The Police’s Every Breath You Take

The most frequently played track in radio history, Every Breath You Take is a twisted love song by English rock band The Police. The best-selling single of 1983, it spent eight weeks at the top of the US charts, and featured on the band’s final album “Synchronicity”. It was written by Sting (whose real name is Gordon Sumner) during a messy divorce from his first wife, Frances Tomelty. The musician was on a break in Jamaica and staying at GoldenEye, the villa once owned by James Bond creator Ian Fleming. As he told The Independent “I woke up in the middle of the night with that line in my head, and sat down at the piano and had written it in half an hour”. Guitarist Andy Summers added the famous guitar riff in one take when The Police recorded the song a few months later.

Many mistakenly interpret the song as romantic, but it is in fact a sinister message from a stalker to his victim. Sting said he was inspired by George Orwell’s novel 1984: “I was thinking of Big Brother, of surveillance and control” and the song is about “jealousy and ownership”.

Lyrically the song is simple and repetitive, using common collocations with verbs using the same vowel sound ‘ei’. Police drummer Stewart Copeland criticised the track for having “an utter lack of groove”. He believed that while it was “Sting’s best song” it had “the worst arrangement”.

The song won two Grammy Awards, and then found a whole new audience when it was sampled in Puff Daddy’s I’ll Be Missing You, a 1997 tribute to the murdered recording artist The Notorious B.I.G., featuring vocals by his widow Faith Evans. Sting later performed the song alongside Puff Daddy and Evans at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards.

Every breath you take

And every move you make

Every bond you break

Every step you take

I’ll be watching you

Every single day

And every word you say

Every game you play

Every night you stay

I’ll be watching you

Oh, can’t you see

You belong to me?