"
Every Breath You Take" is a song by the English rock band
The Police from their album
Synchronicity (1983). Written by
Sting, the single was the biggest US and UK hit of 1983, topping the
Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for eight weeks (the band's only No. 1 hit on that chart), and the
UK Singles Chart for four weeks. It also topped the
Billboard Top Tracks chart for nine weeks.
At the
26th Annual Grammy Awards, the song was nominated for three
Grammy Awards, including
Song of the Year,
Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, and
Record of the Year, winning in the first two categories. For the song, Sting received the 1983
Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically from the
British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.
In the 1983
Rolling Stone critics' and readers' poll, it was voted "Song of the Year". In the US, it was the
best-selling single of 1983 and fifth-best-selling single of the decade.
Billboard ranked it as the No. 1 song for 1983.
"Every Breath You Take" is the Police's and Sting's
signature song, and in 2010 was estimated to generate between a quarter and a third of Sting's
music publishing income. In May 2019, was recognised by
BMI as being the most played song in radio history. With nearly 15 million radio plays, Sting received a
BMI Award at a ceremony held at the
Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills to mark it being the Most Performed Song in BMI's catalogue, a distinction previously held since 1999 by Mann and Weill's "
You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'". BMI President and CEO Mike O'Neill stated: "For the first time in 22 years, BMI has a new top song in our repertoire with Sting's timeless hit 'Every Breath You Take,' a remarkable achievement that solidifies its place in songwriting history."
The song ranked No. 84 on the
Rolling Stone list of the
500 Greatest Songs of All Time and is included in
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. It also ranked number 25 on
Billboard's Hot 100 All-Time Top Songs. In 2008,
Q magazine named it among the top 10 British Songs of the 1980s. In 2015, the song was voted by the British public as the nation's favourite
1980s number one in a UK-wide poll for
ITV.
Sting wrote the song in 1982 in the aftermath of his separation from
Frances Tomelty and the beginning of his relationship with
Trudie Styler; their split was controversial. As
The Independent reported in 2006, "The problem was, he was already married – to actress Frances Tomelty, who just happened to be Trudie's best friend (Sting and Frances lived next door to Trudie in Bayswater, West London, for several years before the two of them became lovers). The affair was widely condemned."
To escape the public eye, Sting retreated to the Caribbean. He started writing the song at
Ian Fleming's writing desk on the
Goldeneye estate in Oracabessa, Jamaica. The lyrics are the words of a possessive lover who is watching "every breath you take; every move you make". Sting recalled:
I woke up in the middle of the night with that line in my head, sat down at the piano and had written it in half an hour. The tune itself is generic, an aggregate of hundreds of others, but the words are interesting. It sounds like a comforting love song. I didn't realise at the time how sinister it is. I think I was thinking of
Big Brother, surveillance and control.
Sting later said he was disconcerted by how many people think the song is more positive than it is. He insists it is about the obsession with a lost lover, and the jealousy and surveillance that follow. "One couple told me 'Oh we love that song; it was the main song played at our wedding!' I thought, 'Well, good luck.'" When asked why he appears angry in the music video, Sting told
BBC Radio 2, "I think the song is very, very sinister and ugly and people have actually misinterpreted it as being a gentle little love song, when it's quite the opposite."
Gary T. Marx, sociologist and scholar of surveillance studies, wrote in 1988 that, while the song was "a love rather than a protest song", it "nicely captures elements of the new surveillance". He compared the lines to various new technologies of surveillance, including linking "every breath you take" to
breath analyzers, "every step you take" to
ankle monitors, and "every vow you break" to
voice stress analysis.
According to the
Back to Mono box-set book, "Every Breath You Take" is influenced by a
Gene Pitney song titled "Every Breath I Take".
Led Zeppelin's song, "
D'yer Mak'er" (1973), also contains the words "every breath I take; every move I make". The song has an AABACABA structure.
