Synchronicity by The Police

Synchronicity, the Police's fifth studio album and their last, came out on A&M on 17 June 1983, and it's the sound of a trio at the peak of its powers pulling in every direction at once and somehow holding together. Hugh Padgham produced, Sting played bass and sang, Andy Summers handled guitar and Stewart Copeland drove the drums, and the title and a lot of the songs sprang from Arthur Koestler's book The Roots of Coincidence.

The record swings from jittery art-rock to smoky, brooding balladry. "Synchronicity II" is a nervy, pounding rant; "King of Pain" and "Wrapped Around Your Finger" simmer with a cool, menacing hush; "Murder by Numbers" slinks in with a jazzy leer; "Walking in Your Footsteps" and "Tea in the Sahara" go somewhere dusty and strange; and "Miss Gradenko" is a quick, nervous curio. Then there is "Every Breath You Take", a gorgeous, uneasy lullaby with a chill running underneath. Critics singled out exactly that mix: disparate styles and studio experiments welded into one piece.

It went to number one in the UK and the US and sold more than eight million copies in America alone, and after the tour that followed, the Police were arguably the biggest band on the planet. At the 1984 Grammys it picked up five nominations, Album of the Year among them, and won three. It has since landed in the Grammy Hall of Fame, and in 2023 the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.