re: "everything little thing she does is magic", that's also covered in the revolver interview. they make it pretty clear that the usual band dynamic was sting recording demos that had the core of the song, but the other two never liked his arrangements & they'd totally rearrange the songs as a band. since sting wrote the core melody & lyrics, he got the credit even though the others wrote original parts of the arrangement too. for "magic", summers & copeland couldn't figure out any sort of satisfying rearrangement at all so they eventually resentfully resorted to just replicating sting's demo for once.
Revolver: More Schadenfreude. What can you tell me about 'Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic'?Summers: Well, I'm going to get very insulting here. When Sting was off doing the demos in Canada, he used this pianist who was incredibly pushy.
Copeland: He wasn't pushy.
Summers: f*** he was! He even managed to come down to Montserrat when we were recording.
Copeland: He was just like us actually.
Summers: Well, yeah, but there wasn't room for him. He must have played 12 piano parts on that song alone. And as the guitar player I was saying, 'What the f*** is this? This is not the Police sound'.
Copeland: So we tried to make the song a Police song - which meant undoing all of Sting's arrangement. That was our basic policy anyway. Always has been. Throw out Sting's arrangement, keep his lyrics and the song. So we tried playing it slower than the demos, we tried my "rama-lama" punk version. Andy tried turning the chords upside down. We spent more time on this song than on all the other songs put together. One morning, in a state of extreme grumpiness, I remember saying, 'Okay put up Sting's original demo and I'll show you how crummy it is.' So Sting stood over me and waved me through all the changes. I did just one take, and that became the record. Then Andy did the same thing on the guitar. We just faced the music, but the bullet, and used Sting's arrangements and demo. Damn.
― ufo, Monday, 10 January 2022 02:27 (two years ago) link