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Composed by guitarist Andy Summers, “Mother” is track four on 1983’s Synchronicity. Featuring lyrics focused on a character’s portrayal of an overbearing mother and the resulting paranoia that engulfs them.

Musically the track is very diverse, featuring an Arabian-tinged arrangement with horns, minimal percussion, an unconventional 7/8 time signature, and Andy Summers’s vocal stylings. His manic portrayal of the character is one of the song’s highlights, as well as his impressive guitar/sitar solo in the middle of the track.

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O My God The Police – O My God

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One of the closest links to the older Police sound on 1983’s Synchronicity, track three incorporates lyrics from two earlier Police songs, “Three o' Clock Shit” (which was never released but was widely bootlegged from early live shows) and “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” from 1981’s Ghost in the Machine.

Sting is not much of a fan of religion and the lyrics of “O My God” heavily reflect on his disbelief, but could also be seen as a re-phrasing of the Book of Lamentations in the Bible.

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Walking in Your Footsteps The Police – Walking in Your Footsteps

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Track two of 1983’s Synchronicity continues the use of synths as a major harmonic element, but this time they follow a tribal groove. Police drummer Stewart Copeland adds to the percussion by smacking sticks together in a primal show of rhythm while guitarist Andy Summers fills the air with grunts from an effected electric guitar. Sting rounds out the arrangement with his vocal, describing the plight of the dinosaurs as an analogy towards humanity’s own path towards extinction by their own means.

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Synchronicity I The Police – Synchronicity I

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The opening track of The Police’s blockbuster 1983 album Synchronicity starts with a repeating synthesizer riff. From there it’s a cavalcade of theoretical concepts on the synchronization of related effects paired with unrelated causes. Psychologist Carl Jung’s concept of meaningful coincidence was Sting’s main influence behind much of the writing of the album and if it were to be treated as a “concept album,” then this first track is the introduction to what you’re about to hear in the rest of the tracks.

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[Middle-Eight] The Police – Every Breath You Take

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While recording the song, producer Hugh Padgham and Sting found themselves having to fill in the space between the end of the bridge and the start of the next verse, otherwise known as the “middle-eight.” At first it was indistinguishable from the verses and it needed its own charm. That’s when a happy accident changed everything, according to Padgham:

[Sting] was fiddling around on the piano, banging away on the same note, and I remember shouting to him on the talkback, ‘Yeah! That’s it! Just the one-note thing is great!’ I was always into one-note stuff, ever since we did a one-note guitar solo on an XTC song — I liked its hypnotic effect and thought it was really cool. So, suddenly, when I heard Sting playing that note, it was like ‘There it is! We’ve got it!’ And that was after he’d been fiddling around for hours, trying to find a part.

Listening to the song now, I really like the dynamics going into the middle eight — the big, explosive ‘shplang’ guitar chords and overdubbed toms that were played with mallets — and that was all about experimenting until we got the right sound. In fact, the song’s overall sound still stands up because it’s not full of gimmicks…

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While recording the song, producer Hugh Padgham and Sting found themselves having to fill in the space between the end of the bridge and the start of the next verse, otherwise known as the "middle-eight." At first it was indistinguishable from the verses and it needed its own charm. That's when a happy accident changed everything, [according to Padgham](http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar04/articles/classictracks.htm):

> [Sting] was fiddling around on the piano, banging away on the same note, and I remember shouting to him on the talkback, 'Yeah! That's it! Just the one-note thing is great!' I was always into one-note stuff, ever since we did a one-note guitar solo on an XTC song — I liked its hypnotic effect and thought it was really cool. So, suddenly, when I heard Sting playing that note, it was like 'There it is! We've got it!' And that was after he'd been fiddling around for hours, trying to find a part.

> Listening to the song now, I really like the dynamics going into the middle eight — the big, explosive 'shplang' guitar chords and overdubbed toms that were played with mallets — and that was all about experimenting until we got the right sound. In fact, the song's overall sound still stands up because it's not full of gimmicks...

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Fatty

4 years

The “middle 8” IS the bridge. (8 bars with different chords) The section referred to here is back to the verse chords. It’s an instrumental section of verse. See Hugh’s second quote where he talks about going into the middle eight with the toms. He’s referring to going into “Since you’ve gone….” Bridge and Middle 8 are the same.

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4 years

Considering the fact that this “middle eight” note repeats after the more sentimental-worded bridge, which expresses longing and pining, it’s possible that the repeated middle eight would imply that the protagonist is oscillating himself in frustration. (Hint: visualize the number “8” as a ball sack. And what’s usually in the middle of that “8”?)

