The Police - Every Breath You Take: The Classics
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Music CD Cover Artist: The Police Edition: Music CD Format: Original recording remastered CD Release Date: 2005-01-11 Music Label: A&M Soundtracks:
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Free Music Notes for Every Breath You Take: The Classics Album
Free Music Review: My LP records and they're all scratched
Hit: 5 Stars
This really is a five star singles collection. Only one minor hit is missing ("Synchronicity II") and the gawdawful Puffy mix of "Roxanne" is - one can only hope - been wiped from the face of the Earth. But having seen the band reunite on the 2007 Grammys, and how "Roxanne" still sounds amazing for a 30 year old song, "Every Breath You Take: The Classics" is a prefect reminder of just how much The Police commercialized "Punk rock" and made brilliant pop at the same time.
I remember buying "Outlandos D'amour" in the fall of 1978, right before starting college. I was just beginning to get into punk/new wave and "Roxanne" was such a giddy single that I had to have the album. I was enthused but also surprised. While the band played with punky brashness, there was stuff here that was way too sophisticated for punk. The tricky drumming of Stewart Copeland was a dead giveaway...The Police were more than those peroxided heads on the album cover.
When "Regatta DeBlanc" arrived, the aggressive "Message In A Bottle" served notice. Sting was a charismatic singer that could rock with the best of them, and Andy Summers' playing was really beginning to show that he was limitlessly inventive. The spacey reggae of "Walking On The Moon" pushed their experimentation to a new peak. While "Message" should have been the breakthrough single The Police deserved after "Roxanne," radio resistance to this new kind of new wave music forced the band to wait until the third album.
"De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" changed that. Irresistibly catchy, it spotlighted Sting's ability to write crafty pop songs. Then the enigmatic and literate "Don't Stand So Close To Me" went top ten, forcing even the staunchest critics to accept "Zenyatta Mondatta" and The Police. After all, not every rock band could quote Nabokov and top the charts with it. By now, the band had also become MTV darlings and Sting a heart-throb, an image he had no problem riding to success but still took issue with on the creative level. He wanted to make sure that The Police were regarded more as musical artists than video vixens with goofy song clips.
Success emboldened Sting and The Police experimented heavily on "Ghost In The Machine." Gone were the pretty boy cover pictures and pseudo-Eurospeak titles. The stuttering time-signature of the title track and the Pink Floyd meets the Beach Boys of "Invisible Sun" were unlike anything The Police had recorded before. Still, it was the classic pop sounding "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" that was, well, magic. The mix of progressive and pop set the stage for The Police's finest hour.
If "Every Little Thing..." sounded like classic pop, "Every Breath You Take" sounded timeless. As everyone knows, the deceptively paranoid single cross-circuited and insta-catchy melody with lyrics that sounded like a pledge of devotion only to be undermined by the totally obsessive nature of the protagonist. The nature of the album "Synchronicity" was to allow each member to add his part as he saw fit (even though Sting was obviously the de facto leader by now). it led to the stripped down sound of "King Of Pain" and "Wrapped Around Your Finger."
But that was as far as the band could travel together. Sting's ambitions (or ego, depending on your point of view) had moved past Copeland and Stewart's. The worldwide success of "Synchronicity" and the tour put the band on a hiatus that they never really called off. That leaves the sole new items here the pointless electronic remake of "Don't Stand So Close To Me" (from the "The Singles" collection) and a remix of "Message In A Bottle" that is all but indistinguishable from the original. "Every Breath You Take: The Classics" does allow for both versions of "Don't Stand So Close To Me," which makes that earlier collection obsolete.
However, the recently reissued Police library has at least two classic albums in it (in my opinion, "Synchronicity" and "Zenyatta Mondatta"), that rate picking up a few of the individual albums for their key tracks. (For instance, it is again my opinion, but both of the "new" tracks here could have easily been dumped for the likes of "So Lonely," "Driven To Tears" or "Synchronicity II.") Still, as a collection of memorable radio and groundbreaking music, the evolution of The Police from punky white reggae to musical sophisticates makes this CD a must have if you don't want to go beyond the hits.