Bring On the POLL - ILM Artist Poll #116 - THE POLICE - (Results Thread)

lol

16. The Bed’s Too Big Without You

So Far:

16	492	16		The Bed’s Too Big Without You
17	486	14	2	Ωmegaman
18	473	17		Wrapped Around Your Finger
19	436	13	1	Secret Journey
20	374	11		Every Breath You Take
21	366	11	1	It’s Alright for You
22	354	11		Next to You
23	322	10	1	Darkness
24	312	10		Canary in a Coal Mine
25	276	9		De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da
26	271	8		Voices in My Head
27	266	8		Truth Hits Everybody
28	245	8	1	No Time This Time
29	209	6		Demolition Man
30	200	7		Man in a Suitcase
31	183	5	1	I Burn for You
32	176	6		Tea in the Sahara
33	174	6		Bombs Away
34	170	6		Does Everyone Stare
35	165	6		Contact
36	149	5		Murder by Numbers
37	148	5		Shadows in the Rain
38	143	5		Too Much Information
39	119	4		Rehumanize Yourself
40	110	4		Mother

"EBYT" is correctly placed.

As annoying as the chorus is, there's a case for "De Do Do" because at least the guitar work is cool.

woah, sting's girlfriend killed herself because they broke up?? had never heard that before. and straightaway I'm thinking about 'can't stand losing' and the record cover for that is literally a drawing of someone hanging themselves. wtaf?!

I mean I always thought the 'can't stand losing you' sleeve was in poor taste but if sting had actually known someone that took her life after splitting up with him then it seems like a hugely cunty thing to do

:O

"EBYT" is correctly placed.

agreed, and i don't even think it's a case of 'ilm contrariness'. it's a good song, but they really do have ~20 that are better

xxp I thought the person on the sleeve was Sting, but it was in fact Stew.

Going to try and get a bit earlier start tomorrow morning.

Bummed this is a busy week at work and I haven't had a minute to check in on the rollout while it's happening! Lots of my high placements showing up today, including my #1, "No Time This Time" -- had no idea this was a '78 track but makes sense. Can't deny I favor the punkier side of this band, but this poll/rollout is really making me realize there's a whole side of this band (e.g., the part where they are in fact exceptionally good at playing their instruments) that I'm mostly listening right past.

"First to fall over when the atmosphere is less than perfect
Your sensibilities are shaken by the slightest defect
You live your life like a canary in a coalmine
You get so dizzy even walking in a straight line"

Sting often likes to indulge himself in is lyrics and get sloppy but this is one of the tightest quatrains I've ever seen, those syllables are just like rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat, it's like something tightened by a wrench, love everything about "Canary" but these lyrics most of all -- agree it's not really a ska song but rather a song which could only exist in a world where ska exists

those syllables are just like rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat, it's like something tightened by a wrench

Yes. See also:

Wake up, make up, bring it up, shake up
Stand by, don't cry, watching while the world dies
Big car, movie star, hot tip, go far
Blind date, too late, take a bus, don't wait

Yup

I really should have voted for more Zenyatta

I thought I had seen every Police video but have never seen this one before:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxI2rUJOp_Y

But are you safe[ly in the top 15], Miss Gradenko?

xp that wasn't an official promo video for it, that's just the way that particular programme presented music as far as I remember, it was a teeny bit saucy I think you could safely say

I wonder what the highest-placing non-single will be? Bring on the night? Synchronicity 1?

I voted Gradenko pretty high. And the highest non single, well the voting thread answers that question …

Oh I don't remember that. Was it 'Oh My God'? :/

Going back a bit to "Does Everyone Stare," voodoo speaks wisdom:

yes! love the odd timing on the piano, so far behind the beat that it winds up being on beat again

Yeah in Stewart's autobiography he says that he wrote it for a composition class in I guess college.

The professor criticized it for including parallel fifths (a no-no for some theory heads), but encouragingly said that it had "a voice." That was all the encouragement Stewart needed, and he regarded it as basically the go-ahead he needed to start considering himself a songwriter and not just a drummer.

I don't pretend to know or love these guys *as people*, but I found that anecdote oddly charming.

omegaman was definitely my number one non-voting regret

Omegaman has such a gnarly riff. even Fripp doesn't bend his notes that much.

omegaman and darkness are the ones that’ve popped into my head most often since i voted

would’ve placed them both high if we voted today (i did put darkness near the bottom)

Talking of fripp, I wonder how conscious they were that crimson had a song called 'the sheltering sky' when they made 'tea in the sahara'

I wonder how conscious Paul Bowles was about having a written a novel called The Sheltering Sky.

he probably had some inkling? I know that's what they're both inspired by, but I could imagine them trying to avoid sounding like the other song while still striving for basically the same sort of atmosphere. Prefer the KC personally, though I do like wide open space that the police conjure on their's (even though I find it kind of a boring song)

anyway, just blabbering for the sake of blabbering here, don't mind me

Never forget

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGoC66IcW9A

Master class in stiff upper lip, Gordie!

https://i.imgur.com/DCEwhbE.jpg

15. Roxanne
From: Outlandos d'Amour
Single Released: April 7, 1978
508 Points, 15 Votes, 1 Number One

We went into Surrey Sound Studios and it was working pretty well. We recorded a few tracks, one of which I wrote more or less as a throwaway. That was 'Roxanne', I didn't think much more about it until we played the album to Miles Copeland who is, of course, Stewart's brother and a bit of an entrepreneur, though he'd never been particularly interested in The Police. In fact, he'd kept away from it to say the least. He did come along to the sessions while we were putting the first album together but more or less just to offer brotherly advice to Stewart. He heard the album and quite liked it. When we got to Roxanne, we were a bit embarrassed because the song was a bit of an anachronism, because compared with our usual material it was slow, quiet and melodic. Far from saying he thought it was a piece of shit, he said it was amazing. I thought, 'He likes this song. This is fantastic!

