Probably the world’s biggest band at the time, The Police were able to be both creatively risky and commercially bulletproof in 1983.
A huge-selling Grammy-winner, Synchronicity had a first side that took plentiful blind leaps, from the jaggedness of the two title tracks to Andy Summers’ berserk misfire Mother.
Side two, though, reassured pop fans with the triple triumph of Every Breath You Take, King Of Pain and Wrapped Around Your Finger – evidence that Sting in his pomp was a slyly subversive master of writing dark-hearted, disquieting songs which yet brought joy.
The album proved that three men can grate on each other’s last remaining nerves but still retain unique chemistry and deliver diamonds – as long as they record in separate rooms, as was now the case. The net result, a balance of edginess and ease, could have turned out very differently, as this six-CD or four-LP box reveals (trimmed formats are also available).
It’s fascinating to hear the trio jamming now universally-known hits with the singer shouting, ‘Middle eight!’
There will be fans who don’t want to see the workings behind the magic curtain, and others who do. This set is for the latter. As well as live cuts and remixes, dozens of demos and out-takes appear from Sting’s archives.
It was standard for The Police to do multiple takes: in fact, the staccato perfection of Every Breath You Take drew from a stream of overdubs. There are drafts of King Of Pain and Every Breath which ladle on a soup of sequencers and keyboards rather too thickly.
It’s fascinating to hear the trio jamming now universally-known hits with the singer shouting, “Middle eight!” Or, after some ad-libbing, “I think that’s it now...”
That presumably made sense at the time: Sting’s bank account must thank the mysterious gods of music that the most-played song in radio history was counter-intuitively stripped back, kept understated, and granted Summers’ Bartók-inspired guitar motif.
The box also includes a California concert from that year, which ramps up the energy. Yet as the unreleased material shows here, restraint was often their trump card.
Synchronicity (40th Anniversary Edition) is on sale now via UMR / Polydor.
