"SO LONELY" THE POLICE (1978)

This month, I’m jumping into the #APlaceInTheSong challenge from @JukeboxJohnny2. Great songs have that special ability to describe places in a way that makes us feel like we’re right there. Each day, I’ll pick a track that I think accomplishes that feat.

One of the most unique sounding bands from my childhood years, the music from The Police always stood out to me. The music traversed a seemingly wide territory shared by rock and reggae like a musical Venn diagram. Unusual, but highly accessible. Sting’s lyrics were exceptionally clever and took seemingly straightforward topics into the stratosphere. He wrote prose and poetry. Case in point: “So Lonely”.

Listening back to “So Lonely”, I’m struck by the rawness of the song. The simplicity of sound from the three-piece certainly contributes to the garage band feel. But this is also a reminder of the band’s roots. It was never about slick production when it came to The Police; it was always about the songs. The melodies. The lyrics. The ever-so-catchy chorus. “So Lonely” is angsty, miserable, cathartic and celebratory all at once. It’s so damn catchy, you can’t help but sing along to it – alone or in a crowd.

“In this theater that I call my soul I always play the starring role.”

"THE BED'S TOO BIG WITHOUT YOU" THE POLICE (1979)

The decade in which I was born has given me a strange perspective on its music. I discovered pretty much all of the 70’s sounds – from prog rock to punk to disco – well after they came into the world. It wasn’t until the late 80’s that I discovered what I was missing. I would characterize the decade as one where budding genres leaped off their inspiration pads and came to fruition. For the month of February, Mental Jukebox will feature some of these gems with a different 70’s song each day. #28DaysOf70sSongs

The Police are that unique breed of rock that we can look back at and affirm one thing: no one else was doing what they were doing at the level in which they were doing it. There are countless bands that merged rock with punk. Many others who merged rock with new wave. But no other relevant band did what they did with rock and reggae so seamlessly. The sound is invigorating and has a very improvisational feel even in its calculated nature. One of the more pronounced examples of this is the eighth track off Regatta De Blanc: “The Bed’s Too Big Without You”.

It’s a song about a former girlfriend of Sting’s. It’s a song of loneliness and remorse. It’s not an unusual topic for a rock song, but it’s a lament told on a bed of reggae rock, a genre that The Police seemed to be defining almost overnight. There’s nothing else like it. Over the course of the band’s career, Sting’s most obvious contributions have been his songwriting abilities and his soaring tenor vocals. But critics have said his bass playing is a bit lacking, almost pedestrian. Well, that’s simply not the case with “The Bed’s Too Big Without You”. The song puts the bass playing at the forefront. The bass line cascades downward along with Sting’s waning spirit. Just maybe you might feel a little bit of what Sting was feeling when he wrote the song.

“Living on my own was the least of my fears.”

"DRIVEN TO TEARS" THE POLICE (1980)

For the month of October, I’m selecting a song each day from the decade that has the most meaning to me: the 80s. It was the decade that I grew up in. The period of time where I discovered my love for music — and explored many different genres. For the next 31 days, I’ll highlight a handful of songs that I truly loved and that were representative of the decade. #31DaysOf80sSongs

There’s rock. There’s reggae. And then there’s The Police. No other band blended the two worlds together better than Sting, Summers and Copeland. They took all the best elements of both and bended them into these fantastic forms that were both extremely fun and extremely smart. While trios like Rush and Muse have made a name for themselves with the amount of sound they created from three guys, The Police made a name for themselves by working in space. A perfect example of this is “Driven to Tears”.

It may not be my favorite Police song (that distinction belongs to “Synchronicity II”), but “Driven to Tears” is a song that I have serious respect for structurally and stylistically. Along with reggae-infused sound, it seems to have a jazz mentality with its percussion style and emphasis on giving individual instruments their moment in the spotlight. Summers’ guitar solo at the 1:40 mark feels improvised and hardly on the nose. Copeland plays more like Max Roach than a traditional rock drummer with a heavy emphasis on the cymbals. And Sting wields note repetitions, arpeggios and space on his bass guitar. On “Driven to Tears”, the pregnant pauses further the song along as much as the notes do.

“My comfortable existence is reduced to a shallow meaningless party.”