Every Breath You Take: Listen to this early, strangely sunny synth-driven demo of The Police’s classic hit

26 July 2024, 10:25

Listen to the early demo of The Police's huge hit 'Every Breath You Take'. Picture: Getty/Alamy

By Thomas Edward

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It is not a love song. I repeat. It is not a love song.

Regardless of the manner in which Sting intended The Police's biggest charting hit to come across as, it'll inevitably be considered a love song.

Of course, 'Every Breath You Take' still became one of the most misinterpreted songs in popular music history.

Sting penned the hypnotic ballad after separating from his first wife, Frances Tomelty, about an obsessive stalker reminding his victim he'll forever be looming over her shoulder.

"I think it's a nasty little song, really rather evil. It's about jealousy and surveillance and ownership," Sting told NME in 1983.

"I watched Andy Gibb singing it with some girl on TV a couple of weeks ago, very loving, and totally misinterpreting it. I could still hear the words, which aren't about love at all. I pissed myself laughing."

Nevertheless, 'Every Breath You Take' has become a staple at weddings despite its sinister overtones.

That might've been very different, however, if the song took the form of the original demo – a strangely sunny and synth-driven number that The Police have recently released. Listen below:

The Police - Every Breath You Take (Demo)

The former band have released a series of demos and rough cuts from their 1983 album Synchronicity as part of an anniversary boxset.

While visiting the James Bond creator Ian Fleming's Goldeneye resort in Jamaica, the lyrics for the song came to Sting in a mad rush of inspiration.

"I woke up in the middle of the night with that line – 'every breath you take, every move you make, I'll be watching you' – in my head."

"I sat down at the piano and had written it in half an hour," Sting recalled in 1993.

It was ultimately a solo effort in the beginning, as Sting worked alone on a Hammond organ from London's Utopia Studios in 1982, which you can hear from the demo.

During the sessions, tensions in the band reached boiling point with Sting requiring fewer contributions from his bandmates, which meant more blazing rows.

That was until Andy Summers was given the go-ahead to put down his ideas in the studio.

The Police's inter-band relationship was a breaking point during the recording of 'Every Breath You Take'. (Photo by Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images). Picture: Getty

"Sting said to me, 'Go on, go in there and make it your own'," Summers recently told Ultimate Classic Rock.

"When you hear the demo on that, you won’t even believe it. The whole album was difficult, but 'Every Breath You Take' was going to go in the trash, basically," he continued.

"We thought it was too light and it wasn’t very good. Sting and Stewart [Copeland] just couldn’t agree about where the kick drum and the bass went and so on."

"It reached the point where we were all getting pretty tired of it and didn’t really want to do it."

"Sting said to me, 'Go on, go in there and make it your own.' We needed a guitar and I went in and almost instantly played the guitar line that is of course is the signature of the song. Everybody stood up in the control room and cheered."

"The manager heard it and said, 'I’m going straight to A&M. This is going to be a number one. And it was, that was our first number one in the US. It was number one for eight weeks straight."

The Police - Every Breath You Take (Official Music Video)

'Every Breath You Take' was a gargantuan hit for The Police, who hadn't tasted chart success like that in the US before.

In fact, in 1983 it was the biggest hit of the year according to the Billboard chart, as it stayed at the top spot longer than any other single - Michael Jackson's 'Billie Jean' only managed seven weeks at the summit.

The song won a Grammy Award in 1984 for Song of the Year and Best Pop Performance By Duo Or Group With Vocals, and became one of the decade's most iconic music videos.

Imagine how very different it would've been had the song stayed in the form of the original demo. Very different indeed.