Every Breath You Take

Rocktober 5th! 

For the month of October, we celebrate Rock Music!

In years past, I’ve gone the route of great rock songs of all time. But this year I wanted to do something a little different,  and have chosen to go with Great Rock Songs of the 80s.

As always, especially when it comes to music, the topic is subjective. But, I’m sure you’ll be happy with my selections for this month. 

Today our song is: Every Breath You Take – The Police

Wikipedia tells us this about the song:

To escape the public eye, Sting retreated to the Caribbean. He started writing the song at Ian Fleming's writing desk on the Goldeneye estate in Oracabessa, Jamaica. The lyrics are the words of a possessive lover who is watching "every breath you take; every move you make". Sting recalled:

I woke up in the middle of the night with that line in my head, sat down at the piano and had written it in half an hour. The tune itself is generic, an aggregate of hundreds of others, but the words are interesting. It sounds like a comforting love song. I didn't realise at the time how sinister it is. I think I was thinking of Big Brother, surveillance and control.

When asked why he appears angry in the music video, Sting told BBC Radio 2, "I think the song is very, very sinister and ugly and people have actually misinterpreted it as being a gentle little love song, when it's quite the opposite. Hence so." Gary T. Marx, sociologist and scholar of surveillance studies, wrote in 1988 that, while the song was "a love rather than a protest song", it "nicely captures elements of the new surveillance". He compared the lines to various new technologies of surveillance, including linking "every breath you take" to breath analyzers, "every step you take" to ankle monitors, and "every vow you break" to voice stress analysis.

According to the Phil Spector Back to Mono box-set book, "Every Breath You Take" is influenced by a Gene Pitney song titled "Every Breath I Take". Led Zeppelin's song, "D'yer Mak'er" (1973), also contains the words "every breath I take; every move I make".

  

Thank you for supporting me during this month-long music fest. If  you choose to join me in this RockFest, feel free to snag my graphic at the top or you can create your own. You don’t even have to use my same theme - just as long as it’s Rock Music.