The Police
“Fuck the PO-lice!” – N.W.A.
“Do you know how long I can have sex for? DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG I CAN HAVE SEX FOR!!!???” – Sting
“What the hell…how can anyone be that big of a Sting fan?” – Me
Albums Reviewed:
Every Breath You Take: The Classics
I wasn’t planning on finishing up this page for a few more days. I had plans that involved not being here, specifically back at my house in the ‘burbs. Ofcourse, I wake up this morning to find a BLIZZARD outside my window. It’s snowed over a foot today so far. I think it’s letting up about now. Oh well. I decided not to make the trek out to good ol’ Swellesley, and thus had a whole afternoon of free time on my hands. What to do? Well, since I think I have a medical condition that precludes me from doing schoolwork on a Friday, why don’t I finish up the text for my Police page and post it? Sounded like a good idea, so here we are. Two new artist pages in three days! Don’t expect this kind of productivity any time in the future, my friends.
Anyhoo, onto the band, which I have an interesting attitude towards. I’m definitely a big fan, no doubt, but their albums always frustrate me. They’ve written some of the neatest, tastiest pop singles this side of The Beatles, but they’ve never been able to carry that tastiness over the full course of an album, though they came close on their debut (to me, their best). If you take the ten or so best songs they ever did, they measure up to my favorite bands of all time, like The Beatles or Led Zeppelin or whomever, but looking at their full albums, they don’t really measure up there. They still rule, though! Except for that little filler problem. And I realize one could define “filler” as simply “songs I don’t like.” But how could ANYONE possible really dig stuff like “Behind My Camel?” HOW? TELL ME! Blerf.
OK, let’s run through the lineup quickly. There’s only three guys, so this shouldn’t take too long. On the left is drummer Stewart Copeland. MAN is he a good drummer. He’s not “just the drummer” by ANY means. Listen to any of The Police’s first four albums (not so much Synchronicity), and TELL me he’s not the man. On the right is guitarist Andy Summers, who was like 40 when this “punk” band got started in the late seventies. He wasn’t much of a soloer, but he was good at providing just the right guitar sound at just the right time, for the most part. And he wrote one of the worst “songs” I’ve heard in my life, but we’ll get to that later. Gordon Sumner (whom you might know as “Stink,” or possibly “Sting”) is upside down in the middle, and he wrote all the band’s best songs and hit singles before becoming a giant prick, disbanding the group, and starting on a long, flaccid solo career I’ll never ever bother with in my life. Good stuff, eh?
And…onto the reviews!
milestoneed@hotmail.com writes:
Your
review of the Police albums were weak All of them were great. Thought you
should know.
Outlandos D’Amour (1978)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “So Lonely”
Yeah, it’s not “professional,” or exceptionally “well-produced,” or “tight.” Fuck all that shit. THIS is the best Police album, and it’s also the only one I can offer a hearty, two-thumbs-very-far-up recommendation for. WHY, you ask? Well, as I mentioned in the intro, The Police have a problem with half-assed “quasi-instrumental” or “dumb novelty song” or “complete fucking waste of time” filler, and to me, this is the one with the smallest amount of said filler. I’d have to say only HALF OF ONE SONG could qualify as useless filler, and that particular half of a song is hilarious, so it ain’t no thang, dawg.
