Talk:Synchronicity (The Police album)

Synchronicity: Could someone tell me which metre that song is in?

Añoranza 07:11, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

The song "Synchronicity I" you mean? It's 6/4, as opposed to the more common 6/8. 6/4 is not an "odd" time signature, but the grouping of this song can be analysed as a syncopated "4/4+2/4" or "5/4+4/16", and gives it the "odd" feel. (there's plenty of room for other analyses of the rhythm, but these are the basics... having not heard the song for years, just remembering the hook. -Tzf 22:12, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Murder By Numbers wasn't on the original LP, right?

I remember buying this album being disappointed that Murder By Numbers was only on the Audio Cassette release. At the time I felt personally affronted by this! Any self-respecting collector would not buy audio cassettes because they could easily get "eaten", particularly by the notorious car cassette players of the time. So I would buy only LP's and make my own cassette copies of them. I'm sure it was included on the first CD edition too, but when did that come out? Did Murder By Numbers appear on later LP releases? Or have I got it all wrong, and it was on the original LP release? -Tzf 22:12, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

No, it did not. I own the LP version, and the track was left off. -Readymade01

Rock n Roll?

This album was classified as "Rock n Roll", so I changed it to just "Rock". -Readymade01

cover?

Why is it not noted that there are about 100 diferent versions of the album cover? or the fact that most of the records are purple when held up to the light? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vadahata2 (talk • contribs) 23:45, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

multitracking does not mean you hate your bandmates!

The author of these 3 sentences from the "History" section does not understand how professional studio recordings of rock music are made.

"For sound engineering reasons, the three band members recorded their parts in separate rooms: Copeland with his drums in the dining room, Sting in the control room, and Summers in the actual studio. This physical separation underscored the increasing tension and strain in the relationship between the bandmates. According to co-producer Hugh Padgham, subsequent overdubs were actually done with only one member in the studio at a time due to such strain."

The Police could have high on Ecstasy, madly in love w/ ea other, eagerly looking forward to completing the recording so they could fly away to wherever 3 guys madly in love can get married to each other, and they STILL would have "recorded their parts in separate rooms"! [[1]]might be of interest to those who don't understand the concepts of "separation" and "bleeding" in a multitracking context.

So yes, if playing 'live' i.e. together at the same time in a studio, measures are taken to isolate the instruments from ea other, so that, for instance, you don't end up with loud cymbal crashes in the background of another instrument's track. This physical separation is standard recording technique and would not comment on, or be reflective of, any relationship dynamics any more than the fact of each band member also physically separating himself when he used the bathroom! Likewise, it's not unusual at all for overdubbing sessions to not be attended by nonparticipants- remember, Hugh Padgham was not co-producing w/ the boys...

So while it's well known that the trio were not fond of each other during the making of Synchronicity, it's folly to claim that these 2 very normal aspects of a big budget rock recording process by a hugely successful band w/ a big name producer are somehow indicative of negative relationship dynamics. I'll wait for a while to see if a hardcore Police fan wants to rewrite this part of the "History" section. If not, I will end up deleting at least the first 2 of the 3 sentences. Fp cassini (talk) 07:01, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Amusingly, "This physical separation underscored the increasing tension and strain in the relationship between the bandmates" is almost a direct quote from Andy Summers's memoir One Train Later. Another case of a WP editor taking that memoir way too literally. I'll go remove that bit, as well as the part about overdubbing, since that needs a reference anyway.

For the record, if by "the boys" you mean The Police, that's incorrect; The Police did co-produce Synchronicity.--Martin IIIa (talk) 21:25, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

"Concessions"?

Currently, the article states: "Sting's material dominates the album, with the two short tracks by Andy Summers ("Mother") and Stewart Copeland ("Miss Gradenko") being seen by the band themselves as concessions."