The demo of the song was recorded in an eight-track suite in North London's Utopia studios and featured Sting singing over a Hammond organ. A few months later, he presented the song to the other band members when they reconvened at
George Martin's
AIR Studios in
Montserrat to work on the
Synchronicity album. While recording, guitarist
Andy Summers came up with a guitar part inspired by
Béla Bartók that would later become a trademark lick, and played it straight through in one take. He was asked to put guitar onto a simple backing track of bass, drums, and a single vocal, with Sting offering no directive beyond "make it your own". Summers remembered:
This was a difficult one to get, because Sting wrote a very good song, but there was no guitar on it. He had this Hammond organ thing that sounded like
Billy Preston. It certainly didn't sound like the Police, with that big, rolling synthesizer part. We spent about six weeks recording just the snare drums and the bass. It was a simple, classic chord sequence, but we couldn't agree how to do it. I'd been making
an album with
Robert Fripp, and I was kind of experimenting with playing Bartok violin duets and had worked up a new riff. When Sting said 'go and make it your own', I went and stuck that lick on it, and immediately we knew we had something special.
The recording process was fraught with difficulties as personal tensions between the band members, particularly Sting and drummer
Stewart Copeland, came to the fore. Producer Hugh Padgham claimed that by the time of the recording sessions, Sting and Copeland "hated each other", with verbal and physical fights in the studio common. The tensions almost led to the recording sessions being cancelled until a meeting involving the band and the group's manager, Miles Copeland (Stewart's brother), resulted in an agreement to continue.
Keyboard parts were added from Roland guitar synthesizers,
a Prophet-5 and an
Oberheim synthesiser. The single-note piano in the middle eight was recommended by Padgham, inspired by similar work that he had done with the group
XTC. The drum track was largely created through separate
overdubs of each percussive instrument, with the main backbeat created by simultaneously playing a snare and a
gong drum. To give the song more liveliness, Padgham asked Copeland to record his drum part in the studio's dining room in order to achieve some "special sound effects". The room, however, was so hot that Copeland's drum sticks had to be taped to his hands to avoid slippage.
In 1999, "Every Breath You Take" was listed as one of the Top 100 Songs of the Century by
BMI. In May 2019, BMI updated the list and “Every Breath You Take” was recognized as the Most Performed Song in BMI’s catalogue, a distinction previously held by Mann and Weill’s “
You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'”. In 2003,
VH1 ranked the song the No. 2 greatest
breakup song. As of 2003, Sting was making an average of $2000 per day in royalties for the song.
In October 2007, Sting was awarded a Million-Air certificate for nine million airplays of "Every Breath You Take" at the
BMI Awards show in London.
"Every Breath You Take" is the Police's and Sting's
signature song, and in 2010 was estimated to generate between a quarter and a third of Sting's
music publishing income. In May 2019, was recognised by
BMI as being the most played song in radio history. With nearly 15 million radio plays, Sting received a
BMI Award at a ceremony held at the
Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills to mark it being the Most Performed Song in BMI's catalogue, a distinction previously held since 1999 by Mann and Weill's "
You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'". BMI President and CEO Mike O'Neill stated: "For the first time in 22 years, BMI has a new top song in our repertoire with Sting's timeless hit 'Every Breath You Take,' a remarkable achievement that solidifies its place in songwriting history."
The song ranked No. 84 on the
Rolling Stone list of the
500 Greatest Songs of All Time and is included in
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. It also ranked number 25 on
Billboard's Hot 100 All-Time Top Songs. In 2008,
Q magazine named it among the top 10 British Songs of the 1980s. In 2015, the song was voted by the British public as the nation's favourite
1980s number one in a UK-wide poll for
ITV.
It is one of
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. On the 60th anniversary of the Billboard Hot 100 Chart, on
Billboard released the "Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Singles" chart where the song was ranked No. 29. On the 50th anniversary of the Billboard Hot 100 Chart, the song was ranked No. 25 on
Billboard's "The All-Time Top 100 Songs" chart.
The Police - Every Breath You Take
Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner CBE (born 2 October 1951), known as
Sting, is an English musician and actor. He was the principal songwriter, lead singer, and bassist for the
new wave rock band
the Police from 1977 to 1984, and launched a solo career in 1985. He has included elements of
rock,
jazz,
reggae,
classical,
new-age and
worldbeat in his music.
