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

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

^ perfect encapsulation of how I feel about a lot of this, I was obsessed with the Police and then Sting from ages 11-15 before The Cure took all my attention. I’ve loved revisiting it.

https://i.imgur.com/2o1PRHt.jpg

13. Synchronicity I
From: Synchronicity
Released: June 17, 1983
589 Points, 17 Votes, 1 Number One

"Synchronicity I", as well as its more famous counterpart "Synchronicity II", features lyrics that are inspired by Carl Jung's theory of synchronicity. Also included in the lyrics is a term from "The Second Coming," "Spiritus Mundi" (translating to "spirit of the world"), which William Butler Yeats used to refer to the collective unconscious, another of Jung's theories. Like other songs on Synchronicity, "Synchronicity I" is driven by a synthesizer riff.

When asked how "Synchronicity I" is connected to "Synchronicity II," Stewart Copeland said, "I've had Sting up against the wall on this issue before, and he point blank refuses to explain the connection. None of us in the band can even remember which one's which. The only way I can keep them straight is that 'Synch I' has Sting's cool sequencer part, that 'dunga dunga dung' thing that I, to this day, get all the credit for. People think it's me playing some percussive instrument, and I have to put them right. It was real 'rama-lama' way of starting our set on tour, though it almost killed me to start with that kind of onslaught every night."

According to Summers, there was originally going to be a link between this song and counterpart "Synchronicity II":

"We had this section for 'Synchronicity' which we referred to as The Loch. I went in and detuned my guitar synth to C sharp and it produced a great wash of sound, lovely. And there was an acoustic on top, a few cymbals and an oboe, really serene. We were going to have it at the end of 'Synchronicity I' — it was supposed to be the Loch Ness Monster — and then it would go into 'Synchronicity II'. But we couldn't really get it to work. Miles (Copeland) didn't like it... it was too psychedelic for him.

Oh.

Incredible opener. But never has there been a harsher drop off between track 1 and 2

I think I thought the two Synchronicities were different planes happening simultaneously, like I was the cosmic perspective and II was mired in the mess of modern life.

It's an irritating kick in the crotch iirc

the vocals on the chorus sound so good, absolutely soaring stuff

love king of pain, the verse chord progression is surprisingly complex

I wonder if anyone has ever thought about covering this song in the style of Husker Du? Kicks off the album with the same energy as New Day Rising

well not really but

"King of Pain" is permanently overshadowed, for me, by Weird Al's "King of Suede," which I heard first, many many many times. The original is good, but imho Al's lyrics are better, or at least avoid the corny business about skeletons. In both versions, it's the composition and arrangement that make such an incredible earworms, not the words... Though the entire "two-for one sale on our three-piece suits" section is pretty amazing.

Along the same lines, whenever I mentally reach for Every Breath You Take, there's a two-second adjustment where I first dip into Al's rendition in "Polkas on 45." Here I do think The Police have him beat, but then again, "Velvet Elvis" might be a better Police song than all of the above.

https://i.imgur.com/9zxiGBD.jpg

12. So Lonely
From: Outlandos d'Amour
Single Released: November 3, 1978
599 Points, 17 Votes

"People thrashing out three chords didn't really interest us musically. Reggae was accepted in punk circles and musically more sophisticated, and we could play it, so we veered off in that direction. I mean let's be honest here, 'So Lonely' was unabashedly culled from 'No Woman No Cry' by Bob Marley & The Wailers. Same chorus. What we invented was this thing of going back and forth between thrash punk and reggae. That was the little niche we created for ourselves."

— Sting, Revolver 4/2000

Sting recycled the lyrics in the song's verses from his earlier Last Exit song "Fool in Love". The lyrics themselves, about someone who is lonely after getting his heart broken, were thought to be "ironic" to large audiences.[4] Sting denied this claim, however, saying, "No, there's no irony whatsoever. From the outside it might look a bit strange, being surrounded by all this attention and yet experiencing the worst lonely feeling...but I do. And then suddenly the attention is withdrawn a half an hour later. You're so isolated...

Doubling back in the list as I give Ghost probably my third or fourth ever listen: man, Demolition Man is a lot of fun. Their answer to Fishbone or Oingo Boingo maybe? Makes me wish the Stallone/Snipes film had been an conceived as more of a retro 80s teen party comedy.

oh mannnn So Lonely RULES

disappointed to learn Sting is not proclaiming "I'm a fuckin' nightmare, I'm Mister Magoo" on DM. Wonder if this was an influence on "Firestarter," nonetheless.

This has been a very fun poll.

Here's another song with dubious sex-themed lyrics: "Salami! Salami! Salami!"

xxp I wish he was singing that! "I'm a three-line whip, I'm the sort of thing they ban" is just complete cobblers, a shit metaphor followed by hand-wavy waffle