The question that springs to mind is "Concessions by whom?" A&M had no control over which songs were included on The Police's albums, so the concessions would have to be by the other band members. The trouble is, it's a matter of record that Sting loved both "Mother" and "Miss Gradenko". I remember reading from an interview in which Sting spends a couple paragraphs raving about how brilliant "Mother" is. "Miss Gradenko" is more ambiguous, but Sting was enthusiastic about Copeland's compositions for Synchronicity, so it's hard to believe that he didn't like the only one which he allowed on the album. So that means that at worst, there was one member out of three who objected to each of the compositions. How does that make its inclusion a "concession"?

At the least, that statement needs to be both phrased more clearly and outfitted with citations. For now, I'm simply deleting it. If anyone knows what "seen by the band themselves as concessions" is supposed to mean, please share that information here. (Assuming, of course, that it isn't just something the editor made up.)--Martin IIIa (talk) 13:05, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I think you are overweighting any enthusiasm that Sting might have had for his bandmates' material, at least in regards to including their songs on the album. I didn't write the sentence that you deleted, but I assume the author was recalling this quote from an interview with Stewart:

"Those two tracks by Andy and me are concessions, like on the Jim Hendrix albums where there'd be one Noel Redding track. We've all been growing in different directions, so our songs stand out as being different from the other tracks more obviously than they have on other albums." - Stewart Copeland, Musician magazine, June 1983.

In his recent book, Chris Campion described the song selection process for the album thusly:

"...But there was still the matter of which songs would appear on the final album. Sting, who had lost all sense of fairness and equality, had decided of his own volition that Synchronicity was to be a solo album by proxy. He had too much of a personal stake in the songs for the album to be diluted by what he saw as Summers's and Copeland's inferior attempts at songwriting. In fact, Sting didn't want any songs by the others on the record, but this was not going to wash with the other two. They reached a compromise in a manner similar to settling a dispute in a school playground: they flipped a coin. Summers and Copeland were given one song each on the record to appease them." - Chris Campion, Walking on the Moon, 2010.

Campion tends to overemphasize the conflict and underhandedness in the band, but his source here is the description in Summers's 2006 memoir, which mentions the coin flip and the situation leading up to it. -- David Koller (talk) 02:08, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I know that Copeland and Summers had to fight tooth-and-nail for the inclusion of their songs. Besides the sources you quote above, this is also mentioned in the Message in a Box liner notes. Sorry, I guess my original post didn't present my problem with that line very clearly. The issue is that that line implies that songs "Miss Gradenko" and "Mother" of themselves were concessions, when so far as we know they were only concessions in that Copeland and Summers wrote them. In other words, it implies that in the minds of the band members, the inclusion of "Miss Gradenko" and "Mother" compromised not merely Sting's desire to have Synchronicity be all his songs, but the actual quality of the album.

Part of it is, nearly every Police album has only two or three songs not written by Sting, nearly all of which Sting allowed only grudgingly. (The one exception is Regatta de Blanc, and that only because the band was so short on new material at that time that they were in no position to reject songs from any source.) So the article specifically including this "concessions" line implies that there's more to it than what happened with every other Police album, that Copeland and Summers's songs were actually judged too weak to pass muster, but were included anyway. The subjective intro statement "Sting's material dominates the album" doesn't help either.

I think it would be better to replace that statement with an account of the coin toss incident. That would be a lot more substantial than a vague "seen by the band themselves as concessions", while still getting across the point that the inclusion of Copeland and Summers's songs was a group compromise rather than something all three of them wanted. Adding the Copeland quote doesn't seem like a bad idea, either.

