How I Like The Police: The Leftovers

Like most kids who got into “modern rock” via MTV in the ‘80s, I’ve always been pretty OK with The Police. The trio of frontman/bassist Sting, guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland, who put out five albums between 1978 and 1983, were melodic, witty, artful, and emotive, but with a sense of humor. They were handsome guys and fond of scampering in their videos, too! Despite the date of their break-up, I saw at least as many Police videos on TV as solo Sting videos, and had Every Breath You Take: The Classics on cassette. I never bothered to trade up from that best-of to full-length albums like I did with Talking Heads and the Velvet Underground, but I did play The Classics a lot, which can’t be said for Money For Nothing or Glittering Prize.

By the end of the ‘90s, I’d gotten the memo that Sting was a pompous cornball, that rhyming “words they try to jail you” with “rhetorical failure” was hilarious, and that he’d mispronounced Nabokov. Rob Sheffield, back when poptimism allowed gleefully pooping on a multiplatinum act’s deep cuts instead of treating them like sacred verse, gave The Classics a 9 in the SPIN Alternative Record Guide and every studio album a 7 or less. He also pointed out the absurdity of repeatedly following ornate metaphors with “that’s my soul up there,” ruining “King Of Pain” for life. It was officially more fun to find groaners in Sting’s lyrics than to look for wisdom. And as an owner of multiple Guided By Voices EPs, accomplished musicianship was not going to be a saving grace.

Still, when my cassette collection went the way of the dodo, I made a CD-R charmingly titled Every Wind You Break: The Assics, with 12 or so songs that still had melodic or emotional appeal. And when my CD-R collection went the way of the dodo, I found a cheap copy of their debut, Outlandos D’Amour, deciding the band was at their most charming at their earliest, turning power-trio rock into reggae or vice versa. While I still perused the discs in front of their record store placards, I couldn’t justify a second purchase. For every song I wanted on the shelf at home, there were at least two or three titles next to it scaring me off.

I’ve had two big personal breakthroughs when it comes to these gentlemen blondes as an adult. One is that, on early ragers like “Truth Hurts Everybody” and “Fall Out,” the band sounds eerily like peak Aerosmith, thanks to Sting’s high-pitched, yet melodic shouting and the band’s confident, hard and fast attack. The second observation is that, when Sting didn’t write many words and the other two didn’t write anything, like on “When The World Is Running Down, You Make The Best Of What’s Still Around” and “Voices In My Head” (released together on a promo that almost topped the dance chart), they could really ride a groove. There are acts where I only need the excited, gestative debut, and others where I only need a best-of. But I know in my heart that the Police deserve both. Outlandos provides enough of the early energy, but there should be a second album or compilation available to represent their lithe, platinum era. And so, into Satan’s streamosphere I went, using it as a discovery tool for the physical purchases that allow me to rationalize my subscription. My handy-dandy subjective album rating scale can be found here.

Every Breath You Take: The Singles (1995) 5

The obvious place to start. Only two songs from Outlandos, so it’s not that redundant. Unfortunately, there’s now two goofy reduxes of hits rather than the solitary one that graced my old cassette. I’d like to have “Message In A Bottle” (the original, not the “Classic Rock Mix”), which features both impressive classic rock/reggae dynamic shifts and a lyric that can be childishly misheard (if you like to do that kind of thing) as “massaging a butthole…sanding out an ass! Oh, ass!” (In Accidental Evolution Of Rock & Roll, Chuck Eddy noted Sting, in his dubious patois, appears to sing “a year has passed since I broke my nose”). I’ll even tolerate the playful skank of “Walking On The Moon,” but I can’t stomach the statutory rape fantasy today (either version), or the one about how music saves Sting from being physically assaulted by logic. “Every Little Thing Is Magic” is the real “De Do Do Do,” in terms of euphoric bubblegum, but the eloquence of “Invisible Sun” and “Spirits In the Material World” escapes me. I’ll stake my claim on the loveliness of “Every Breath You Take, but “King Of Pain” and “Wrapped Around You Finger” are a Scylla and Charybdis of florid embarrassment. This adds up to just four post-Outlandos hits on here I’d want to have, with a more resolute Sting hater still free to smirk “keep it up” at me in disbelief. Docked a point from the '86 version for offering fans two different vintages of "Don't Stand So Close To Me."

Regatta De Blanc (1979) 7

As two of those four hits I’d keep from Breath are on their second album, maybe I just want that? Blanc was pretty transitional, putting their take on punk aside for something more explicitly new wave, and - despite a ridiculous title track that somehow won the Grammy for Best Instrumental despite all of Sting's “eeeyoo” bullshit - Side A almost gets away with abandoning Steven Tyler screaming "give us some reggae!" for proto-Men At Work. But you can tell they’re dealing with a depleted songbook and, while there was reportedly no label pressure, there was also no practice and way too many annoying solo Copeland credits on the B. There’s something cutely ramshackle about Blanc, but I don’t need the whole thing. 