I think the
main reason I like this record so much is its sort of punkish energy and
vibe. Being a band in
The song that opens up the second side, “Can’t Stand Losing You,” represents the last “super-catchy and awesome hit single” on the record and, ofcourse, matches the album’s first three tracks’ quality. It’s the REMAINING tracks that bring this thing up to a 9. Maybe played slow and boring and jazzy, “Peanuts” or “Truth Hits Everybody” or whatever would make me think “FUCK THE POLICE AND THEIR FILLER!” Instead, the aggressive, “IN YO’ FACE, BITCH!” attitude of this album makes them COOL! Stupid songs sound better when played fast and with lots of energy. THAT, my friends, is just a proven fact. “Peanuts,” a Copeland tune (I think), rules all sorts of ass. It repeats like two lines 100 times (this is what a lot of Police filler songs do), but it’s so FAST and FUN! And Andy plays this completely out-of-tune way-too-fast guitar solo in the middle that just sounds awesome! And Sting sounds WAY too earnest at the end, when he keeps yelling “PEANUUUUUUUUUUTS!!! PEEAAAAAAANUTS!!!!!” I dunno, did an elephant escape from the zoo? The man wants his peanuts! While “Hole In My Life” has a slow, “So Lonely”-esque reggae feel, “Truth Hits Everybody” and “Born In the ‘50’s” definitely prove my “dumb filler crap ceases to be dumb filler crap when played with speed and energy” theory. When the stupid “We were born…born in the ‘50’s!” chorus starts the latter, you might call me a fucking moron, but the verses! Mmmmmmmm! Those are tasty! Finger lickin’ good!
That leaves the last two songs. “Be My Girl – Sally” and “Masoko Tanga” present, respectively, examples of the “dumb novelty crap” and “quasi-instrumental shit” types of Police filler. Or they WOULD, that is, if they weren’t entertaining, because they are! Entertaining, that is. “Be My Girl – Sally” gets flack, but I dig it. The guitar tone in the intro and outro rules my medulla oblongata, and Andy’s tale of unconditional love for a blow-up doll is FUNNY! I ask you, what’s wrong with a little funny now and then? And “Masoko Tanga,” the first Police quasi-instrumental, is also the best. It has an incredible groove which you will NEVER be able to get out of your head, and those nonsense chants Sting comes in with are neat. It’s kind of tough to describe the weird quasi-reggae quasi-African quasi-lots of other things stuff going on here, so you’ll just have to trust me, which you should always do, ofcourse. Because I AM A GOLDEN GOD!
Every Police album has its backers, and I proudly back this one as their best. Not counting their Greatest Hits album, that is. You should probably just get that one. They were a singles band anyway.
Reggatta De Blanc (1979)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Message In A Bottle”
So, after “Outlaws Of Love,” La Policia move onto “Reggae Of White.” Hmmm, maybe I WON’T translate the album titles. This one definitely sounds better in pseudo-French. And what language is “Zenyatta Mondatta” in? Hungarian? Finnish? One of those African tribal languages that sounds like “CLICK gobble gobble gobble CLICK CLICK booboo gobble gobble t.a.t.u. CLICK?” Oh, I got it, it’s in Sting-ese and means “I am a pretentious cocksucker who loads his albums with filler and in several years I will start a solo career that no one likes, but screw them because I can have tantric sex for forty-five consecutive hours with no food or water. I’m like a tantric sex camel.”
OK, now
that that’s sorted out, we can move onto the album and it’s opening track,
“Message In A Bottle,” my pick for best song The Police ever did! Oh man, is this song the shit. I stick the CD into my music-plays-here-machine,
and BOOM, those first guitar chords just TAKE ME TO WORLD OF UNSPEAKABLE
PLEASURE! Like a chateau in
However, there’s eight more tracks here, and while I do enjoy them all to some degree (something that would cease to be the case later on), the “dipshit filler” factor is starting to elbow its way in. Actually, contrary to all of what I just said, the rest of the first side is actually pretty darn good, so I guess I should think before I type. “It’s Alright For You” sounds like one of the fun, fast “filler” tracks from the debut. “Bring On The Night” is a neat sort of mood thingy with some solid Andy guitar work and a GUITAR SOLO! Andy’s guitar solos are never THAT impressive, to be honest, but the presence of one is always cool. “Deathwish” has more fantabulous Stew drumming, and it actually sounds a good bit like “Masoko Tanga” to me, at least until Sting starts singing. Then it sounds nothing like “Masoko Tanga.”
