Synchronicity (The Police Album) - Songs

Songs

"Synchronicity I" starts the album off with a sequencer line that repeats throughout the song. Its lyrics include a term from "The Second Coming", "Spiritus Mundi" (literally "spirit of the world"), which William Butler Yeats used to refer to the collective unconscious, another of Jung's theories. "Walking in Your Footsteps" features lyrics concerning the relation between extinct dinosaurs and humans, and is followed by the jazzy "O My God". (The song recycles some lyrics from two earlier Police songs: "Three o'Clock Shit", which was never recorded on an album but was widely bootlegged from live performances, and the 1981 single "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic"). "Mother" features screamed vocals by Summers and a frantic guitar line reminiscent of Robert Fripp (with whom Summers had previously recorded), and "Miss Gradenko" is a song about a romance in the middle of a communist bureaucracy. "Synchronicity II" features extensive use of audio feedback.

"Every Breath You Take", which begins side two of the record is possibly The Police's best-known song, with Sting's vocals on top of a steady rhythm featuring picked guitar, strong bass, and controlled drumming. Originally, the song was what Summers called a "Hammond organ thing that sounded like Billy Preston". The guitarist came up with a more interesting guitar riff which became a distinctive part of the piece. The song, released before the album, went to number 1 on both the US and UK charts, aided by a black and white video directed by Godley & Creme.

"King of Pain" features a lyrical imagery and numerous effects and instruments, while "Wrapped Around Your Finger" uses subdued keyboards. The record's closer, "Tea in the Sahara", is a quiet, eerie song about three women who meet their death in the desert; the song is based on a story from Paul Bowles' novel The Sheltering Sky. "Murder by Numbers", originally the B-side of "Every Breath You Take", was added to the CD and cassette versions of the album, and has lyrics comparing political power to the development of a serial killer.

The album's original cover artwork was available in 36 variations, with different arrangements of the colour stripes and showing different photographs of the band members, which they took themselves. In the most common version Sting is reading a copy of Jung's Synchronicity on the front cover along with a negative/superimposed image of the actual text of the synchronicity hypothesis. A photo on the back cover also shows a close-up, but mirrored and upside-down, image of Jung's book. The original vinyl release was pressed on audiophile vinyl which appears black like most records, but is actually purple or brown when held up to the light.