The Police - Every Breath You Take

The Police were an English rock band formed in London in 1977. For the vast majority of their history, the band consisted of Sting (lead vocals, bass), Andy Summers (guitars) and Stewart Copeland (drums).

The Police became globally popular in the late 1970s and are generally regarded as one of the first New Wave groups to achieve mainstream success, playing a style of rock that was influenced by punk, reggae, and jazz.

Their 1983 album, Synchronicity, was number one on both the UK Album Chart and the US Billboard 200, and sold over 8,000,000 copies in the US. The group disbanded in 1984, but reunited in early 2007 for a one-off world tour lasting until August 2008. The Police have sold more than 50 million albums worldwide, and were the world's highest-earning musicians in 2008, thanks to their reunion tour.

Although the early style of the group has been classified as punk rock, Allmusic Guide argues that this was only true "... in the loosest sense of the term"; the Guide states that the band's "... nervous, reggae-injected pop/rock was punky" and had a "punk spirit", but it "wasn't necessarily punk".

The Police, along with The Clash, were among the first mainstream white bands to adopt reggae as a predominant musical form (as others have done before in U.K. with ska) and to score major international hits with reggae-styled material. Although ska and reggae were already popular in the United Kingdom, the style was little known in the United States or other countries. Prior to the emergence of the Police, only a handful of reggae songs (such as Eric Clapton's 1974 cover of Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff", or Paul Simon's "Mother and Child Reunion") had enjoyed much chart success in the USA.

Sting spent time as a secondary school English and Mathematics teacher, and his work with the band reflects a literary awareness. For example, material on the album Ghost in the Machine was inspired by the writings of Arthur Koestler, the Police's final studio album Synchronicity was clearly influenced by the writings of Carl Jung, the song "Don't Stand So Close To Me" echoes (and mentions) Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita, and the song "Tea in the Sahara" reflects the novel The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles.

"Every Breath You Take" is a song by The Police on the band's 1983 album Synchronicity, written by Sting and Andy Summers (but officially credited to Sting only). The single was one of the biggest hits of 1983, topping the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for eight weeks and the UK Singles Chart for four weeks. It also topped the Billboard Top Tracks chart for nine weeks. Sting won Song of the Year and The Police won Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal at the Grammy Awards of 1984 for "Every Breath You Take". The song ranked No. 84 on the Rolling Stone list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and No. 25 on Billboard's Hot 100 All-Time Top Songs.This song is considered to be The Police's signature song, and in 2010 was estimated to generate between a quarter and a third of Sting's music publishing income.

The song had a music video (directed by duo Godley & Creme) that was praised for its black-and-white cinematography. Both MTV (1999) and VH1 (2002) named it as one of the best music videos ever, placing it 16th and 33rd in their respective top 100 lists. Daniel Pearl won the first MTV cinematography award for his work on the video.