From day one, The Police were never known to be one big new-wave family. They certainly had great chemistry together and could transform Sting’s songs into something fantastic, but there was only so far they could go before each of them started to stick their noses into the mix and talk about how the song wasn’t shaping up the way they heard it in their head. Although Stewart Copeland was usually willing to let Sting write whatever he wanted to and lay his trademark drumming on top of it, he felt this song was far too poppy for what they were supposed to be.
Because when the band first formed, they were looking to be the furthest thing from the radio-rock band they turned into. Sure, Sting’s songs were catchy, but what made them a bit more energetic was how nervy they sounded with Andy Summers’s guitar parts, like on ‘Next to You’ or when Sting tried to pass off a song about a hooker on the radio with ‘Roxanne’.
Even though Reggatta de Blanc and Zenyatta Mondatta continued their streak of writing fairly off-the-wall tunes, there was always a bit of pop music creeping in. Despite having one of the wildest guitar solos ever put to tape on the song ‘Driven to Tears’, a song like ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’ felt like it was tailor-made for the pop charts if you manage to ignore the lyrics about trying to describe a relationship between a schoolteacher and a student.
By the time of Ghost in the Machine, though, they all seemed to be taking cues from the pop sphere. Despite the reggae elements of their sound still hanging around, a track like ‘Invisible Sun’ was coated in synthesisers and ‘Spirits In the Material World’ feels like a song that Peter Gabriel would have created had he decided to make pop hooks sooner than So.
But when stacking up the entire record, ‘Every Little Thing She Does is Magic’ is pure pop by their standards. Outside of the gorgeous piano opening, Sting’s melody is note-perfect from the minute he starts, still managing to sound beautiful when shifting between different styles, whether that’s the luscious verses or turning the whole song into a calypso break for the choruses.
The band were used to changing styles, but Copeland felt that this was too far over the line, saying, “By this time, we all had home studios, and we’d all show up at the studio with fully-produced platinum demos. And, of course, we wanted to turn it into a band track. We tried every which way, but nothing. To the extent that we did it differently from the demo was the extent to which it didn’t sound like a hit anymore. So, they put up the demo, and Sting is standing over me pointing out where the verse, the chorus and all the different pieces are. I just cranked out one take of OK, play the fucking demo, and I’ll play along and see if that works, and it kinda did.”
Even though playing to a demo is never anyone’s favourite approach, the subtleties are what make Copeland’s performance stand out. The song may be attributed to Sting, but the moment that Copeland kicks off the song with that hi-hat roll, everyone practically has the song memorised before it starts.
Then again, it’s not that hard to see why the band eventually had to disband after songs like this became more prevalent. They were still on top of the world, but it had become a much different act than the power trio that made ‘Message in a Bottle’.