You get so dizzy even walking in a straight line
Of schoolgirl fantasy
She wants him so badly
Knows what she wants to be
Inside her there's longing
This girl's an open page
Book marking, she's so close now
This girl is half his age!
Zenyattà Mondatta is the third studio album recorded by English-American Post-Punk/New Wave Music band The Police. It was released through A&M Records on 3 October 1980.
Recorded in four weeks during the leadup to their second tour, the album marks the start of a shift away from the reggae fusion sound of Outlandos d'Amour and Reggatta de Blanc in favor of a more atmospheric, electronic-friendly style that would grow increasingly prominent on their following two records. For tax reasons, the band moved recordings away from their regular Surrey Sound studio and moved over to Wisseloord Studios in the Netherlands, bringing along producer Nigel Gray for the ride and on a still-modest budget of £35,000 (the majority of which was spent on rehiring Gray).
The recording atmosphere was much tenser than the band's first two albums: not only were both the tour and the album done at the behest of A&M Records, forcing the musicians to rush through the recording process, but Creative Differences between the three members were rapidly escalating. The band had long been, as they put it, a clash of three great egos, but here it started to reach even greater heights, culminating in a feud between Sting and Andy Summers over the instrumental track "Behind My Camel" that ended in Sting unsuccessfully attempting to dispose of the song's master tape by burying it in his backyard. The whole trio would later look back on the album as their creative nadir, levying particular ire at the tight schedule it was made under (completing it just hours before the tour's first show). They would later re-record both of its singles during their final recording sessions in 1986, with the new version of "Don't Stand So Close to Me" acting as the center point for that year's Greatest Hits Album Every Breath You Take: The Singles.
The album continued to improve the band's commercial fortunes, topping the charts in the UK and Australia and peaking at No. 5 on the Billboard 200. It would go on to become the second-best-selling album of 1980 in the UK and the ninth-best-selling album of 1981 in the US, where it would be certified double-platinum. It would also receive a platinum certification in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, and New Zealand, and went gold in Germany.
Zenyattà Mondatta was supported by two singles: "Don't Stand So Close to Me" and "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da". The former would be their third UK #1 single, and both would hit #10 on the Billboard Hot 100, the highest they'd reached yet on the US Pop chart.
Tracklist:
Side One- "Don't Stand So Close to Me" (4:04)
- "Driven to Tears" (3:20)
- "When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around" (3:38)
- "Canary in a Coalmine" (2:26)
- "Voices Inside My Head" (3:53)
- "Bombs Away" (3:06)
Side Two
- "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" (4:09)
- "Behind My Camel" (2:54)
- "Man in a Suitcase" (2:19)
- "Shadows in the Rain" (5:04)
- "The Other Way of Stopping" (3:22)
General scratches his belly and tropes:
- Abuse Discretion Shot: The song "Don't Stand So Close To Me" is about an inappropriate relationship between a teacher and an underage schoolgirl, but never actually says what happens between them. The first two verses are about the growing attraction between the two; the second verse ends "Wet bus stop, she's waiting, his car is warm and dry". Then the song cuts to the chorus. The third verse deals with the aftermath of the encounter.
- Alternate Music Video: "Don't Stand So Close to Me" has three different videos:
- The first one, produced for the 1980 version, is one of their standard "the band sing and muck about a room"
videos, themed around a classroom setting in reference to the lyrics. - The second one, produced for the 1986 version, is a Godley & Créme-directed Surreal Music Video portraying the band spinning in place among computer-generated setpieces, including clips of and paraphernalia related to prior Police videos.
- The third video goes back to the 1980 version, being a holiday-themed showcase of the band skiing and riding snowmobiles alongside people in Santa suits in wintry Canada. This video actually was shot in 1980 concurrently with that for "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" (hence reusing the location), but remained unreleased until December 8, 2021, 41 years after its parent album came out.
- The first one, produced for the 1980 version, is one of their standard "the band sing and muck about a room"
- As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The album title mixes "Zen" (as in Buddhism) with "Kenyatta" (as in the president of Kenya), the Italian word for "world" ("mondo"), and the title of their previous album, Reggatta de Blanc. Oh, and an meaningless diacritic. It's evocative of the band's world-music-inspired sound, but that's it.
- Canary in a Coal Mine: The song of the same name invokes the trope as a metaphor for the subject's various neuroses, drawing parallels between their susceptibility to being overcome by their paranoia and a canary's rapid death when exposed to toxic gas.
- Canis Latinicus: In the first video for "Don't Stand So Close to Me", the chalkboard in the classroom scenes features the schoolboy fake Latin poem "Caesar adsum jam forte / Brutus et arat / Caesar sic on omnibus / Brutus in his hat."note
- Darker and Edgier: The subject matter here grows far more bleak and mature than on their previous two albums, themselves no strangers to dark topics. The first three songs alone respectively describe child sexual abuse, nihilism induced by worldwide suffering, and using escapism to avoid tense current events, and the tracks after them rarely ease up.
