The Police
Synchronicity (A&M 493 599)

One of the highest selling albums of the glorious parcel of time known as 1983 is also one of the best of the 80s overall: Synchronicity retains its freshness and even gets better 20 years on.

Listening to the album now in comparison to most of the other hits of the era, it just doesn't make any sense. It's no secret that most eighties music hasn't dated well, as smitten as I am with virtually every pop song that came out in '83. But Synchronicity sounds like nothing else ever made; it could have just as easily been released in 1989, or 1993, or last year.

Sting was absolutely on when he wrote this stuff, while Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers had only started to develop intense hatred for him, so the energy and power is tightly focused. Right from the beginning, with the title track and its keyboard hook reminiscent of The Who, the ride begins in earnest, and for the most part, it's breathtaking.

The title track is as confident an album opener as ever has been, and sets the tone right away. "Walking In Your Footsteps" is nice, but I still roll my eyes a bit at the line "Hey there Mr. Brontosaurus/Don't you have a lesson for us". "O My God" leads up to the undeniable low point of the album, "Mother," which Andy Summers wrote. Yuck!

Fortunately, Sting steps back in to give us "Miss Gradenko," a cool song about a fictional Soviet female working in the Communist government, and the next track, the incredible "Synchronicity II." The video for this song might be the only thing related to the album that has dated poorly, featuring the band standing on the mountain of trash, looking like Chess King models after an F-5 tornado. Not a good video, but a fantastic song.

"Every Breath You Take" is next, which I still love. I've always found it funny that people interpret a song that's really about a spurned man relentlessly stalking his ex-lover as being a love song. Hearing about someone using this as a wedding song just makes me chuckle uncontrollably. It's such a haunting, disturbing song, and conveys such a warped understanding of love, it just mystifies me how people take it that way.

"Every Breath You Take" sat at #1 for eight weeks in '83, which at the time was an incomprehensibly long time for a song to do that. (I can't exactly remember what song knocked it out of the top spot, but I think it might have been Billy Joel doing "Tell Her About It" … eep!)

"King Of Pain" follows, another tune that never fails to satisfy. The chorus especially gets to me, very powerful. "Wrapped Around Your Finger" wraps up an incredible four song run, and it on most days is my favorite on the disc. Back in the day, I really disliked it, but time has changed my view of it. I think gaining the ability to fully understand the lyrics helped quite a bit, as I'm always amazed by them. The line "I will turn your face to alabaster/When you find your servant is your master" always grabs me, and I'm continually impressed that Sting somehow managed to use "Mephistopheles" in a song and pull it off.

"Tea In The Sahara" puts an end to the string of incredible songs, just managing to keep the quality level up, and the disc closes with "Murder By Numbers," my opinion of which varies from day to day, but mostly I like it.

I'm still stunned at how well Synchronicity has aged, arguably better than any of the other Police albums. "Synchronicity II" (inexplicablyomitted from both Police "best of" albums) alone makes this a worthwhile album, but so much och of the rest is astounding that the album will always be something to return to.

The intolerable "Mother" really hurts this album … fortunately time has been more kind to everything else on it.

Loud Bassoon rating scale

Review by Casey Blick