Police - Synchronicity POLL

God, I'd love to hear Rush do a cover of Synchronicity.

If bimble pulled this out on vinyl to start the poll as stated above - I don't believe it would have had 'tea in the sahara,' right? I remember being fairly peeved at 13 and finding my buddy's cassette had a song my vinyl copy didn't have ... that said - I vote 'Synchronicity I' ...

PS - Excellent call on the wish for Rush to cover Synchronicity - (heck either one!)

"Murder By Numbers" was the extra song not on the original vinyl release, "Tea in the Sahara" was on both.

What he said.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Votes are pretty right on except for Mother scoring so low. Pretend it's Scratch Acid and re-listen!

I voted for "O My God" by accident and now I'm totally happy that I did because I would have cried if it was beat by "Mother."

Was searching for an image of the bare breast cover art and found this info on Wikipedia:

The album's original cover artwork was available in 36 variations, with different arrangements of the colour stripes and showing different photographs of the band members, which they took themselves. In one version Sting is reading a copy of Jung's Synchronicity on the front cover along with a negative/superimposed image of the actual text of the synchronicity hypothesis. A photo on the back cover also shows a close-up, but mirrored and upside-down, image of the Jung's book.

Yeah, that's actually the one I've got, with all the pics of Jung's Synchronicity.

I have to constantly sing along with one part, "packed-like-lemmings into shiny metal boxes"

Anyone heard the B-Side "I Burn For You"?? Such a great tune, surprised it didn't make it on here

"Synchronicity 1". Song doesn't get nearly enough love.

― Alex in NYC, Monday, April 6, 2009 7:56 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

alex so OTM (as usual)

I love the vocal harmonies in 'Synchronicity I'. I would have voted for 'Synchronicity II' in this, though.

Hey, mighty brontosaurus,
Don't you have a lesson for us

I feel disappointed to learn the lyrics are not "Are you SICK, Miss Gradenko?"

Miss Gradenko are you SICK

TPL does the album; not quite as good as I remember it being - http://nobilliards.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/the-police-synchronicity.html

I definitely agree that Ghost is a better record. In fact, I feel like that and Reggatta are the great records that you claim the Police never made. Synchronicity is definitely not it, though that Side 2 continues to be astounding, even "Tea in the Sahara" which I loathed for so many years. Just incredible that the band who recorded "Next to You" only six years prior would wind up doing such tightly knit sophistipop songs like this.

Have you heard the B-side "I Burn For You"? I believe it wound up on a soundtrack somewhere, which is unfortunate - it's one of Sting's best songs, and had they slotted it in the middle of Side 2, kicked out "O My God", and made "Synchronicity II" close the first side, the album could be a masterpiece. Alas...

I agree - I think "I Burn For You" was the best thing they ever did, and it got thrown away on the Brimstone And Treacle soundtrack (the cassette of which I've kept pretty much for that track only).

I Burn for You is indeed awesome. It would have fit well on Zenyatta or maybe even Synchronicity. I would have closed side one pretty well. Even more than a lot of later Police stuff, there's barely anything for Andy to do on the track, though.

Though Sting (and certainly Omar Hakim) makes a pretty good case for it c. "Blue Turtles."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgxy9lMbqJc

Yeah, someone here introduced me to "I Burn for You" last month and it is spectacular; exactly the sort of thing I wish Sting would have done in his solo career.

As it stands, the b-side of Synchronicity is pretty good and I love, love, love "Tea in the Sahara", but it's still the weakest blockbuster LP of the early 80s.

Marcello is otm about "the disaster of three-way democracies". I can't think of any group whose albums would have benefited more from crediting the entire band with all compositions; an arrangement that would have been much fairer to Andy on a certain massive #1 hit...

Yeah, seriously. Even-split is a good way to survive. Even Coldplay does that, and I'm not even sure the other guys have names. Of course, I don't doubt that Sting believes he's done his best work after the Police ...

Man, do I love the snare sound on this record.

i burn for you is fantastic. sting's smugness and awful lyrics keep me from embracing this band, but they had some amazingly vital, alive songs.

Most contemporary reviews were sympathetic, and then some; interviewing the band in Atlanta later that year for the NME, the late Richard Cook remarked, “...if that record (Ghost In The Machine) was difficult, Synchronicity is like Chinese algebra"

Cook's observation is like... 50% crypto-racist and 50% math-class-is-tough-Barbie. It brings back 1983 as a foreign country, where psychiatric advice was a running gag in Peanuts and the Columbia House's secret gold box and the Book of the Month Club intersect.

This album is fucking great! I love every song, even Mother. 7/4 time!