— Sting, A Visual Documentary, 1978

According to Andy Summers:

Sting played it for me in my living room early on. He was very shy at first bringing in his songs. But it was brilliant, and later on we all worked it out in a damp basement in North London. I remember Stewart telling Sting where to place the bass notes, which was a bit tricky. Miles Copeland came down to hear us and we were kind of embarrassed to play it for him, because Miles had blinders on and was into fast and furious punk. But much to his credit, he said, 'This is great, a knockout!' I was really surprised. And he took it to A&M and got a contract for one single. I don't think it ever broke the Top 40 in America, but eventually it became the Police signature tune.

— Andy Summers, Guitar World, 1/94

every breath at 20, that makes sense to me. roxanne out of the top ten? come on now

the most undanceable record I've ever had the misfortune of walking onto a dance floor for

still love the moment where he sits on the piano, and that brash, brogue-y “rrrrrrrooooxanne” that comes in after “it’s a bad way”

feel like the basic misogyny that Matthew was talking about is p. strong in this one. 'I won't share you with another boy'? She's not yours to share in the first place mate, she's sharing her body with you

I didn't vote for "Roxanne," it's on the one hand undeniable and on the other just not something I have desire or need to hear. All-time classic rhythm, obv.

"Roxanne" is one I kinda can't hear with fresh ears anymore. I know I thought it was great when I first heard it, and the stop-start is definitely a solid hook. Agreed that the sex-worker shaming is a groaner. Maybe it's actually the first in the long line of Sting's "the narrator is supposed to be a creep" songs. Perhaps we're meant to look at the futile demands of this dopey client (who clearly thinks he's "special") and roll our eyes..?

I think my favorite stuff in the poll is really all the deep cuts we've been hitting recently. The comments here focusing on the instrumental contributions are helping me get past my aversion to a lot of the songs that I've always heard as underwritten due to their "repeat the title several times" choruses.

Always dug "Canary" for the speedy jumpy energy that's been noted already - for me, the better version of "Man in a Suitcase."

"Truth Hits Everybody" is a monster. Outlandos's impact as their brash punky debut falls apart completely without it imho. Great "woah-oh-ohs." Don't know most of the words, but "Sleep lay behind me like a broken ocean" is an evocative opener and already showing Sting's tendency towards more poetic-type lyrics than I expect from a 'punk' band.

https://i.imgur.com/gkXCwEJ.jpg

King of Pain
From: Synchronicity
Single Released: August 1983 (US)/January 1984 (UK)
529 Points, 17 Votes

"King of Pain" was released as the second single in the US and the fourth single in the UK, taken from their fifth and final album, Synchronicity (1983). The song was released after "Every Breath You Take"'s eight-week appearance on top of the charts. Sting's fascination with Carl Jung and, to a greater extent, Arthur Koestler inspired him to write the track. As a Hungarian-born novelist who resided in England, Koestler was enthralled with parapsychology and the unexplained workings of the mind (he wrote the book titled The Ghost in the Machine in the late '60s, after which the Police named their fourth album). A music video was made but only released in Australia.

Engineer/co-producer Hugh Padgham remembers this song as being one of several songs that had been heavily reformed and edited during the mixing stage. He explains:

"I remember this one song on Synchronicity, called "King of Pain", which had basically everything going all the way through it. If you listen to it now, it's very stripped down, bits and pieces coming in here and there. Literally everything was recorded all the way through and I really remember that one well — sitting down with Sting coming in one day, when we were mixing and (Sting) going, "This is shit" and I went, "I think you're probably right." The thing at the back of my mind always is trying to keep things simple so you can then hear what's there, as opposed to the kitchen sink style, which is cool, sometimes. Some people do it incredibly well."

14. King of Pain

would be a great name for a french bakery

Creepazoid narrators in Sting songs are common, yes, but so is ventriloquism. I am reasonably certain he has not worked as a coal miner (despite "We Work the Black Seam") and he is almost certainly not a vampire (despite "Moon Over Bourbon Street").

The early-era Police lyrics that might give one pause are readily identifiable:

"Their logic ties me up and rapes me," not a very good image; disproportionate to the lyrical setting.

"Limp wrist, tight fist, contact, no twist
Black dress, no mess, I want no less." Limp-wrist a homophobic slur at the time.

"On Any Other Day" throws "my fine young sun has turned out gay" into a list of other perceived calamities.

I am not sure there's a way to ferret out the exact state of mind of a prolific lyricist at the moment of lyric writing, to have some kind of final verdict about which lines were heartfelt and which were portraying a character.

So fun to sing in the car!

"King of Pain" is histrionic twaddle that works like hell.

Also hilarious imagining Sting enduring any sort of pain.

"King of Pain" would be a great name for a french bakery

...until the skeleton chokes on the crust!

"Their logic ties me up and rapes me," not a very good image; disproportionate to the lyrical setting.

This is why Tom Monroe's version changes the line to "ties me up and takes me".

it takes a special knack to be able to stand INSIDE the pouring rain

the bits where sting isn't saying a word are brilliant. love that guitar solo, but that chilly little interlude that comes right after it is magical to me - sounds just like something off tinderbox by siouxsie & the banshees

Too low! Of all the really mopey hits, this is the one that somehow works the best -- carried by the music, somehow. It's absolutely amazing that a chorus that goes "I'll always be king of pain" could be non-embarrassing, but it is, it's totally satisfying.

That said I voted the mopey "Every Little Thing" higher than this, but what can I do, I imprinted on that song in the mopiest period of my life, there are some things about ourselves we cannot remove or revise