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Police
While the Police were working overtime in the late 70's to establish themselves both at home (in England) and abroad (in America), the dust that the punk bands had kicked up began to settle, burying the major record labels in a pile of debris. Sales of prerecorded music were in a funk, so the more palatable new wave artists were swept up by every A&R man who had a pen for signing contracts. When they exhausted the fallout of “real” new wave bands, they invented their own (remember the Knack?). Most of these new wave bands did little to alleviate the slumping industry, though. They might have had a knack (pardon the pun) for attracting media attention, but for the life of them, they couldn't seem to translate the press into record sales. Elvis Costello, Squeeze, Joe Jackson and XTC sold only moderately, while many others had trouble selling anything at all.
The Police were destined to be different. A&M Records signed the band before they had even set foot in America and like the others, sales were initially slow. Their no-frills touring method attracted enough attention to breathe new life into their older recordings, however, and "Roxanne" began to climb back up the charts. The musical talents of all three bandmembers were immediately obvious to anybody who saw them. Combining rock's solidity with reggae's elasticity while playing at punk's warp speed gave them a vital energy and original sound that would have been welcome at any time period. Stewart Copeland was one the most quick-wristed and precise drummers in all of rock and roll, while guitarist Andy Summers was a master of concise invention. Add to this Sting's budding ability to compose entire songs (as opposed to fragments that were developed into songs) and you have yourself a band with one heck of a lot of commercial potential.
Outlandos D'Amour, the punkish and compact first album, was followed by Regatta De Blanc, which quickly outsold its predecessor, mostly on the strength of radio-friendly material such as "Walking On The Moon", "The Bed's Too Big Without You" and "Message In A Bottle". While other new wave acts continued to struggle, the Police became million-sellers. With their finances secure and their fame intact, they set out on a world tour that encompassed four continents. Meanwhile a third album, Zenyatta Mondatta, caught the band in their most loose-limbed state yet, with a sound that captured the essence of their live energy. Some critics moaned, complaining of a lack of structure and a haphazard approach to writing, but no other Police album did a better job of showing the band to full advantage. All three players interwove their parts into a hypnotic pattern that can only come from intense familiarity and constant playing, something uncommon for ordinary pop music. The Police had become a perfectly integrated unit with no weak link. "Don't Stand So Close To Me" (#10) and the much more literate than it sounds "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" (#10) were extracted as singles and contributed to making the band a household name around the globe.
Their fourth album, Ghost In The Machine, is much more weighty and suffers somewhat from overproduction, although it too has some excellent moments, including the singles "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" (#3) and "Spirits In The Material World" (#11). Signs of strain were evident, though, and the band recognized the need to take a break. After a prolonged absence that gave them an opportunity to recover from one another, they launched headlong into what was destined to become their last album. Synchronicity is a masterful record, featuring a subdued approach to instrumentation that allows Sting’s by now excellent songwriting to become the album's focal point. More so than on previous Police albums, the emotional core of Sting's writing was laid bare. He recorded the album in the midst of a divorce, and his expressive voice conveys the complex emotions that resulted from his separation. Sting's pain and confusion came across with a natural ease that is evident on each of the three Top Ten singles that the album yielded, including "King Of Pain" (#3), and "Wrapped Around Your Finger" (#8), but none more so than "Every Breath You Take" (#1 for eight weeks). Few “love” songs could claim to harbor more anger, possessiveness and outright spiteful aggression than this does. The ostensible niceties of Sting’s words express emotions that were obviously less than kind. Once focused, it was plain to hear that "Every Breath You Take" wasn't a soothing love song at all, but a scathing claim to empowerment, sung with an attitude that actually revealed the singer's powerlessness. Sting was aware of it and the sentiments that he expressed in "Every Breath You Take" bothered him enough to consciously set out to rectify it. For his first release as a solo artist, he wrote a song that he intended to be an antidote, titled "If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free." "Every Breath You Take" was written before he knew better, or before he cared to know better. Song topics are often fictional but Sting seemed unconcerned with disguising his lyrical intentions and their parallel to his own personal experience. It takes time to come to terms with the loss of control that results from a separation and these lyrics capture the time before the healing has begun. Resentment seeps out of every pore of his voice and is quite chilling, especially since it is aimed directly at a loved one who has become estranged.
MTV played a vital role in familiarizing the public with "Every Breath You Take" and the other singles from Synchronicity. Although videos had also accompanied their earlier hits, they were crude in comparison. In the early ‘80s, video was usually an unimaginative and egocentric means of promotion that had yet to realize its creative potential. As was typical for the genre, Police videos were dull and mindless - that is, until Kevin Godley and Lol Creme (ex-10 C.C. techno-heads with a sharpened eye for all things artistic) began to construct their sets and their storyboards. Instead of having Copeland, Summers and Sting stand around like awkward nimrods, Godley and Creme brought a sense of underlying meaning to their visual images, providing a surreal subtext that didn't interfere with the songs themselves.
"Every Breath You Take" was the first Police video that didn't deride the music it attempted to compliment. It was still limiting but at least it relied on surreal images instead of hyper-real idiocy. After all, Sting has an intense presence that demands respect. Furthermore, songs about divorce don't lend themselves to moronic mugshots. Godley and Creme recognized this and capitalized on it. Their constructions granted Sting the chance to expand his persona while expounding his thoughts, qualities that would benefit him as he began a career as a solo artist.
 
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