83. "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" by The Police

It's a little awkward posting about a Police song after just posting about a Police song. But why are they starting every song name with "Every"? Are you really so sure, Sting? That's arrogant.

"Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" is my favorite Police song, and it's not close.

It's all Stewart Copeland's drumming here, sorry. It's not complex. 

Actually, it is: Every little thing he does is complex. And it's simple to love. 

Go back to my entry on "Every Breath You Take" for my gushing about his drum sound, the snare, the cymbals. It holds for here too. Playing the ride cymbal bell, it sounds like he's hitting a damn anvil. The verses are all the hi-hat work. The choruses consist of only three things: Cymbal (ride and crash), snare, and kick drum. With those three elements, Copeland just dynamites my mind...

No, it's not that simple. The drumming is amazing, but it lives off this ecosystem of such harmonic and rhythmic excellence. The verse guitar and piano double a complex line, mad suspensions pushing a line between major modality and edgier derivations. All that is wiped away with the choruses, about as brightly, unambiguously major as I can stand. Sting's bass playing is melodically great but also hits percussive grace notes essential to the groove. The vocals, so high-flying and unlike anything, creative harmonies everywhere adding to the effect. Not a line, not a voicing of a chord, not a harmony of any kind is something that says, "Yeah, it's business as usual; just relax; you're safe." Today, when groups on mainstream radio are religiously afraid to be strange with their chord construction and harmony (disappointing since they do seem to be embracing more tunefulness and fun, exotic production techniques), it's boggling to think that a group tried to push our ears this far and still rocked - not to mention sold.

Then we have the finale.... I'm listening to it right now, and I have to tell my fingers it is time for typing not drumming on the desk. The drumming is just euphoric, ecstatic, something you train hard to be able to play with discipline but abandon. The drum fill that brings on the peak of the finale is one of the things I'll consider at the end of my life as a reason for it all, all the failures and fascism stacked up against it. It is so sharp, so compact, so fleet. And my favorite part of the fill is how Copeland hits the muted hi-hat in the middle of it. So sharp you can cut your soul on it!

In the finale, the music again toys with modality, going through a beautiful progression, before resolving on a clear major chord, a release the way the choruses were. Sting is a fantastic bassist, and he is all over the place in this section, in an absolute zone. The piano hits its ascending punctuations. The peak vocal is not a word, it is just a sound: "Eo-o!" Sting probably beat himself up endlessly looking for a lyric to fit that line but gave up and went with the weird sound he sang on every demo to that point. How did he know that we needed that sound in our lives?

I used to hate this song when I was younger. The choruses were annoyingly giddy. The rest of the song sounded weird. "Eo-o" wasn't a word. I was dumb when I was younger. I'm smart now. This is one of The songs.

82. "Every Breath You Take" by The Police

There appears to be this phenomenon where a band, a band that tends to prefer rocking, has a mega hit with a ballad that seems completely a-typical to their usual rocking selves.

Off the top of my head: "No Rain" for Blind Melon, "More Than Words" for Extreme (not on this list, but a prime example), maybe even "Losing My Religion" for REM.

What's weird about "Every Breath You Take" is that, while it appears to be a false-advertising deviation from the usual rocking the Police liked to do, it is actually a perfect extension of everything that band liked to do all the time.

It starts with drums. To me, the high delivered straight to my brain every time I hear the Police is the drum work of Stewart Copeland. First of all, his name sounds like he was born holding drum sticks that is such a drummer-sounding name. Copeland stands in a long and illustrious line of drummers I like to call the "agile drummers." There is sharp attack and frenetic movement in everything they do; they own all regions of their kits; and even if they are just holding on a hi-hat/cymbal, snare, kick pattern, there is constant rhythmic attitude and staccato greatness to enjoy. Preceding him in this line was Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, following him was Matt Cameron of Soundgarden (also the permanent Pearl Jam fill-in).

In this song, Copeland has almost nothing to do at first - yet he still does so much in its service. His cinderblock-solid snare drum crack sets off the song, then (without any hi-hat/cymbal accompaniment) holds the ideal backbeat, echoing into the available silence. Sharpness providing air, air becoming mystery.

Meanwhile, the legendary guitar pattern of Andy Summers is just what he always brings to every song. He had an interesting role in this band, basically a second fiddle to Sting's lead bass. He could afford to form these excellent accompanying patterns that travel all over the fretboard without ever treading into the territory of taking the lead. He is doing nothing different on this song, except the dynamics are low enough that he almost accidentally shines through more than normal. Suddenly this his signature guitar pattern simply because Copeland and Sting are not flying all over the place in front of him.

The bass, in the verse, is still kind of the heartbeat, even just hitting root notes and doubling the guitar rhythm. The fact that Sting is backing up the guitar lends maybe some subtle credibility to the guitar part. He only slightly varies his picking rhythm in small moments to counterpoint the guitar, because Sting can't let himself be totally invisible.

Then there is the Sting vocal. Butter. Questionable sanity butter, but butter. He kind of set the standard for the pretty British tenor, didn't he?

What is the chorus? There is some formal ambiguity here. The chorus I think begins with the line "Oh can't you see," but it is a very downbeat chorus. It functions more as an prologue to the real event, this magnificent post-chorus bridge. Songs that fry formal expectations but don't sizzle too loud about it have a real chance to be their own songs.

That post-chorus bridge is maybe the most mature sounding sequence in the Police discography. The Police always found a way to employ piano in great supporting roles, and here it is just what needs to happen, these tones ringing out after each dramatic guitar blast. The vocal: Butter.

Notice here how readily the drums take on a greater role but keep their consistent sharpness. The cymbals of Stewart Copeland's are made of some kind of elfin metal, so sharp, so bright, occupying a targeted frequency with the magical efficiency of mithril.

This is, in short, the Police. This is what they do. It is not a performance outlier, as maybe the 538 would call it if the Police were a sports team. The technical consistency underlying much of their music is pretty impressive, if nothing else. In this case, it just happened that all the usual ingredients shook out into a strange, unique, darkly obsessive ballad, and the result took over the world's ears.