The Police

Radio singles such as "King of Pain," "Wrapped Around Your Finger," and "Every Breath You Take" lend Synchronicity a weighty, greatest hits-type air. And while there's no arguing that these are some of the band's biggest hits, long-time fans may have trouble appreciating the mushy, AOR sound.

Synchronicity is a work of dazzling surfaces and glacial shadows. Sunny pop melodies
echo with ominous sound effects. Pithy verses deal with doomsday. A battery of
rhythms–pop, reggae and African – lead a safari into a physical and spiritual desert, to "Tea
in the Sahara." Synchronicity, the Police's fifth and finest album, is about things ending–the
world in peril, the failure of personal relationships and marriage, the death of Go... More >

I prefer my musical watersheds juicier than this latest installment in their snazzy pop saga, and my rock middlebrows zanier, or at least nicer. If only the single of the summer was a little more ambiguous, so we could hear it as a poem of mistrust to the Pope or the Secretary of State; instead, Sting wears his sexual resentment on his chord changes like a closet "American Woman" fan, reserving the ambiguity for his Jungian conundrums, which I'm sure deserve no better. Best lyrics: Stew's "Miss Gradenko" and Andy's "Mother." Juiciest chord changes: the single of the summer. (Grade - B+)