But, uh-oh, here comes post-“Walking On The Moon” side 2. Stew actually wrote three of the last five tunes on the record, and he likes dipshit comedy tunes that don’t go anywhere and annoy me. Ass. Good drummer, though. The cool, spacey feel that this album has is, um, what’s the word…OK, I’ll be nice…”counteracted” by Stew’s dumb “On Any Other Day,” with lines like “My wife has burned the scrambled eggs, the dog just bit my leg.” What’s odd is that the drumming isn’t as interesting, and THE DRUMMER WROTE THE SONG! Tell me how THAT makes sense. At least Sting sings the other two dipshit Copeland songs (Stew sings “On Any Other Day” and really can’t sing worth dogshit), and “Contact” does carry on the spacey feel of the album pretty well (“Does Everyone Stare” is dipshit like “On Any Other Day”), but that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it as much I enjoy Outlandos’s filler, because I don’t. Of the remaining material, “Bed’s Too Big Without You” is actually extremely fun. It amounts to more of a groove than anything else, but it’s a fun groove, and “No Time This Time” closes the album with an upbeat driving rocker, which is fucking weird if you axe me. Did the boys want to bookend the album with vigorous rockers (the other being “Message In A Bottle”)? Whatever, in any case, it’s not as good as “Message” (ofcourse, as I said before, NOTHING The Police ever did is as good as that song). It’s fine, though. No objections here. More Outlandos-esque punkish stuff. I approve.
I’d rate this one a solid #2 in the Police album hierarchy, but it’s starting to veer toward more dangerous territory. The only two REALLY good songs are the hit singles (remember, “Reggatta De Blanc” is an instrumental), and there’s a higher percentage of dipshit filler. However, I do enjoy the sort of laid-back, spacey vibe the album has, and that makes the filler better. Plus, again, there’s only one instrumental-ish track, and it’s VERY good, so that’s another plus. Hey! I recommend this one, too, but Outlandos is better. So put THAT in your pipe and smoke it!
Zenyatta Mondatta (1980)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Canary In A Coalmine”
Uh oh, what’s that! Oh my god! IT’S THE FILLER! IT’S DESTROYING THE CITY! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! SAVE YOURSELVES! IT’S TOO LATE FOR MEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Seriously,
the amount of tunes on this album that make me question the reason for their
existence is staggering. There’s THREE
instrumentals or pseudo-instrumentals, out of eleven tracks, and another song
or two that sound like they might as well be instrumentals. The album almost seems unfinished in
places. There’s things here and there
that make me go “don’t tell me they INTENDED this to sound like that, they
could have fixed that up.” For an
example of this (and watch out, I’m gonna get REALLY nitpicky here), take a
look at the opening track, the otherwise super (ofcourse, it’s a single, DUH)
“Don’t Stand So Close To Me.” Now, this
song has quite possibly the coolest opening buildup and verse melodies Stink
EVER put in a Police song. My problem
comes in the chorus. There’s a little
guitar sound that pops up and sounds like something the band meant to fix
later, but just never did. It goes like
this: “Don’t stand, don’t stand so,
don’t stand so close to me *da-da*.”
