Bad Export for You: The original Japanese CD and cassette releases of the album, put out as part of A&M's partnership with Alfa Records, inexplicably omit the bonus track "Murder By Numbers" present on most other releases on the formats across regions.
Blooper: A&M Records initially planned on including a custom logo on all their CD releases, similarly to what RCA Records did, but ultimately switched over to the industry standard Compact Disc Digital Audio logo once they started manufacturing discs. Despite this, some early CD pressings of Synchronicity by CSR Compact Disc and Matsushita mistakenly printed the custom logo on their front covers; these were hastily covered up with stickers bearing the industry standard logo. This mistake is also present on early Matsushita pressings of Bryan Adams' Cuts Like a Knife, Quincy Jones' The Dude, and Joe Jackson's Night and Day.
Corpsing: When shooting the video for "Wrapped Around Your Finger", the film was sped up to achieve a slow-motion effect. This meant that the playback had to be sped up, too. Sting kept cracking up when trying to lip-sync.
Creator Breakdown: Many of Sting's songs, including "Every Breath You Take", "King of Pain" and "Wrapped Around Your Finger" were inspired by his divorce from his first wife. The album as a whole was also heavily influenced by the collapsing relationships between the band's members, who by that point couldn't even work in the same room as one another; this would end up being the last album they managed to make before acrimoniously breaking up three years later.
Hostility on the Set: By the time Synchronicity began production in late 1982, the band's Creative Differences were starting to reach a tipping point. Sting, Andy, and Stewart so hated the sight of one another that they had to work in separate rooms of the studio, and each of them were only able to show up unaccompanied by the other two when it came time to start recording overdubs.
Sting's solo debut The Dream of the Blue Turtles contains two nods to "Every Breath You Take". The opening track and leadoff single "If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free" is an Answer Song to "Every Breath You Take", being written specifically in response to people who misinterpreted that track as a love song. Meanwhile, "Love is the Seventh Wave" features a self-parody of the song, including joke lines like "every cake you bake."
Sting engaged in another self-parody of "Every Breath You Take" on Spitting Image, rewriting it as the anti-jingoist Protest Song "Every Bomb You Make".
Frank Zappa and his backing band performed "Murder By Numbers" on his final world tour, featuring Sting himself on vocals; the performance is included on the CD release of 1988's Broadway the Hard Way.
Michael Stipe described R.E.M.'s hit "Losing My Religion" as his attempt at rewriting "Every Breath You Take", with both tracks being anti-love songs about toxic obsession wrapped beneath a deceptively upbeat tune.
"Murder By Numbers" informs the title of at least two films and a 2020 visual novel.
Throw It In!: The feedback on "Synchronicity II" came from an accident Andy Summers had while playing, but the band and producer liked the effect and decided to keep it. Likewise, the rumbling used to represent the Loch Ness Monster was a recording of roadie Tam Fairgrieve's snoring, which the band cranked up to wake him from a nap; they found it so funny that they decided to toss it into the song.
While recording the album in Montserrat, the members each recorded their parts in different rooms (Stewart Copeland played drums in the dining room,note The dining room was stiflingly hot, which made Stewart's hands sweat so much that he couldn't hold onto his drumsticks and ended up having to tape them to his hands. Sting worked from the control room and Andy Summers recorded in the actual studio) and only overdubbed instruments when just one of them was in the studio at a time because they couldn't stand to be in the same room. Additionally, Sting and Stewart Copeland started a fight while recording "Every Breath You Take", which almost made producer Hugh Padgham walk out.
The video for "Synchronicity II" was a dangerous production. Sting was insistent on getting all the time in the spotlight, which caused director Lol Crème to grow to dislike him. Drummer Stewart Copeland and bassist Andy Summers were performing atop giant scaffolds. The height itself proved to be a danger, but there was also a lot dry ice being blown around the studio. The air became so dry that something ignited, which caused the scaffolds to catch fire. Despite urges from safety personnel, Crème demanded filming to continue. Sting also spent a majority of the video swinging from a rope; at one point he fell.
Miscellaneous:
The original US CD release of the album in 1983 marked the first time that Sony, the first CD manufacturer in the world, made discs for a label not affiliated with them. The release was pressed by CSR Compact Disc, the first CD pressing plant in the world, which previously made discs exclusively for the Sony-partnered Columbia Records and their sublabels. Such copies are distinguished by the secondary catalog number DIDX-1 in the disc matrix.
and cassette