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.”