It’s that *da-da* guitar thing at the end that REALLY bothers me. It’s out of tune, or out of place, or
SOMETHING. It takes my enjoyment of the
song down a notch or two by itself. YES,
that little *da-da* guitar noise downgrades what is otherwise a super-duper
enjoyable song. Not a
OK, let’s
get to the rest of the album, about half of which has no reason whatsoever to
exist (damn you, Sting). One song that
most definitely DOES have a reason to exist, however, is “Canary In A
Coalmine,” a fast, fun, energetic throwaway tune that’s so cute, catchy, and
cool it becomes the best damn thing on the album! And it’s a good thing I enjoy the song, too,
because it reappears five tracks later, only this time it’s called “Man In A
Suitcase.” In the category of “fun,
goofy throwaway songs,” we’ve also got a third entry, Copeland’s “Bombs Away,”
which is less dipshit than his tunes on Reggatta. The line “The president looks in the mirror
and speaks, his shirts are clean but his country stinks” always makes me
chuckle, and how about following the words “
After the nice (sorta) but forgettable tunes “Driven To Tears” and “When The World Is Running You Down, You Make The Best Of What’s Still Around” (the title packs more juice than the song), we get to my main reason for disliking this record, and that’s the fucking instrumental and pseudo-instrumental bullshit. “Voices Inside My Head” is the first one. It’s boring, and Stink does the exact same “CHA! CHA!” things he did in “Reggatta De Blanc.” Summers’ “Behind My Camel” and Stew’s “The Other Way Of Stopping” are full-fledged instrumentals (not quasi or pseudo like “Voices Inside My Head”), and they both go absolutely NOWHERE. The Police did know how to lay down a neat instrumental thingy (“Masoko Tanga!” Reggatta De Blanc!”), but these tracks (as well as “Shadows In The Rain,” which has a few lyrics, technically, but FEELS like a fucking useless bullshit pseudo-instrumental, if you feel me, my brother) just sound like one boring sleep-inducing groove (as opposed to interesting and funky like “Masoko Tanga” or fun and rocking like “Reggatta De Blanc”) repeated ad nauseum for three or so minutes, doing nothing, building to nothing, and turning into nothing along the way. And “Behind My Camel” won a Grammy for best instrumental! Christ, the Grammies are bullshit, aren’t they? The only thing that makes them at ALL interesting is Stew’s drumming, and that’s also why this album gets a 7 instead of a 6. STEWART COPELAND. And only Stewart Copeland. His drumming is superb on all Police albums (although he’s not so neat on chunks of Synchronicity), but this is the Stew peak for me. His cymbal work is just EXQUISITE. He OWNS the hi-hat. He alone makes “Driven To Tears” about five times better than it would be otherwise. LISTEN TO THAT STUFF! IT’S SO COOL! And even when he’s just doing regular 4/4 stuff I could do, listen to that snare and cymbal tone! It’s like the best EVER! I go home and play my drum set and go “Fuck, why can’t I get tones like Stew?” Then I realize MY style involves simply “hitting everything as hard as I can” because I’m trying to be John Bonham or Dave Grohl, instead of trying tricky, complicated jazzy ratta-tat-tatting on everything. Stewart Copeland is a very, very good drummer. He ROOLZ.
This album’s not that great, though. Get it for Stew’s drumming and a handful of really neat songs. Hey, you know what? That’s the reason to get EVERY Police album!
Ghost In The Machine (1981)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”
And
so, the journey towards “artistic maturity” continues. Each of the first three Police albums
displayed less and less youthful vigor and excitement, and right about here
they decide, “hey, let’s be taken seriously as artists!” Thus, they (read: Sting) cart in a bunch of
synths (a LOT more than before) and horns and things, stop giving their records
pseudo-French, quasi-Gibberish titles, and write songs like the opener,
“Spirits In The Material World.” Now, I
like this tune a
Oh man, but do you know what’s cooler? The next tune, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic!” This baby here comes in as my #2 Police tune of all time (still love “Message In A Bottle!”), and is made even HAPPIER and FUNNER (not a word!) by the fact that THE ENTIRE REST OF THE ALBUM is dark and political and whatnot. How can you NOT love this song? My personal favorite part is this little synth trick they throw in that goes “whhhheeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEE!” after the line “Must I aaaaalllllwaaaaaays beeeeeee aaaaaalllloooooooooooone?” Good GOD, do I love that thing. Shit, yes. And look! The Police pulled a U2 and stuck all three singles at the start of the album. Too bad that, to me, “Invisible Sun” doesn’t really measure up to the other two. It’s nice and dark and moody and atmospheric, but I’ll take “Every Little Thing She Does” goodness ANY day, thank you very much. It’s a smidge blah, “Invisible Sun” is.
