Album dossier / 1983

Synchronicity

The Police · Rock/New Wave

Recorded at George Martin's AIR Studios on Montserrat and mixed at Le Studio in Morin-Heights, Quebec, Synchronicity was made amid open warfare between Sting, Stewart Copeland, and Andy Summers -- the trio tracked in three separate rooms, with Copeland's drums set up in an adjoining dining room connected to producer Hugh Padgham's control room only by a video monitor. Padgham says the sessions came "one meeting away" from being abandoned after ten days without a usable track; "Every Breath You Take" crystallized the tension, as Sting insisted on a stripped-down, fill-free drum part Copeland resented playing. The album entered both the US and UK charts at #1 and the single spent eight weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, even as the sessions effectively ended the trio's ability to work together as a band.