As a solo musician and a member of The Police, Sting has received 17
Grammy Awards: he won
Song of the Year for "
Every Breath You Take", three
Brit Awards, including
Best British Male Artist in 1994 and Outstanding Contribution in 2002, a
Golden Globe, an
Emmy and four nominations for the
Academy Award for Best Original Song. In 2019, he received a
BMI Award for "Every Breath You Take" becoming the most played song in radio history. In 2002, Sting received the
Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement from the
British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors and was also inducted into the
Songwriters Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Police in 2003. In 2000, he received a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame for recording. In 2003, Sting received a
CBE from
Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace for services to music. He was made a
Kennedy Center Honoree at the White House in 2014, and was awarded the
Polar Music Prize in 2017.
With the Police, Sting became one of the world's
best-selling music artists. Solo and with the Police combined, he has sold over 100 million records. In 2006,
Paste ranked him 62nd of the 100 best living songwriters.
[5] He was 63rd of
VH1's 100 greatest artists of rock,
[6] and 80th of
Q magazine's 100 greatest musical stars of the 20th century. He has collaborated with other musicians on songs such as "
Money for Nothing" with
Dire Straits, "
Rise & Fall" with
Craig David, "
All for Love" with
Bryan Adams and
Rod Stewart, "
You Will Be My Ain True Love" with
Alison Krauss, and introduced the North African music genre
raï to Western audiences through the hit song "
Desert Rose" with
Cheb Mami. In 2018, he released the album
44/876, a collaboration with
Jamaican musician
Shaggy, which won the
Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album in 2019.
Personal life
Sting married actress
Frances Tomelty on 1 May 1976. Before they divorced in 1984, they had two children:
Joseph (born 23 November 1976) and Fuchsia Katherine ("Kate", born 17 April 1982). In 1980, Sting became a
tax exile in
Galway in Ireland. In 1982, after the birth of his second child, he separated from Tomelty and began living with actress and film producer
Trudie Styler. The couple married at Camden Registry Office on 20 August 1992, and had their wedding blessed two days later in the twelfth-century parish church of St Andrew in
Great Durnford,
Wiltshire, south-west England. Sting and Styler have four children: Brigitte Michael ("
Mickey", born 19 January 1984), Jake (24 May 1985),
Eliot Pauline (nicknamed "Coco", 30 July 1990), and Giacomo Luke (17 December 1995). Coco is a singer who now goes by the name Eliot Sumner, and was the founder and lead singer of the group
I Blame Coco. Giacomo Luke is the inspiration behind the name of
Kentucky Derby–winning horse
Giacomo.
In April 2009, the
Sunday Times Rich List estimated Sting's wealth at £175 million (US$265 million) and ranked him the 322nd wealthiest person in Britain. A decade later, Sting was estimated to have a fortune of £320 million in the 2019
Sunday Times Rich List, making him one of the 10 wealthiest people in the British music industry.
Both of Sting's parents died of cancer: his mother in 1986 and his father in 1987. He did not attend either parent's funeral, in order not to bring media attention to them.
Sting ran five miles (8 km) a day and performed aerobics. He participated in running races at
Parliament Hill and charity runs. Around 1990, Danny Paradise introduced him to yoga, and he began practising
Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga series, though he now practises
Tantra and
Jivamukti Yoga as well. He wrote a foreword to
Yoga Beyond Belief, written by Ganga White in 2007. In 2008, he was reported to practise
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's
Transcendental Meditation technique.
Sting's affinity with yoga contributed to a rumour about his sexual prowess, including a purported eight hours of sex with Styler. The story stems from an interview with Sting and Bob Geldof. A journalist asked "how do you perform in bed?" and Geldof remarked that he was a "three-minute man" but Sting could last for hours thanks to yoga.
Sting played chess grandmaster
Garry Kasparov in an exhibition game in 2000, along with four bandmates: Dominic Miller, Jason Rebello,
Chris Botti and Russ Irwin. Kasparov beat all five simultaneously within fifty minutes.
Sting – Trudie Styler
Sometimes you can’t deny the heart what it wants, even if the circumstances aren’t in your favor. Trudie Styler actually met Sting with thanks to his wife (at the time) because she introduced the two. It didn’t take long for Sting and Frances Tomelty to get divorced, paving the way for Trudie and Sting to tie the knot and remain madly in love until today.
