“Demolition Man” by The Police

Sting wrote "Demolition Man" during the summer of 1980, staying at Peter O'Toole's house in Connemara, Ireland, and meant it for the Police's Zenyatta Mondatta, but the band never got round to cutting it then. A demo went to Grace Jones when she asked him for a song, and the Police finally claimed it for themselves on Ghost in the Machine in 1981, producing it with Hugh Padgham, who engineered it too.

One of its lines casts the singer as the parliamentary whip at its most severe, the order that tells British MPs to vote with their party on the votes that matter most. Sting said he never expected his A-level in British Constitution to come in handy for a rock song.

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