The Police - Did You Know?
March 22, 2018Music facts, music trivia, interesting stories and much more. Introducing the "Did You Know" page about British rock band, The Police.
Enjoy!
The Police were a British rock band that were formed 1977 in London. Most of their music career, The Police consisted of Sting (lead vocals, bass, songwriter), Andy Summers (guitar) and Stewart Copeland (drums, percussion).
The Police became popular worldwide in the late 1970s and early 1980s and are regarded as one of the first new-wave bands that achieved mainstream success, with their music style that combines rock influenced by reggae, punk and jazz. The Police are also considered one of the leaders of the Second British Invasion of the United States.
The band disbanded in 1986, at the peak of their popularity, after only five albums. A lot of the hostility that lead to their breakup, was caused by song selection. Each band member wanted more of his songs on the albums, mainly because it was the writer who got the royalties, and unlike other bands like Van Halen and U2, The Police didn't share songwriting credits.
The Police have sold more than 75 million records worldwide, which makes them one of the world's best-selling artists of all time. In 2008, the band reunited and went to tour, which got them to be the world's highest-earning musicians that year, thanks to that reunion tour.
The Police has won several music awards, among them six Grammy Awards and two Brit Awards. In 2003, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Another amazing fact, is that four of their five studio albums feature on the list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, made by Rolling Stone magazine.
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The song "Every Breath You Take" by The Police is one of the most misinterpreted songs ever. The song is actually about an obsessive stalker, although it sounds like a love song.
Sting wrote this song in Jamaica at the same desk where Ian Fleming wrote his James Bond novels. He wrote the song after separating from his first wife, Frances Tomelty.
"Every Breath You Take" was the biggest hit of 1983 in America and it stayed at the top of the chart for 8 weeks.
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The song "Roxanne" by The Police is about a man who falls in love with a prostitute, telling her she deserves better and should find a more decent profession.
Sting got the idea to the song after walking through the red-light district of Paris, when The Police was in town to play a club by the name of The Nashville.
There, Sting saw prostitutes for the first time, and imagined what it would be like to fall in love with one of them, figuring some of the prostitutes must have boyfriends.
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Sting was visiting the German Avant-Garde composer, Eberhard Schoener, in early 1979.
One night, the two went out on a schnapps drinking session and Sting returned to his hotel room drunk, slumped on his bed when the riff to the song "Walking on the Moon" came to him.
Sting got up and started walking around the room, trying to clear his head muttering to himself "walking around the room, walking around the room." The next morning Sting wrote down the riff, and decided that "Walking Around the Room" was a stupid title, so he decided to change it to "Walking on the Moon."
The song is actually an allegory for how Sting felt when he was on the road, confined to hotel rooms and stages as the world kept turning.
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