Fascinating interview with the producer on what a nightmare it was recording "Every Breath You Take": http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar04/articles/classictracks.htm

I listened to this album a lot as a kid, and you couldn’t skip tracks on an LP, so I find it weird that while half the songs are burned on my brain, I have absolutely no memory of the others—O My God, Mother, Miss Gredenko, Tea in the Sahara? what are these(?)

This band is kinda goofy, but “Synch II” is clearly in the Top 1 gtr riffs of all time.

damn someone voted for “mother”?

I listened to this album a lot as a kid, and you couldn’t skip tracks on an LP, so I find it weird that while half the songs are burned on my brain, I have absolutely no memory of the others—O My God, Mother, Miss Gredenko, Tea in the Sahara? what are these(?)

Mother is such an irritating joke, maybe you did yourself a favor and blocked it out. Miss Gradenko and O My God sound like tossed-off filler so no surprise that they wouldn't be memorable.

I actually like Tea in the Sahara, and I guess it was a hit somewhere since it was on the international Greatest Hits CD. It's a nice low-key, atmospheric piece, but I can kind of see where Sting would go wrong whenever I hear it - it stops just short of that, but it points towards that unfortunate direction.

"Miss Gredenko" the best album track imo

it’s a banger I agree, maybe a little influence on Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes” to my ears.

Haha, I like "Mother" and "Tea in the Sahara" (although "Sync II" would def get my vote and probably did). "Every Breath You Take" is my least favourite song.

Buddy of mine on his private Twitter recently said something like, "Listening to Synchronicity on vinyl right now - where you can't skip past "Mother" and there's no "Murder by Numbers" for compensation at the end of Side Two."

OK, “Miss Gredenko” is kind of a jam. Cool solo. It’s almost like a (lesser) French Frith Kaiser Thompson track.

Buddy of mine on his private Twitter recently said something like, "Listening to Synchronicity on vinyl right now - where you can't skip past "Mother" and there's no "Murder by Numbers" for compensation at the end of Side Two."

Yeah I've always had this album on my iPod/iTunes with "Mother" chopped out and "Murder by Numbers" as a nice little epilogue.

that moment when two buddies find out they’re both ilxors

#synchronicity

do we stan
neu! and can
suggest ban
synchronicity

geir hates sex
pretend lex
POX
synchronicity

eephus w/o a cuz
sub-borad oriolez
synchronicity

Melodically, harmonically, lyrically, texturally, "Walking in Your Footsteps" is about as NOTHING as a song can be.
"Mother" is still worse though, I wonder if Summers was imitating both Peter Hammill and Fripp on "Disengage" from Exposure.
This release would have been fine as a 45 with the two Synchronicities on it, the other singles are adequate.

Melodically, harmonically, lyrically, texturally, "Walking in Your Footsteps" is about as NOTHING as a song can be.

otm -- dullest second song ever

With #onethread
one #oneboard
you will know
synchronicity

Mother and Miss Gredenko unmemorable? the former is infamously one of the most irritating album-destroying tracks ever, the latter is ridiculously catchy

O My God is like a by the books filler track - sort of a dry run for Sting's solo career - but I do find it interesting that they reused lyrics from the Strontium 90 days

fwiw the live disc from this tour has better versions of "Tea in the Sahara" and "Walking in Your Footsteps". it kinda makes me feel like the album wasn't really complete yet.

imo the weirdest thing is why "I Burn For You" wasn't included. its one of Sting's best songs ever, just unfathomably good for an outtake for an album that included uh...all the songs mentioned above

When I was a kid I was into the fact that I could recognize that "Mother" had a weird time signature without really being into the song per se

Melodically, harmonically, lyrically, texturally, "Walking in Your Footsteps" is about as NOTHING as a song can be.

Hits different when you're living in fear of Soviet missles on a random afternoon!

("Walking in Your Footsteps") hits different when you're living in fear of Soviet missles on a random afternoon!

Yeah, I can see this. I actually like this track because it really sticks out as a crystal clear time capsule of Reagan's '80s. And I've also come across so many vintage '80s-era docs and even kids' PBS shows that remind me of "Walking in Your Footsteps" musically speaking, especially instrumentally. It may not be much more than a time capsule, but a time capsule has its appeal, and I do like how it shores up the context surrounding that album (the culture and the time it was released).

it kinda makes me feel like ('Synchronicity') wasn't really complete yet.

All of their albums feel kind of unrealized, like they sped up towards the end just to complete the LP with filler and leave certain tracks undeveloped. They were never that happy with Zenyatta Mondatta for that reason, but ironically (at least to me), it's the closest thing they have to a fully-realized album.