Police

The Police were a trio whose superstar was singer and bassist Sting, a sort of Rod Stewart without the rasp, endowed with a faint baritone—just as soulful and sentimental, but much gentler. Their strongest credentials, however, were Stewart Copeland’s (drums) tenure with the Curved Air (he had married Sonja Kristina), and Andy Summers’ (guitar) background in blues bands (Zoot Money) and the Canterbury scene. Their hits, based on melodic progressions and the syncopated rhythms of reggae (an idea that had occurred the year before to the Can), made them the biggest commercial success of the new wave.

Outlandos D'Amour (A&M, 1978), released at the height of punk-rock fury, showcases the explosive power-rock of Roxanne as well as the more graceful melodicism of Can't Stand Losing You. On Reggatta De Blanc (A&M, 1979), Walking On The Moon and Message In A Bottle stand out—the latter a dramatic masterpiece of crescendos and pauses that definitively established their mature style. The metallic twang of the guitar is only loosely related to reggae’s hiccup rhythm, and the melodies are essentially those of traditional pop.

Zenyatta Mondatta (A&M, 1980) marked the definitive abandonment of punk-rock’s angular sound in favor of pure melodicism, capable of producing choruses worthy of the Merseybeat tradition, such as Don't Stand So Close To Me, all enriched by creative guitar counterpoints, imaginative rhythms, and Sting’s deep baritone, which carries the melody with a delicate touch. In Dedododo Dedadada, for instance, Summers’ guitar emits metallic tones bordering on dissonance, and the already jagged chords follow one another in a fragmented way, almost ignoring the melody. The pop progression of Don't Stand So Close To Me unfolds within a chaos of cacophonous chimes. And so on. Little of reggae remains.

Sting’s romanticism increasingly took over, leading the trio toward tear-jerking ballads such as Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic, on Ghost In The Machine (A&M, 1981), with keyboards tinkling like a Caribbean metallophone, and ultimately to Every Breath You Take, on Synchronicity (A&M, 1983), which would remain the quintessential classic of its kind.

Ultimately, theirs was nothing more than an intelligent revision of bubblegum pop. A defining feature of their sound was the glossy, electronic production, with rhythm pushed to the forefront. Every Breath You Take (A&M, 1986) compiles most of their hits.

The pop-jazz inclination of Sting would fully emerge in his solo career. The more cultured Andy Summers would pursue a career leaning more toward jazz than rock. And the most ambitious—yet also the most formally accomplished—Californian Stewart Copeland would go on to become a classical composer (his first ballet premiered in San Francisco in 1985, his first opera in Cleveland in 1989).