4 June 1983
‘Every Breath You Take’ is officially the most-played track on radio ever: an estimated 15 million times. What accounts for this? Probably the glossy production on Andy Summers’ guitar riff, which positively glistens with richness. As a riff, though, it’s sparse and sombre, so right from the start there’s an intriguing tension.
And then Sting comes in. I’ve mentioned his disagreeably sour and huffy voice before, plus his apparent total lack of self-awareness at the triteness of his lyrics, especially his rhymes. But ‘Every Breath You Take’ is even more unpleasant, as it’s essentially—and there’s no way around this—a stalker singing about stalking, or at the very least a passive-aggressive man having an undignified, self-entitled sulk at a woman leaving him. Now, there’s nothing to say that a song can’t deal in unpleasantries or voice unlikeable characters, but the nastiness positively drips from ‘Every Breath You Take’. That the band members pretty much couldn’t stand each other at that stage is well known, and boy does it come across on record.
Still, though: 15 million radio plays. This doesn’t say much for the radio programmers and classic hits DJs of the world.