The Police (2007) 6

A 2CD that opens with “Fall Out”? Exactly what I want in theory, but Disc 1 features six songs from Outlandos D’Amour (an 8 already on the shelf) and just four from Regatta De Blanc, including the title track and “Bring On The Night” (another song too regatta de forced for me) instead of “Deathwish” and, I dunno, “No Time This Time.” The deep cuts from Zenyatta Mondatta on this comp are better picked, so let’s just move on to…

Zenyatta Mondatta (1980) 7

Keep it in your pants or I’m calling the superintendent, Mr. Sumner. Between that opener (honestly creepier than, say, Cheap Trick’s “Daddy Should Have Stayed In High School,” just for its literary, third-person pretensions) and Copeland’s erotic foreign policy fantasy (made creepier by his dad literally involved in staging multiple coups), exists the finest four-track run of their career: funky, spacious minimalism that suggests reggae reacting to new wave’s robotic cool without surrendering to synths. If I could find a cheap copy of that “When The World Is Running Down/Voices In My Head” promo-disc, this post might not exist.

But then there’s side B. The overreaching inanity of “De Do Do Do" reads more like a trolling Twitter thread than a lyric today, which is bad enough when not sandwiched between Copeland's “guerrilla girl/ hard and sweet” and Summers’ audition for Robert Fripp’s League Of Crafty Guitarists (which won them another Grammy!). “Man In A Suitcase” gives away its mediocrity with a forced key change. One could argue “Shadows In The Rain” impressively predicts the dancehall thrust of Shabba Ranks (the title even sounds a little like “Shabba Ranks”), but I don’t appreciate the implied image of Sting rolling his abs. Finally, a nagging instrumental by Copeland closes out a side that nullifies the charms of the previous. Sigh.

Ghost In The Machine (1981) 7

“Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” is so unabashedly sweet and exuberant, I have to wonder if they recorded it just so fans could cluck “how can you resist that?” at the hipsters grumbling about the deep thoughts and bad rhymes that bracket it. I appreciate the explicitly antifascist "Re-Humanise Yourself," and every time Sting is mixed behind the horns and drums, particularly on “Hungry For You" and “Too Much Information." Sadly, none of those three tracks appear on the US version of the 2CD comp (“Re-Humanize Yourself” is a bonus track in their homeland). 

Synchronicity (1983) 6

Maybe the funniest last album by a huge band since CCR’s Mardi Gras. Finally, Sting let Andy and Stewart put their token solo copyrights on the A side…and then put all his pop smashes on the B, reaffirming album placement wasn’t the reason he had all the hits. The most interesting thing about the closing numbers is that they show how easily he’ll replace his bandmates with jazz pros in his solo career. Even funnier? Eight of the tracks from Synchronicity are on that self-titled 2CD, Sting humbly denying buyers his “When The World Is Running Down” rewrite “Oh My God” along with Stew’s song and Andy’s song. Docked a point for asking a brontosaurus if they have a message for us. 

Having done my due diligence, I’m left with no choice but to make a playlist called How I Like The Police: The Leftovers, featuring most of the songs I enjoy that aren’t on Outlandos D’Amour. While Spotify is the devil’s playground, The Police are three lucky fucks who should be ok only getting micropennies for the rest of their lives, unless they’ve put too much of their nest egg in wineries.

Please note that I did not include the UK number one where Sting chants “keep it up.” I also closed with an old B-side from the online comp Flexible Strategies, where again...this really could be Aerosmith. Just try to guess the first note heard on "Landlord." You won't.

Spotify link above, YouTube links below.

How I Like The Police: The Leftovers

1. "Synchronicity I" (Synchronicity, 1983)
   "If we share this nightmare, we can dream Spiritus Mundi"
2. "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" (Ghost In The Machine, 1981)
   "It's a big enough umbrella, but it's always me that ends up getting wet"
3. "When The World Is Running Down, You Make The Best Of What's Still Around" (Zenyatta Mondatta, 1980)
   "When I feel lonely here, don't waste my time with tears, I run Deep Throat again"
4. "Deathwish" (Regatta De Blanc, 1979)
   "Burning in the outside lane, people think that I'm insane - insane!"
5. "Fall Out" (Single A-side, 1977)
   "I never followed leaders, I've got no machine, and I've paid all my dues all along"
6. "Re-Humanise Yourself" (Ghost In The Machine, 1981)
   "Billy's joined the National Front, he always was a little runt"
7. "Driven To Tears" (Zenyatta Mondatta, 1980)
   "Too many cameras and not enough food"
8. "Message In A Bottle" (Regatta De Blanc, 1979)
   "Sanding out an ass! Oh, ass!"
9. "Synchronicity II" (Synchronicity, 1983)
   "Many miles away, something crawls to the surface of a dark Scottish loch"
10. "Canary In A Coalmine" (Zenyatta Mondatta, 1980)
    "You say you want to spend the winter in Firenze, you're so afraid to catch a dose of influenza"
11. "No Time This Time" (Regatta De Blanc, 1979)
    "Less time for the intricacies of explanation"
12. "Hungry For You" (Ghost In The Machine, 1981)
    "Ça y est alors, ma belle traitresse"
13. "Voices Inside My Head" (Zenyatta Mondatta, 1980)
    "Cha! Cha! Cha! Cha!"
14. "Too Much Information" (Ghost In The Machine, 1981)
    "Cha! Cha! Cha! Cha!"
15. "Every Breath You Take" (Synchronicity, 1983)
    "Every claim you stake, I'll be watching you"
16. "Landlord" (Single B-side, 1979)
    "You've no morality, what do you care, you deal in poverty, you buy despair"

If you feel the need to shake your fist about the above, please leave your message with the other hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore. All other queries, comments and compliments can go to anthonyisright at gmail dot com.