Police, Every Breath You Take - A Classical Musician’s First Listen and Reaction

I had never made such a connection between the lyrics in this song and the name of the band. Hilarious.

The piano chords, notes and melodic/ rhythimic ostinato repetition relates (or translates) to what This song is about: obsession and Control

The music seems to reflect the theme of the song, the hypnotic and insistent quality of the beat is like the intrusive thoughts about the person in the song, which have taken over the mind of someone who is struggling to come to terms with a failed relationship. A person who struggles to let go and dwells compulsively on every move that person makes

One of the simpliest bass lines in a song written by a great bass player.

Cracks me up that some people think this is a love song...

This song still get me singing after all this time. Never gets old.

I discovered this channel a few days ago, and already spent hours binge watching it. Relistening with Amy songs I know by heart since decades, is like a journey you've done millions of times on your own, and doing it with somebody that points you to so many things you never saw before make it a completely different journey. How come that somebody gets into your world, and with some subtle changes, make it suddenly a better world ? Virgin Rock you rock Ma'am ! ❤

They have several hits, and a lot more songs worth listening to.

Some people think this is a romantic song: it's a popular choice for weddings, but in fact it's about a stalker.

This song always reminds me of my penultimate school year in 1983 - Saturday I wrote a biology exam. The teacher asks how it was, easy or difficult? I guess I wrinkle my nose, I can't give an exact answer to that. But the lessons are over. And I go to the city and buy 2 records. Genesis: Genesis and Police: Synchronicity. Just because of the two songs: "That's all", and "Every breath you take", both of them I have heard in the radio some days before. For me, the Police song was never a love song, but it wasn't a song about a massive stalker either. For me, he describes the feeling when a love has come to an end and the abandoned person is still mourning it. I still remember how I wandered through the streets at night during my first lovesickness and thought of my departed sweetheart. This song reminds me of that feeling and nothing else. In Germany, many people understand/understood this song as a simple love song. Just as there are still married couples who play the song "White Wedding" at their wedding party. This is really strange. But for me, the Police song is just a song about a love, a relationship that has come to an end, and the grief, the pain that is felt.

Despite all those accolades, it doesn't crack my top ten of best Police songs, and is atypical of most of their catalog. Worth diving a little deeper into Police's repertoire,

To me this is an absolutely perfect pop song. Every choice they made from lyrics, vocals, instruments (what, when and how they are used), arrangement, and production are flawless. It also has the most effective bridge (the best part of the song in my opinion) I can think of in any song.

Sting, Copeland, and Summers were possibly the best Rock Trio ever. And yes, I say this as a gigantic Rush fan.

The beat is certainly prominent and propels the song, but I think that the most memorable, distinctive elements of it for the general public are the guitar figure (riff…?) that starts the song and the melody sung by Sting.

Quite an amazing band. As just a casual fan I somehow ended up with their greatest hits album on cassette. The amazing thing, it was double album and every song really was a hit and a good one too.

This band put a lot of thought into their songs, fighting each other along the way, and several times they hit a home run like Every Breath You Take.

The song is about obsessive love... They called themselves The Police (they said) to get free advertising in the pubs in England. Part of what made the song so popular is that it has a lullaby quality, I think. You can take comfort and go to sleep know somebody is watching over you or you can consider it to be a stalker lulling you into a false sense of security and if you misstep he will do something.

Also, a ton of teenage guitarists got very frustrated trying to play the arpeggiated guitar part :-) Turns out that Andy Summers has quite small hands and his trick was basically to damp/mute the first note in the sequence and then not bother to keep it in the rest of the chord so that he could just play it on five strings.

Your discussion of the piano's place, and its relationship with chords, reminds me of a part of a Tom Lehrer album I listened to many times as a kid. He was a pianist, and in part of his introduction to a folk song he lamented that the piano isn't really a folk instrument, and so he invited the audience to imagine that he was playing an 88-string guitar.

In the context of a supposed police or intelligence agency watching someone, the music takes a macabre twist-- a kind of possessive, twisted love relationship on the part of the "state", and someone who is destined to be whisked away, never to be heard from again... and I never saw THAT in the song before!