Police – "Don't Stand So Close to Me" (1980)

Wet bus stop

She’s waiting

His car is warm and dry

BMI is a performing rights organization that annually distributes over a billion dollars in copyright royalties to the 900,000 songwriters it represents.

In May 2019, BMI announced that “Every Breath You Take” by the Police had overtaken the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” to become the most performed song in the BMI catalogue, which includes over 14 million compositions.

Horribile dictu!

Author Neil Gaiman once said, “There's no big apocalypse. Just an endless procession of little ones.”  The day that “Every Breath You Take” became the most popular recording in the world may not represent a big apocalypse, but it certainly was a little one.

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“Every Breath You Take,” which was released in 1983 on the group’s fifth and final studio album, Synchronicity, was a #1 hit in both the U.S. and the UK.

Synchronicity sold eight million copies in the U.S., where it topped the album charts for no fewer than 17 weeks.  (It was also a #1 album in the UK.) 

All told, the Police’s five studio albums have sold over 75 million albums worldwide.  They won six Grammy Awards, were named “Best British Group” at the BRIT Awards, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility.   In 1983, Rolling Stone said the Police were “possibly the biggest band in the world.”`

I knew that the Police were overrated, but I didn’t appreciate just how overrated they were until today.

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I’m not sure if any other recording artists released five albums that sold more copies than those five Police albums, but I am sure that no other artists ever released five albums with more pretentious titles.

Outlandos d’Amour, Reggatta de Blanc, Zenyatta Mondatta, Ghost in the Machine, Synchronicity.  Really?

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Today’s featured song is “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” which is about the only Police song I can stand to listen to.  

Sting was inspired to write the song by his experiences as a schoolteacher:

I wanted to write a song about sexuality in the classroom.  I'd done teaching practice at secondary schools and been through the business of having 15-year-old girls fancying me – and me really fancying them!  How I kept my hands off them I don't know.

(That’s really creepy, but at least he was honest.)

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Click here to listen to “Don’t Stand So Close to Me.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: