Yep, I was going for any Copeland song, music or lyrics. I don’t know what it is about his tunes I don’t like as much … To me they just seem kind of spare, homely and uninteresting, melodically and harmonically. Though the big exceptions are “Darkness” and “Miss Gradenko.” Not to take away from his brilliance as a performer, though. The guy can play. (Maybe I resent him for the crappy soundtrack to Wall Street. :D)
Summers’ stuff is more interesting to me, musically, but his topics are too quirky for me. Not that a would-be Norman Bates and a Polythene Pam your Plastic Pal aren’t worthwhile song topics, but …
God yes, but those are pretty early songs. They were all painfully young and so vapid was order of the day, though with the darkness of “Can’t Stand Losing You” and “Roxanne” that can’t be a blanket statement.
I don’t blame you for guessing that, but actually, the original Last Exit version was creepy as hell and IMO far more haunting than the Brimstone version. (Sting has major pitch problems here but his performance is so restrained and evocative I forgive him utterly.) It also has a middle and a proper ending instead of that repetitive motif that takes over at the end in the revamp and the Bring on the Night versions.
That said, the revamped version’s relentness bass and above all the TOTALLY KICK ASS chord change in the second verse never fail to give me chills, and I definitely miss them in the original. My ideal version would combine both the original’s spare, hypnotic first verse with the newer version’s harmonies and bass line on the second verse. Oh – and I’d include Omar Hakim’s breathtaking solo from the BotN film, while I’m at it.
Sorry for rambling. This is easily in my top five favorite songs ever, so I … feel strongly.
Fact. This also works with A Night at the Opera from Queen. Synchronicity II is a good song to listen to when doing cardio, I’ve found, though I do kind of get my heart rate up well beyond where it should safely be.
Thanks to all of you who have contributed to this thread. Now I know I haven’t just been imagining it: this is indeed one of the great Police songs. So why the hell wasn’t it included on their “best of” album?
I wonder if they felt there were already too many cuts from Synchronicity on the Greatest Hits album already, so it was left off in favor of some of the more mainstream (radio hit) songs???
I think that Synchronicity II is a much more memorable song than King Of Pain or Every Breath You Take…
I just imagined the whole song being the setup for one of those tragic news stories, where a middle-aged husband and father takes an axe to his entire family. Neighbors and co-workers all said, “He was a quiet man…”
To elaborate, RickJay may be right. Maybe the protagonist is the kind of guy who’s just going to meekly take abuse from employer and family, and endure it silently forever.
But in the lyrics, we see some dark, horrible creature. At first, it’s at the bottom of a deep lake. Later, it’s starting to float to the surface. At the end of the song, when the lyrics mention “a shadow on the door,” which I take as meaning the dark, scary monster is out of the lake and about to enter the man’s home.
The monster from the lake, I think, represents all the anger and resentment the guy has been suppressing all his life. It’s been bubbling up, and is now ready to make its presence felt with a vengeance. For no special reason, today is the day the middle-aged shlub finally snaps.
So I really like the Police so I’m not poking fun exactly but I just watched that video (thanks!) and my first thought when Sting starts singing the first lines was…
That’s a pretty good interpretation too. I just always took the line “Many miles away” - repeated at the end fo the song, over and over - to imply there was no internal escape from his routine. But the cool thing about it is you can interpret it a dozen different ways.
While you’re doing eighty miles and hour and screaming the lyrics, of course.