By the way, I don't think I've ever seen that quote from Copeland before. It's funny he would feel that way, since to the listener "Miss Gradenko" is probably the least distinctly "Copeland" composition Stewart ever wrote for the band. A few years ago there were even a bunch of fans insisting that it was obviously a Sting composition that had been miscredited to Copeland! Funny how artists often have such strange takes on their own creations.--Martin IIIa (talk) 20:28, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I always thought Miss Gradenko was about a whistleblower not a romance. In that interpretation "Are you safe Miss Gradenko?" is more of a veiled threat. But who cares what I think? No one. Which is precisely my point. I notice the theory given here is presented on Stewart Copeland's official site, but by the tone ("Please, don’t hesitate to contact us and your opinion will be upload for other fans to read!") it's clear he didn't write it himself. As a source I would have to say it is unencyclopedic. The entire songs section is currently unsourced in fact. It's one thing to say what the artist or a notable critic said about the work, but this isn't a place for interpretation or deconstruction by someone who is non-notable. Gripdamage (talk) 19:38, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

You walk on dangerous ground by assuming that information in an article is "theory" or "interpretation or deconstruction by someone who is non-notable". And in this particular case, you're dead wrong. Copeland himself has said the song is about romance in a communist regime in more than one interview. Should I again come across one of the interviews mentioning it, I'll add the citation; the only Police interview I have at hand right now, the one from Revolver, doesn't mention the song.--Martin IIIa (talk) 20:14, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Stewart was asked the question "What is 'Ms. Gradenko' about?" in a June 2005 AOL chat session. His answer was "Forbidden love and a totalitarian regime. (Stalin in love)." A transcript of the chat is easy to find online. I'll add a citation to the article. David Koller (talk) 20:28, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Excellent! Nice work.--Martin IIIa (talk) 13:47, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

agreed! Gripdamage (talk) 03:13, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Release date

Does anybody have confirmation of the original release date for this album? In the UK it entered the album chart w/e 25 June, which would suggest a UK release date of 10 June. It should be easy enough to confirm this just as soon as I have access to the archives of UK music magazines from 1983. However, that does not preclude the possibility that Synchronicity was released in the US first – as the June 1983 issues of Billboard are not available online, does anybody have access to magazines of the time that state the US release date? Richard3120 (talk) 03:05, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Update: Right, I have worked out that the album's first week on the US album chart was the week ending 2 July 1983, so it definitely wasn't released on 1 June. I know that the standard day for record releases in the US at the time was a Tuesday, so it looks like Synchronicity was released in the UK on 10 June 1983, and in the US on 21 June 1983. If anybody can confirm these dates, that would be helpful. Richard3120 (talk) 04:47, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

I've found the album was released on 17 June in the UK, so I will change the date in the article to reflect that. Richard3120 (talk) 21:55, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

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 Done Richard3120 (talk) 00:53, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

"Songs" section

I've added an "original research" tag to this section because it's entirely unreferenced and seems to feature one editor's views of the songs' structures and their meanings. I've got an interview from the time of the album's release where the band members explain what "Synchronicity", "Miss Gradenko", "Every Breath You Take" and "Murder by Numbers" are about, so this could form the basis of a section regarding song composition. Richard3120 (talk) 00:51, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

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 Done Richard3120 (talk) 19:24, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Removed some dumb-ass rock critic drivel

Have removed the twaddle from Melody Maker's Adam Sweeting about how, "devotees of this extremely sussed trio will find plenty to amuse them"; but, however, he, "could never fall in love with a group which plans its moves so carefully and which would never do anything just for the hell of it". How does he know? And that's 99% of successful groups. Shall we all slag these for their smart management of their careers? And do we need to only rate high groups that Adam Sweeting falls in love with? Dumb-ass comment from a dumb ass rock writer.--Jelsova (talk) 09:50, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

And I've reverted your removal, because our personal opinion of the review should not take priority over the fact that the source is reliable – Melody Maker was the second biggest-selling music magazine in the UK at the time, so Sweeting's review would have been widely read. And Sweeting went on to write for several other respected publications. It's actually quite instructive to see contemporary reviews and see how critical opinion of a record has changed over time, so there is a lot of value in including negative reviews. Richard3120 (talk) 14:01, 14 October 2020 (UTC)