Fuck, I have to talk about the rest of the album now, don’t I? Well, fortunately, they didn’t include any instrumentals on this one (Zenyatta used up the quota for like three or four by itself). However, the middle part of this album is a huge mess. I like the last few songs, mind you, but the middle…ehh. It’s all these weird pseudo-jazz art-rock dipshit horn-driven freakouts that just don’t do much for me at ALL. It doesn’t help that each one seems like it has about one lyric. “Hungry For You (The Parenthesis Has French In It, Fuck THAT)” is an excuse for Sting to sing in French. I don’t much like French. It doesn’t pronounce enough of its letters. Since when does “eaux” equal “uh?” Not in English, I can tell you that! Bloof. “Demolition Man” is completely unnecessarily extended to six minutes long, and isn’t that entertaining for any of it. “Too Much Information” is annoying as HELL, with that “Too much information! Running through my brain!” line repeated WAY too many times. Copeland wrote the music to “Rehumanize Yourself,” and it’s probably my favorite of the middle pack of weird jazz-rock freakouts. It sort of sounds like “Canary In A Coalmine” with horns added that play the wrong notes at the wrong times! I guess that’s cool. “One World (Not Three)” has a dumb title, and it’s a dumb song, but it’s the last song on a Police record that sounds anything like reggae, so that’s sort of neat.
I do like the last few songs a bit, however. The first three are the singles, the middle five make up the weird horn freakout section, and the closing three are the “dark pop song” section. Andy’s “Omegaman” might be my favorite track here besides the opening two singles, which is amazing considering the jarringly unlistenable piece of horse manure he contributes to the next record. The chorus has abolutely SUPERB vocal harmonizing and overdubbing, and I love the “I’m the OOOOOOOOOOOOOmegaman!” section contrasted by the “IIIIIIIIIII’m soooooooo tiiiiiired!” line at the end of the tune. And the bridge is REALLY good. I also heartily enjoy “Secret Journey.” It’s a VERY dark and atmospheric pop song that I can really sink my teeth into, much more so than “Invisible Sun,” although the intro sounds like new age music and most likely prevented it from ever being a single (It should have been! FUCK “Invisible Sun!”). Copeland’s “Darkness” doesn’t do so much for me, but I’d still take it over the dipshit freaky middle section of the album.
So, yes, I definitely like this one more than Zenyatta Mondatta, but not by tons. The songs in the middle are definitely not my cup of tea, but they’re interesting, and “Demolition Man” surely has more reason to exist than “Behind My Camel” or whatever, and fuckin’ A does “Every Little Thing She Does Is Really Fucking Catchy” rule ASS. A solid 7, as opposed to the “barely, and only because Stew rules” 7 that Zenyatta got. Shibby!
Synchronicity (1983)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Wrapped Around Your Finger”
So, finally, Stink completes his transformation of Das Kriminalpolizei from exciting, aggressive reggae-pop-punkers to overly-produced “serious” pseudo-art-rock MOR whores. Not coincidentally, this is the album that sold 79 gajillion copies and made VH-1’s “Top 100 Albums of Rock and Roll” because everyone who voted likes The Police and most of them probably only have this album. Before I move onto the specific songs, there’s two distinct ways in which this album suffers in comparison to all previous Police albums. First, on most of this stuff, Sting (THE BASTARD!) neutered Stew Copeland, reducing him to session “OK, just play the 4/4 beat…no, don’t make any cymbal flourishes…the regular 4/4 beat will be fine” man-bitch. I’m sure some of you have been reading my reviews, familiar with “Every Breath You Take” and its nearly-computerized boring drums and going “what the FUCK is Brad talking about with how he loves Stew?” Well, that’s neutered Stew, not real Stew. Second, the energy (which had been gradually dissipating on every album since the debut) is GONE. Where’s the energy? Where’d it go? COME BACK, ENERGY! WAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!
OH! I found it. It’s still here, in the two title tracks that bookend the first side of the album. It’s nowhere else on the record, but, smack my bitch up, these songs ROCK…for chorusey MOR whore singles. Whatever, they’re cool, and I dig them both THOROUGHLY, as much as most of the singles the band’s put out. How can you not love lines like “Another suburban family morning, grandmother screaming at the wall! We have to shout above the din of our Rice Crispies!” Cool stuff, and when you combine those two tunes with the three MASSIVE singles (“Every Breath You Take,” “King Of Pain,” “Wrapped Around Your Finger”) that lead off side two, well, golly gee, you’ve got FIVE super-duper “excuse me, while I JERK MY CHICKEN” songs! FIVE! That’s more than any other Police record. Outlandos comes closest. It has four. Ofcourse, the rest of Outlandos is also very good, whereas the rest of this one is…..hmmmm…..ehhhhhhhhhhhh.
