking the divide between rich and poor with anger that simmers just below the surface until it starts to boil over as the song hurtles toward the final fadeout.
• "When the World is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around" is more than just the Police's longest song title by far; continuing Sting's foray into increasingly political songs, the singer sings of struggling to make the most of the entertainment and food that have survived some sort of world-ending apocalypse, backed by echoed guitar chords from Andy Summers.
• The satirical edge of "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" may have gone over many listeners' heads when the song was first released; the nonsensical nature of the refrain is, in fact, a vicious parody of similarly nonsensical refrains of many hit songs over the years, such as "Da Doo Ron Ron" and "Doo Wah Diddy". As the three bandmates sing in the refrain's final line, "They're meaningless and all that's true." And, like the songs it parodies, it matches its lyrics with a catchy tune.
• "Behind My Camel", the second Police track to win a Best Rock Instrumental Grammy, is one of Andy Summers' crowning achievements as a songwriter. The eerie, quasi-Middle Eastern melody is expertly scored for distorted guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums, all but the last played by Summers,^note  Sting bluntly refused to play bass on the track, forcing Andy to play it instead, and he later tried to get rid of the tape by burying it in the garden of the recording studio. Meanwhile, Stewart Copeland only agreed to play drums when he couldn't find someone to play them in his place. and serves as a fine counterpoint to the buoyant "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da".

Ghost in the Machine (1981)

• The Police's fourth studio album opens with three tracks released as singles (in reverse chronological order).^note  They are also somewhat at odds with the predominant musical flavour of the album, in which the band blend their usual reggae influences with funk, in tracks with heavy emphasis on guitars and brass sections. The angry "Sprits in the Material World" gets things off to a flying start; the ska-influenced song stands out as the band's first track to make heavy use of synthesisers, Sting having composed it on a Casio keyboard, and it marks the beginning of a shift in the band's sound that became more pronounced on the next album.^note  Listen carefully and you'll notice the synth chords are doubled by Andy Summers on guitar, a compromise to which Sting agreed during recording despite wanting the song to just use synths and drums.
• "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic", the second track on the album, continues the theme of featuring keyboards prominently to back the catchy tune and lyrics of a man who consistently gets tongue-tied in the presence of the girl he loves, resulting in an energy level that is positively infectious and sure to get any audience on its feet to dance.
• The third track, the haunting "Invisible Sun", is the Police's musical reaction to The Troubles in Northern Ireland, expressing the idea that somewhere behind the fighting and strife that was tearing the country in two, there was a sun shining down and bringing everyone a hope for peace.
• Andy Summers named the mystical "Secret Journey" one of his personal favourite Police songs, and was surprised it was never widely released as a single.^note  It was released as a single in the United States only, in place of "Invisible Sun". Sting was inspired to write it after reading George Gurdjeff's novel Meetings with Remarkable Men, and conveys the idea that the journey one must make to get outside oneself can be a purely mental journey. It is bookended by ethereal instrumental passages that enhance the idea that the listener, too, is going on a secret journey courtesy of the song.

Synchronicity (1983)

• The band's last and most commercially successful album (which earned them their second Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals Grammy) opens with the dizzyingly frantic "Synchronicity I", a musical exposition of Carl Jung's theory of synchronicity (the idea that seemingly related events that do not seem to be causally connected yet happen simultaneously represent "meaningful coincidences"). The synth riff that runs throughout the song enters alone at first, and is quickly joined by drums, bass, and close harmony vocals that, in the bridge, overlap in a way that makes them sound as though they are shouting to be heard over each other.
• Side 1 of the album closes by picking up where the opening track left off with the darker than dark "Synchronicity II", in which we actually see what seems like an example of synchronicity at work, a father's gradual mental breakdown as he endures another hellish day at work and returns to an almost as hellish evening with his dysfunctional family juxtaposed with mysterious images of a monster rising from the depths of a dark Scottish lake... or is the monster a metaphor for the father's increasingly fragile emotional state? The harsh, discordant sounds that dominate the introduction and instrumental bridge (accidentally produced in the studio by Andy Summers; the band liked the effect and kept the sounds in) add to the sense of unease and make for one of the band's most memorable tracks.
• Flip the LP over, and you'll get a triptych of anguish-laden tracks released as singles that Sting wrote in the wake of his divorce from his first wife, each one an example of great art born from suffering. The double Grammy-winning "Every Breath You Take" may be a genuinely sinister Stalker with a Crush anthem (it is categorically not a sincere love song, and never say it is if Sting is within earshot!), but Andy Summers' Béla Bartók-inspired guitar riff and Sting's subtly threatening rendition of the lyrics make it easy to see why this is the Police's best-selling (topping the year-end Billboard charts for 1983) and most familiar song. The recording process may have been fraught with difficulty,^note  Not only could the band members barely stand to be in the same room as each other for more than a few minutes, but Stewart Copeland had to record each instrument on his drumkit separately, and the dining room at AIR Studios in which he recorded was stiflingly hot, making his hands so sweaty that he had to tape his drumsticks to them to keep the sticks from flying across the room when he played. but the end result was more than worth it.
• Continuing the theme of emotional torment from the previous track, "King of Pain" matches lyrics packed with vivid imagery of misfortune - a fossil trapped high in a cliff, a butterfly caught in a spider's web, a red fox torn by a huntsman's pack - with energetic instrumentation and a first rate lead vocal performance by Sting to make for one of the jewels in the crown that is Side 2 of Synchronicity.^note  The rather strange video for the song, which only aired in Australia, was edited down from a promotional film for the album, hence the parade of visual references to the album's cover art that loops around about two-thirds of the way through.
• "Wrapped Around Your Finger", the third panel in the triptych of Sting's post-divorce angst, starts with lyrics in which he shows off his literary knowledge - as the singer sings of how he will one day turn the tables on the "mentor" who has him "wrapped around your finger" and wrap the "mentor" around his finger, he references the mythological creatures of Scylla and Charybdis and the story of Faust and his pact with Mephistopheles - and sets them to an eerily minimalist instrumental backing that lingers long in the memory. The live version from the Atlanta concert of the accompanying album tour, as heard on The Police - Live!, is even more gloriously dark and spooky.
• The original release of the album closes with the melancholy, otherworldly "Tea in the Sahara".^note  The CD release adds a bonus track in the black comedic "Murder by Numbers", the B-side to "Every Breath You Take". Sting's soulful rendition of the lyrics about the strange tale of (at least) three sisters' peculiar request that a young man join them for, well, tea in the Sahara is well matched with soft guitar from Andy Summers and cymbals from Stewart Copeland, rounding off the strongest side of any of their five albums.

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