Song · The Police
“Next To You” by The Police
From the album Outlandos d’Amour (1978)
“Next To You” by The Police appears on 11 radio countdowns from 4 stations between 1989 and 2023. It was first released in 1978 on the album Outlandos d’Amour. Its best result is #233 on the WOXY Modern Rock 500 (1991). In the combined RockLists rankings it is #2,131 alternative song of all time.
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"Next to You" is the song that opens Outlandos d'Amour, the Police's 1978 debut, and it goes off like a starting pistol. Sting wrote it and sings it over his own bass, Stewart Copeland drives the drums like he's late for a train, and Andy Summers slashes away until he cuts loose with a slide guitar solo.
The rest of the band weren't sold at first: to Summers and Copeland it sounded too soft and not political enough for their punk credentials, and they wanted the words rewritten into something nastier. Sting refused and kept it a love song. Copeland sneered at the slide solo as old wave, yet fans were still writing to Summers about it decades later. It stayed in the set for years, and it was the last song the three of them ever played live together.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
Indie & Adult Alternative
All Rock Formats
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1989 | 238 | WOXY 97X | WOXY Modern Rock 500 (1989) | 500 |
| 1991 | 233 | WOXY 97X | WOXY Modern Rock 500 (1991) | 500 |
| 1999 | 1121 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2000 Songs of All-Time (December 1999) | 2000 |
| 2000 | 1123 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2001 Songs of All-Time (December 2000) | 2001 |
| 2001 | 1127 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2002 Songs of All-Time (December 2001) | 2002 |
| 2001 | 1605 | WFPK | WFPK 2001 Greatest Songs of All Time | 2000 |
| 2002 | 1126 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2003 Songs of All-Time (December 2002) | 2003 |
| 2003 | 1111 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2004 Songs of All-Time (December 2003) | 2004 |
| 2004 | 1111 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2005 Songs of All-Time (December 2004) | 2005 |
| 2005 | 1111 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2006 Songs of All-Time (December 2005) | 1994 |
| 2023 | 660 | WYEP | WYEP Countdown to Fall 2023 | 1229 |
Also listed as: Next to You.
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