“Every Breath You Take” by The Police

Sting wrote "Every Breath You Take" for Synchronicity, the Police's fifth and final studio album, and in 1983 the song simply swallowed the airwaves whole. It's a study in restraint: a hushed, circling guitar figure, a patient heartbeat of a rhythm, and Sting's voice gliding over the top so smoothly that you barely notice how tightly the whole thing is wound.

In America it sat on top of the Billboard Hot 100 for eight weeks, the band's only No. 1 there, and it ended up the country's best-selling single of that year; in Britain it gave the Police their fifth No. 1 and held the spot for four weeks. At the 26th Annual Grammy Awards it won Song of the Year and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, Rolling Stone's critics and readers both voted it Song of the Year, and Sting collected an Ivor Novello Award for it.

It has become the signature song of both the band and Sting; by 2010 it was reckoned to account for somewhere between a quarter and a third of what Sting earned from music publishing. In May 2019, BMI recognized it as the most played song in the history of radio.

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