Alright, little new wave-ish, but what can you do, this is a beautiful song. This was released as a single, but was on Synchronicity in 1983. I've been feeling a little down lately, running on empty, so to speak, and this is a tune I like to play during those down times. Now this song was their second most popular single, following, you guessed it, Every Breath You Take, even though I consider this to be a lyrically superior song. Now Sting is a superb bassist and vocalist, and is one of the few bassist frontmen, but this entire band is mind-blowing, Andy Summers is of my favourite guitarists, and Steward Copeland is a very proficient drummer, though the latter band members don't get to show off their trade that much during this song. This song is not given the symbolic credit that it deserves, every line is chalk-full of fantastic analogies and meaning that takes more than a few listens to get. Now what I think to be the most powerful lyric in this song is
"There's a little black spot on the Sun today,
It's the same old thing as yesterday."
Now this may seem simple enough, but when you look at the Sun, you're purposely damaging yourself, and I think this symbolizes the downward slope of self-destruction that many are faced with and live their lives doing. I hope you enjoy this song as much as I do, because it's something fantastic.
Roxanne, now isn't this a lovely song. Written by Sting, this song was released in Outlandos d'Amour, The Police's first album in 1978. This album was released with a very small budget, and was only recorded when Surrey Sound had free time or a band cancelled. The word "Outlandos" comes from a mix of outlaws and commandos, and "d'Amour" is French for "of love", this was proposed when the funding of the band, Miles Copeland heard Roxanne, and pictured the band in a more romantic sense. Due to the small amount of advertising, and controversial song lyrics, this song hardly received any publicity upon its release, but grew in popularity and rose to #6 on the UK's top album charts. As many of the songs by The Police, the music is fairly simplistic, with only three instruments and no track layering. This gives the song an inexplicable quality of bareness and unneeded adornment. They do a great job in this song of volume control, crashing and ebbing on the verse and chorus respectively, showing emphasis upon the verse. The subject of this song is love and prostitution. In France, Sting saw many a harlot and wrote a song about falling in love with one such cocotte, Roxanne. In this song, Sting expresses his distaste for her choice of career, and tries to convince Roxanne to find work in another field.