Good for us, however, Sting throws more or less all of the filler into one 12-13 minute section on side one. “Walking In Your Footsteps” is completely fucking stupid, featuring electronic drums, something that sounds like a recorder, and lyrics about dinosaurs. Fuck that shit. “O My God,” while not being PARTICULARLY offensive, represents the biggest “complete waste of time” of any Police song (even more than all the Zenyatta pseudo-instrumental shit). What the hell is this? Is it even a song? It has some of the lyrics from “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” for god sakes. Does it even HAVE a structure? I’ve yet to find one. Copeland’s “Miss Gradenko” goes right in line with the grand Stew tradition of “dumb, novelty dipshit songs,” but I probably enjoy it more than his poop from Reggatta De Blanc like “Does Everyone Stare.” It gets the nod for “best of the awful piece of dogshit four-song stretch in the middle of side one of Synchronicity,” which is quite an honor, mind you. That, ofcourse, leaves Andy’s “Mother,” quite possibly the worst song by a good band I’ve heard in my LIFE. It is UNLISTENABLE. Some odd Arabic-sounding backing track, over which Andy incoherently and ear-bleedingly screams “And every girl that I go out with, becomes my mother in the end!!!” By this time, Sting had complete creative control over EVERYTHING in the band, so WHY did he let Andy include this thing on the album? It boggles the mind. Fuckhead.
Contrary to what you might think, though, I do enjoy the two songs that sound like Sting solo material and end the album, “Tea In The Sahara” and “Murder By Numbers.” They’re slow and sort of sleep-inducing and don’t have much of a melody, but they’re just NEAT. Maybe I just like them because Sting de-neuters Stew and lets him do real Stew drumming. That could be it. A whole album of this stuff would REALLY get on my nerves, but two songs to end a relatively low-key pop album, I can deal with. Interesting sequencing this baby has: Track 1: Kick-ass title track; Tracks 2-5: Awful filler; Track 6: Kick-ass title track; Tracks 7-9: GODLIKE (despite the lack of interesting Stew drumming) singles; Tracks 10-11: Semi-enjoyable Sting solo material.
I debated the rating for this record for a while. 7 or 8? 7 or 8? Hmmm. I finally decided on an 8, but, be advised, it’s a LOW 8. It’s got less filler than the last two albums, but, when there is filler, it is often HORRENDOUS (e.g. “Mother”) as opposed to just “useless.” Half of this album more or less gives me a massive boner when I listen to it, though. If you just skip Tracks 2-5, you’ll have yourself one KILLER Van Halen-length album, although it won’t rock quite as hard. Or at all, for that matter. Jesus, I’m waffling on the rating again…no, an 8 it stays. Some of it blows penis, but there’s just too many AWESOME songs and not quite enough awful stuff to knock it down any lower.
ddickson@rice.edu writes:
Come ON, dude. It's a
political song, not just about freakin' dinosaurs.
Tell Erlewine that, when you see him next. The man needs some
straightening
out. "The dinosaurs went extinct"? "We're walking in
the footsteps of the
dinosaurs"? HEY! WE'RE going extinct!! WHAT A
METAPHOR!!! "Silly dino
tale" my ass.
Agree with the 8. "Mother" blows, and "Murder by
Numbers" is just freakin'
boring, but the rest is gold, Harry.
