The Police

The Police were an English rock band formed in London in 1977. For the majority of their history, the band consisted of Sting (lead singer, bassist and principal songwriter), Andy Summers (guitarist) and Stewart Copeland (drummer). 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. They are also considered one of the leaders of the Second British Invasion of the U.S. They disbanded in 1986, but reunited in early 2007 for a one-off world tour that ended in August 2008.

Their 1978 debut album, Outlandos d'Amour, reached No. 6 in the UK, and their second album Reggatta de Blanc became the first of five consecutive UK No. 1 albums.Synchronicity from 1983 was No. 1 in both the UK and U.S., selling over 8 million copies in the U.S. alone. The Police have sold over 75 million records, making them one of the world's best-selling artists of all time. They were the world's highest-earning musicians in 2008, thanks to their reunion tour.

Synchronicity II

"Synchronicity II" is a song by The Police, and the third single from their album Synchronicity. Written by lead singer and bassist Sting, it was released as a single in the UK and the U.S. by A&M Records, reached No. 17 in the UK Singles Chart and No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 in December 1983. It featured the non-album track "Once Upon a Daydream" on the b-side. The song was described by People Weekly as "aggressive" and "steely."

Background

The song, which refers to Carl Jung's theory of synchronicity, nominally tells the story of an emasculated husband and harried father whose home, work life, and environment are dispiriting and depressing. In an early stretch of lyrics we find "Grandmother screaming at the wall" (family trouble/mental illness), as well as "mother chants her litany of boredom and frustration, but we know all her suicides are fake" (nagging, unhappy spouse). Later, we hear about humiliation by his boss ("and every single meeting with his so-called superior/is a humiliating kick in the crotch"), all the while he "knows that something somewhere has to break". Meanwhile, something monstrous is emerging from a "dark Scottish lake/loch", a reference to the Loch Ness Monster—a parallel to the father's own inner anguish.

Synchronicity

Synchronicity is a concept, first explained by psychiatrist Carl Jung, which holds that events are "meaningful coincidences" if they occur with no causal relationship, yet seem to be meaningfully related. During his career, Jung furnished several slightly different definitions of it.

Jung variously defined synchronicity as an "acausal connecting (togetherness) principle," "meaningful coincidence", and "acausal parallelism." He introduced the concept as early as the 1920s but gave a full statement of it only in 1951 in an Eranos lecture.

In 1952, he published a paper Synchronizität als ein Prinzip akausaler Zusammenhänge (Synchronicity – An Acausal Connecting Principle) in a volume which also contained a related study by the physicist and Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli.

Jung's belief was that, just as events may be connected by causality, they may also be connected by meaning. Events connected by meaning need not have an explanation in terms of causality. This contradicts the Axiom of Causality in specific cases but not generally.

Police

A police force is a constituted body of persons empowered by the state to enforce the law, protect property, and limit civil disorder. Their powers include the legitimized use of force. The term is most commonly associated with police services of a sovereign state that are authorized to exercise the police power of that state within a defined legal or territorial area of responsibility. Police forces are often defined as being separate from military or other organizations involved in the defense of the state against foreign aggressors; however, gendarmerie are military units charged with civil policing.

Law enforcement, however, constitutes only part of policing activity. Policing has included an array of activities in different situations, but the predominant ones are concerned with the preservation of order. In some societies, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, these developed within the context of maintaining the class system and the protection of private property. Many police forces suffer from police corruption to a greater or lesser degree. The police force is usually a public sector service, meaning they are paid through taxes.

Wrapped Around Your Finger

"Wrapped Around Your Finger" is the second UK single (and fourth US single) from The Police's 1983 album Synchronicity. Written by Sting, it was released worldwide by A&M Records and featured the non-album track "Someone to Talk To" as a B-side in the UK, while a live version of "Tea in the Sahara" was the US B-side.

Background

Like other tracks on Synchronicity, such as "Every Breath You Take" and "King of Pain," "Wrapped Around Your Finger" was a personal song for Sting. He said in an interview, "'Every Breath You Take,' 'Wrapped Around Your Finger' were all about my life."

Sting described "Wrapped Around Your Finger" as "a spiteful song about turning the tables on someone who had been in charge." Like other Police songs from this period, it features mythological and literary references, including the Scylla and Charybdis monsters of Greek mythology, and the German legend of Faust. It has a relatively slow, almost foreboding feel in the beginning verses, modulating to evoke a lighter, triumphant feel during the chorus.