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31,872

10 years

It’s also interesting to note the two notes played on the piano are an Ab and C simultaneously.

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[Intro] The Police – Message in a Bottle

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“Message in a Bottle” opens with a guitar hook played by guitarist Andy Summers but composed by Sting. The hook is not performed perfectly; you can hear notes that go dead a little bit quicker than they should.

The harmony in this sequence could be read as a C-sharp minor i–VI–VII–iv progression. The melody however strongly implies that the key is E, which would make the progression vi-IV-V-ii. The harmony approaches a resolution, with movement through the subdominant IV to dominant V, implying a resolution to E, but each time it overshoots and finds F#, like the castaway seeking never finding his way home.

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There's a house on my street and it looks real neat
I'm the chap who lives in it
There's a tree on the sidewalk, there's a car by the door
I'll go for a drive in it The Police – On Any Other Day

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The first verse sets up the notion of our character and his seemingly normal life. It’s a subtle but genius play on musical foreshadowing as the song doesn’t climb in melody but rather sinks into lower tones, providing an ominous atmosphere for our narrator.

It seems he has everything a traditional family man could want, what could possibly go wrong?

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If I could, I'd slow the whole world down
I'd bring it to its knees, I'd stop it spinning round
But as it is, I'm climbing up an endless wall The Police – No Time This Time

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Exploring the fruitlessness of trying to stop time and slow it down to allow more time for enjoying life. Our character’s goal of slowing down the world by stopping it from spinning is a common figure of speech for slowing down life since the world is always in motion.

There is a “trick” you can use, not so much to slow down time, but to slow down your perception of time:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/slow-down-time_n_3567218.html

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[Guitar Solo] The Police – It's Alright for You

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#The lone musician

While the coda is just a phrase from the guitar solo repeated to the fade-out, there is some impressive harmony between what sounds like Sting’s bass (which sounds like it was overdubbed with piano to give it more punch), the high F sharp note played by, presumptuously, Andy Summers, Stewart Copeland’s erratic drumming, and Andy Summers again with an arpeggiated main guitar riff.

In an interview with independent journalist Gert-Peter Bruch for a Police documentary film, Stewart Copeland sheds some light on how the ending instrumentation was arranged:

Gert: …it is more than a coincidence to me that almost half of the album is written by… you!
Stewart Copeland: No, I don’t think so.
Gert: Yes! You did the music of “It’s Alright For You…”
Stewart Copeland: Yeah, I played all instruments on that one, too! Except for the guitar solo that Andy played.
- Gert-Peter Bruch’s website

What’s important to note here is how Sting is mainly not involved, something that was prevalent on this and the previous album Outlandos d'Amour and is noticeably absent on the rest of The Police catalog. Sting is credited with the lyrics while Stewart Copeland takes credit for writing the music.

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#The lone musician

While the coda is just a phrase from the guitar solo repeated to the fade-out, there is some impressive harmony between *what sounds like* Sting's bass (which sounds like it was overdubbed with piano to give it more punch), the high F sharp note played by, *presumptuously,* Andy Summers, Stewart Copeland's erratic drumming, and Andy Summers *again* with an arpeggiated main guitar riff.

In an interview with independent journalist Gert-Peter Bruch for a Police documentary film, Stewart Copeland sheds some light on how the ending instrumentation was arranged:

> [**Gert:** ...it is more than a coincidence to me that almost half of the album is written by… you!
**Stewart Copeland:** No, I don’t think so.
**Gert:** Yes! You did the music of "It’s Alright For You..."
**Stewart Copeland:** Yeah, I played all instruments on that one, too! Except for the guitar solo that Andy played.](http://gertonline.free.fr/muziques/police-sting/scopeland-interview-en03.htm)
- Gert-Peter Bruch's website

What's important to note here is how Sting is mainly not involved, something that was prevalent on this and the previous album *Outlandos d'Amour* and is noticeably absent on the rest of The Police catalog. Sting is credited with the lyrics while Stewart Copeland takes credit for writing the music.

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[opera sample] The Police – Does Everyone Stare

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Legend has it that while recording the demo version of this song in drummer Stewart Copeland’s basement, with wires crisscrossing, an opera radio station was picked up through guitarist Andy Summers’s amplifier. The band decided to keep it in the final recording as it set up an excellent transition to the main verse of the song and Sting’s vocal.