Live! (1995)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Can’t Stand
Losing You” (
One has to wonder why Gordon
Sumner, in all his Sting-ness, decided to make the only officially released and
buff-shined Police live album in this
format. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s
mighty interesting, but unless Sting has really poor musical taste (which is
probably the answer, considering his solo career) he has to realize that it makes every potential listener realize how
much of an adult-comtemporary MOR whore bullshit artist he had become by the
mid-80’s. Just look at this! It’s a two-disc compilation. The first disc comes from 1978 or 79 when
they had just released, or were about to release, Reggatta De Blanc. It’s from
a concert in
OK, so the difference between the two discs isn’t that huge, but it’s there. Every time I hear a generic chorus of female backup singers in a song where they just DO NOT BELONG, I feel like strangling a kitten, and so tracks from this concert such as “Spirits in the Material World” and others simply need to go away. Disc 2 does have its moments, though. The first 15 or so minutes actually fool you into thinking it will kick ass, since the two Synchronicity title tracks totally rock the house and “Walking in Your Footsteps” is actually cool and intriguing here instead of boring and boring. The other shitty tracks actually don’t suck as much either, as the enjoyable rendition of “O My God” proves, but good lord are the singles neutered. All three from Synchronicity are laid out flat on a table and surgically separated from their testicles (which weren’t that big anyway, but at least they didn’t have ADULT CONTEMPORARY SCHLOCK FEMALE BACKUP SINGERS, so their oodles of melodic quality were allowed to shine instead of beaten to a pulp with their own now-separated testicles). “Roxanne,” “Can’t Stand Losing You,” and “So Lonely” are all lengthened out to 6-7 minutes for reasons I do not know, and do not wish to know, because while the lengthy jams were fun in 1979, by 1984 this band has no pulse, so they predictably blow. I have no problem listening to this disc, because the songs on it are so very strong, but the Sting-isms and arena-isms lessen their impact a bit too much.
Disc 1 is,
as mentioned before, much gooder, but still not without its flaws. The jammy midsections of some songs are better here than on disc 2, but still
not especially entertaining. “The Bed’s
Too Big Without You” is lengthened out to nine
minutes with no real justification, for instance, although I enjoy this 7-minute version of “Can’t Stand
Losing You” because they insert “Reggatta De Blanc” in the middle (which they
do in
Mmmm…Pringles.
Every Breath You Take: The
Classics (1995)
Rating: 10
Best Song: “Message In A Bottle”
The fact I’m reviewing a greatest hits compilation that doesn’t have any new material on it shows you two things: The Police’s albums were never very consistent (except Outlandos), and The Police were a HEAVENLY singles band. Christ on a STICK, look at this track listing: “Roxanne,” “Can’t Stand Losing You,” “Message In A Bottle,” “Walking On The Moon,” “Don’t Stand So Close To Me,” “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da,” “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” “Invisible Sun,” “Spirits In The Material World,” “Every Breath You Take,” “King Of Pain,” “Wrapped Around Your Finger.” DUDE! It’s also got two bullshit modern “remakes” or whatever, “Don’t Stand So Close To Me ’86,” and “Message In A Bottle (New Classic Rock Mix),” neither of which I’ve actually heard because I don’t actually have this album. I just stuck the mp3’s of the singles I had in a new playlist, and “voila!” a greatest hits album! Thus, I have no business reviewing this thing other than to hammer home ONE MORE TIME my assertion that The Police were one of the greatest singles bands of all time, but were a bit iffy on their full albums. For MY personal greatest hits package, I’d drop “Invisible Sun” from here and replace it with “So Lonely” (WHERE THE FUCK IS “SO LONELY!!??”). Sure, there are some other cool songs missing, like “Next To You” or “Canary In A Coalmine” or either of the Synchronicity title tracks, but “So Lonely” is like one of the three of four best Police songs EVER! NO excuse for its absence. NONE. Man, is that song the shit.
While I’m not really a “greatest hits kind of guy,” and all The Police’s albums are definitely good in some way, none are GREAT (though Outlandos comes close), and their singles are just AWESOME. If someone came to me and went “Brad, you sexy man, what one Police album should I get if I could only get one?” contrary to my normal philosophy, I would have to answer “well, the greatest hits compilation, my main man! There are some pretty decent songs on there.”
You will see light in the
darkness. You will make some sense of
this.