- A Day in the Limelight: Andy Summers plays both guitar and bass on "Behind My Camel", which he composed. The instrumental nature of the song also means that Sting doesn't perform any vocals, thus bringing Summers further into the forefront (though that didn't stop Sting from accepting the Grammy that the song won).
- Digital Destruction: Due to a mastering error, the 1993 remaster adds a prominent click to the start of "Don't Stand So Close to Me".
- Drone of Dread: "Don't Stand So Close to Me" opens with a long, deep pair of synthesized hums, establishing the darker undercurrents within the lyrics.
- Fading into the Next Song: The end of "Driven to Tears" hard-cuts into the beginning of "When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around".
- Hearing Voices: "Voices Inside My Head" describes the narrator as experiencing this.
- Instrumentals: "Behind My Camel" and "The Other Way of Stopping".
- Last Note Nightmare: "Shadows In The Rain", which closes off with a series of overlapping and increasingly atonal guitar jams.
- Lyrical Dissonance:
- "Don't Stand So Close to Me" is a jaunty-sounding tune about a teacher raping his student.
- "Canary in a Coalmine" sounds bouncy and upbeat, but the lyrics meanwhile describe the subject as pathetically weak-willed.
- "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" is a cheery little number about, depending on your interpretation, either the lies of media and politicians, or how the girlfriend would always twist the meaning of everything he said, so he was left only with nonsensical words that could not be interpreted.
- Mythology Gag: The album title is partly a nod back to that of Reggatta de Blanc.
- New Sound Album: The band introduces synthesizers and ramps up the amount of effects used, resulting in a more atmospheric sound compared to their previous works while still retaining their reggae rock core.
- Portmantitle: In an interview, Stewart Copeland explained that the album title came from a series of portmanteaus: the first word comes from Zen and the name of Kenyan leader Jomo Kenyatta, while the latter is a combination of the Italian word for "world" and a nod to their earlier Reggatta de Blanc.
- Protest Song:
- "Driven to Tears" criticizes the West's inattention towards global poverty.
- "Bombs Away" is about the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, which began as the album was being recorded.
- Rape as Drama: In an interview, Sting confirmed that the teacher in "Don't Stand So Close to Me" raped his student in his "warm and dry" car as part of the song's dramatic arc, and that the end of the song depicts him being deservingly fired for this.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: "Don't Stand So Close to Me" was based in part on Sting's memories of having students crush on him during his stint as a professor. Fittingly, Sting plays one in the song's music video.
- Rhyming Title: Zenyattà Mondatta, "When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around".
- Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Occurs in-universe in "Don't Stand So Close to Me", where the teacher is fired after the rest of the staff discover that he raped a student.
- Sanity Slippage Song: "Shadows in the Rain", narrated by an asylum patient who repeatedly asserts that he's mentally stable despite being delusional and suffering from severe anterograde amnesia.
- Saw "Star Wars" Twenty-Seven Times: The narrator in "When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around" mentions that he's been constantly rewatching Deep Throat (an infamous porn film) for "years and years."
- Shirtless Scene: Sting inexplicably takes his shirt and snowpants off midway through the Christmas video for "Don't Stand So Close to Me", with the camera lingering on the view of him bare-chested for some time. He eventually puts them back on near the end of the video.
- Shout-Out:
- The last verse of "Don't Stand So Close to Me" describes how the teacher, upon realizing that his sexual relationship with an underaged student is exposed, "starts to shake and cough, just like the old man in that book by Nabokov," an allusion to the controversial novel. In an interview, Sting described the book as his inspiration for the song's storyline.
- "When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around" references "James Brown on the T.A.M.I. Show." The song additionally namedrops Otis Redding and the notorious 1972 porn film Deep Throat.
- Single Stanza Song: "Voices Inside my Head".
- Suddenly Shouting: The first verse of "Don't Stand So Close to Me" is sung by Sting at his lower register. The last line adds a second track with him singing the same line a full octave higher, giving this impression. The later verses are at that octave and even higher, perhaps to emphasize the impropriety of the situation.
- Teacher/Student Romance: "Don't Stand So Close to Me" is a harsh deconstruction, depicting it as a sexually abusive relationship between the adult teacher and his underage student. The teacher ultimately gets fired for his actions, but it doesn't spare the student from being relentlessly bullied by her peers, especially once word about her rape gets out.
- Title-Only Chorus: "Don't Stand So Close to Me" and "When the World is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around" (the latter by virtue of how outrageously long the title is).
- Who Writes This Crap?!: In the music video for "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da", Sting reacts to his own lyrics with confusion when singing "their logic ties you up and rapes you," mouthing "Rapes you?" to himself right after with a visibly bewildered look on his face.
