“Emotional clutter”: The difficulties Sting experienced working with The Police

Posted On August 16, 2024August 16, 2024

The Police may have spawned from the new wave scene of the late 1970s, but they refused to restrict themselves to one scene regarding genre. Their biggest hits ranged from reggae-influenced tunes like ‘Roxanne’ to the eerie ‘Every Breath You Take’ to the shimmering ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’. Sonically, they were songs that had little in common, but there was one thing connecting them all: the writing talents of Sting. 

Whatever your favourite Police song is, it was probably penned by Sting. He was the primary creative force behind the band, penning strange tales of obsession and messages in bottles for his bandmates to expand upon in their instrumentation. He spent the 1980s making hit after hit, until The Police became not only one of the biggest bands in the new wave scene, but in the world.

The fact that Sting was driving the band’s hit-making potential was not lost on the songwriter. He noticed it in writing sessions at the time, as he would later recall in an interview with David Sheff. “I just turned up with all these great songs,” he remembered, “And they tended to sweep everything else aside. Still, it was a band and we all had input and we all made decisions.”

It’s easy to see why the band were willing to toss their own ideas aside for hits like ‘Message In A Bottle’, and Sting could see why, too. “They couldn’t stop it from happening,” he stated, “The songs were so good”. Still, the singer admitted that there were “struggles” within the band and acknowledged that even he found elements of the songwriting process daunting. 

“The first part of doing a Police album involved deciding what songs we were going to use, which was always a painful, nerve-racking process,” he remembered, “Because 30 songs are brought to a session and only ten can be used on an album.” The bassist suggested that diplomacy, cruelty, and objectivity were all essential in cutting an album down to the correct length. 

Although Sting described his experience of this process as nerve-racking, his anxieties don’t seem to stem from a lack of confidence in his own songwriting. He knew that he was the leading songwriter in the group, and he knew that his creations were guaranteed hits. It was likely his other bandmates who arrived at these sessions were biting their nails around the table, hoping that one of their tunes might make it onto the next Police record.

Sting’s anxiety surrounding the album-curating process, then, seemed to stem from the relationship management it required. He believed that his songs were the best, but he had to express those feelings to his bandmates without minimising or mocking their own songwriting contributions. His nerves seemed to stem from the discomfort of making sure the best songs were selected without hurting other bandmates. 

It makes sense, then, that as Sting moved into his solo career, he found that the “emotional clutter” was removed from this kind of situation. For a Sting record, he wouldn’t have to consider contributions from other songwriters or mediate awkward interactions when certain songs were rejected. He could focus his efforts entirely on creativity rather than on diplomatic decision-making.

This didn’t necessarily lead to more hits than Sting had produced with The Police. He found success with tracks like ‘Fields Of Gold’ and ‘Englishman In New York’, but rarely did he reach the levels of ‘Roxanne’ or ‘Message In A Bottle’. Perhaps Sting needed The Police more than he knew.

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