159. The Police, "Synchronicity"

 

Man, I hope there are some other Police albums on here, because this is the worst Police album.  What made the Police so exciting and innovative early on was their urgent, immediate sound, a blending of reggae and new wave on albums that crackled with life.  This album sounds like it was assembled by robots and radio programmers.  Unsurprisingly, it was their best-selling record.

The one high point on the album is "Synchronicity II," a frenetic burst of sound centered on the contrast between the constricting life of a worker forced into stifling conformity and, "many miles away," something emerging from a "dark Scottish lake."  It's got real energy and verve and heart.  Sting said about it, "There's a domestic situation where there's a man who's on the edge of paranoia, and as his paranoia increases a monster takes shape in a Scottish lake, the monster being a symbol of the man's anxiety.  That's a synchronistic situation."  

Which brings us to Sting's bombastic self-importance and self-seriousness, which had not yet reached its apex on this, the final Police album, that it would in his solo stuff but is definitely on the way there.  "Walking in Your Footsteps" tries to draw a parallel between the dinosaurs and us, but ends up sounding more like a children's song:

Hey mighty brontosaurus
Don't you have a lesson for us
You thought your rule would always last
There were no lessons in your past

You were built three stories high
They say you would not hurt a fly
If we explode the atom bomb
Would they say that we were dumb?

The album spawned two absolutely monster hits, back to back tracks on the album, "Every Breath You Take" and "King of Pain."  I cannot overemphasize enough how overplayed these songs were on the radio in the 80's and how thoroughly sick of both of them I am, and that surely plays into my general dislike of this album but there you go.  

"Breath," of course, is based on that famous plunking guitar part (laid down in one take by Andy Summers) and Sting singing about stalking the listener.  It's a  creepy, disturbing song that has been widely misinterpreted as some kind of paean to romantic longing.  It was later repurposed wholesale into Puff Daddy's "I'll Be Missing You," which, incredibly, is the subject of today's Number Ones column on Stereogum, a feature I urge you to read and enjoy.  The Police song itself is fine, I guess, but I simply do not understand the grip it had on radio programmers.  (In fact, "Every Breath You Take" was certified in 2019 by BMI as the most played song in radio history, and accounts for something like a third of the Police's royalties.)

"King of Pain" is objectively a better song that, again, suffered from nuclear-level overplay on radio.  Sting tells the story of writing the lyrics, and it's just as painful - for us - as you might imagine: "I was with Trudie who is now my current wife and said 'Look, there's a little black spot on the sun today'.  And there's a pause.  I said, 'That's my soul up there'.  I was full of hyperbole.  I said that!  I went back in and wrote it down on a piece of stuff, and wrote some other stuff."

"Wrapped Around Your Finger" is also on this album, and was also overplayed, but not as much as EBYT or KOP.  Like those two, though, it deals with the dark power dynamics that bad relationships can devolve into.  It also has two rhyming couplet that have always cracked me up because they have a real Rhyming Dictionary vibe to them: "I have only come here seeking knowledge/Things they would not teach me of in college" and "I will turn your face to alabaster/When you'll find your servant is your master."  On the other hand, he does rhyme "young apprentice" with "Scylla and Charibdys," so points for that.

In the wake of this monster-selling album, the Police went on a huge tour even though they fucking LOATHED each other by this point (local stop: Oakland Coliseum, 9/10/83).  Interesting sidenote: R.E.M. opened for them on some of these dates.  But this was the Police's final, and, at to me anyway, least interesting effort.  Have you ever met anyone who says this is one of their favorite albums?

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Some Police album does but not this one.