Bring On the POLL - ILM Artist Poll #116 - THE POLICE - (Results Thread)

Yeah it’s a cool record if you just wanna hear them play.

The order of the albums almost matched my ballot, but I had #s 4 and 5 flipped.

I think that was exactly mine. Outlandos definitely my #5 but that's a pretty good worst album to have.

I didn't include albums on my ballot, but Outlandos would've been my #1. It the least fussy of all their albums and I admire that (which means I'm probably seeking out the wrong qualities in The Police). It's the only one I ever play with no skips.

I do dig the early-installment weirdness on it. there are several directions on that album they'd never go in again.

yeah i’d swap outlandos with zenyatta, zenyatta kinda gives up after the first 4 tracks

Zenyatta was my pick. That scrappy, raggedy sound on "When The world is Running Down..." is heaven to my ears.

Albums results are about right imo

By the way, the Eva Cassidy cover of "Fields of Gold" seems to have had a longer shelf life (in terms of TV / movie use and general lovability) than the Stingster's.

Was surprised to find Outlandos ranked so low. But it was my gateway into the band, so maybe I have an outsized sense of its rep generally. The highs are really high! I admit that Born in the 50s, and the spoken-word part of Be My Girl, are kind of unbearable.

The BBC often used to have humorous poets with regional accents on early evening light entertainment shows - I'm thinking of Pam Ayers etc - and 'Sally' always make me think I've just accidentally caught the tail-end of That's Life and some joker's doing a bad knock-off of 'In Every Dream Home A Heartache'. It is quite impressive how much of the shittest bits of Britain in the late 70s are encapsulated in that piece

That scrappy, raggedy sound on "When The world is Running Down..." is heaven to my ears.

Mine too — I ranked that song VERY high on the tracks ballot. And I like the album, but it is a bit of a hodgepodge and I don't love its big singles.

Thirded, voted for that track but also had the album as my #1. I thought it was uneven when I first heard it, but it's all grown on me and wouldn't change a thing. I know the Police don't think highly of it because of the deadline pressure but in retrospect I wonder if that helped. They didn't labor too much over anything, and they had to fall back on what they did easiest/best. Great rhythms, great hooks, for the most part nothing they messed with too much, much to the album's benefit.

Doing a Top 40, which is really too many. I did a Top 60 when I ran Daft Punk earlier this year and the 60th placement only had three votes. But that is a different animal and that was the right length, good collaborations in the bottom half of that poll but I digress. The Police poll has a floor of four votes, which works. This way we get all number ones in the main rollout, where if I went for only 30 then some would have missed the rollout.

https://i.imgur.com/xmDJBpK.jpg

40. Mother
From: Synchronicity
Released: June 17, 1983
110 Points, 4 Votes

I didn’t know how I wanted this poll to look. There aren’t a lot of different band shots and video shots did intrigue me. I finally decided to go with movie posters from the year the song came out. I would not say 1978- 1983 is a golden age for Hollywood but there are some pretty good posters. I did mess up a bit as these are gross US numbers so some films do bleed into to more then one year. I don’t think I will repeat a poster however.

too high

solo is awesome tho

Ha, this being the start to the rollout is perfect - I didn't vote for it and don't even like it but I love that it's right there, forever, on side 1 of the platinum-selling album Synchronicity.

This song used to piss my dad off so much when it came on, maybe this was the most punk thing they ever did? Also funny that Andy goes full-freudian on sting's jung-themed album

Didn't vote for it though - as much as I admire it, it really is terrible

"You think you can misread Freud, boy-o? Watch MEEEEEE!"

xps 1978-1983 is a kind of a transitional time. The last gasps of the New Hollywood ("Days of Heaven," "Apocalypse Now," "Raging Bull," "King of Comedy," "Heaven's Gate," etc.) The "creative executives" were taking over and you can see more studio meddling with the mutilation of films like "Blade Runner."

But a lot of great stuff happening in the margins. Great burgeoning talent (Albert Brooks with "Real Life" and "Modern Romance," David Lynch with "The Elephant Man," Jonathan Demme with "Melvin and Howard," David Cronenberg with "Videodrome," Sara Driver with "You Are Not I," George Miller and Joe Dante getting established in Hollywood with their "Twilight Zone" segments), long-time mavericks making a comeback or still plugging away (John Cassavetes with "Gloria," Sam Fuller with "The Big Red One" and "White Dog," Ivan Passer with "Cutter's Way," Dennis Hopper with "Out of the Blue," John Huston with "Wise Blood") and the underground scene was just starting to flourish (Charles Burnett's "My Brother's Wedding" among many others).

This song is amazing and hilarious. And it's in 7/4.

solo is awesome tho

Great post birdistheword and I agree that there are some great movies during this era. Looking at a list of movies tho, there was a lot of crap too. I hope I got some good posters out of this exercise.

https://i.imgur.com/gQ7QXsZ.jpg

39. Rehumanize Yourself
From: Ghost in the Machine
Released: October 2, 1981
119 Points, 4 Votes

I mean:

https://i.imgur.com/EEAgjra.jpg

I'm very busy at work today and won't be able to do 20 like I had originally planned. This will be a slow reveal today but maybe that's OK?

That movie looks like a remake of Bedazzled which was actually a fun movie.

it's okay -- rehumanize yourself!

love this song, maybe my favorite of Copeland's Police tunes

It’s actually a collab with Sting? I’d forgotten that.

I think Sting wrote the lyrics, Copeland did the music. well, Sting is probably responsible for the uh "sax arrangements" as well

sting wrote the lyrics, Stewart wrote the music iirc. Never been a fan of this one tbh, lyrics are way too on-the-nose and delivered with sting's most snide-sounding vocal, listening to it actually makes me want to turn into a robot and tase the guy till his socks catch fire.

shocked by the c word in this as a kid, first time I heard it on record

https://i.imgur.com/gKfLJkw.jpg

38. Too Much Information
From: Ghost in the Machine
Released: October 2, 1981
143 Points, 5 Votes

the weird filler tracks on ghost are better than the weird filler tracks on the other albums. i voted for a couple, not this one tho

xp or this one

love this one, what a groove

otm

See the whole world six times over

Voted for both of those Ghost tracks, they're jams.

https://i.imgur.com/QyBPbIo.jpg

37. Shadows in the Rain
From: Zenyattà Mondatta
Released: October 3. 1980
148 Points, 5 Votes

RIP

have realised that I now very much prefer the police when they're exploring atmospheres, textures and grooves - I guess in retrospect you could say their proto post-rock tendencies - rather then when they're more bent on rocking out, as potent as they often were in that mode. But it's the spaces I'm into, and how they arrange things around that, and this ghostly one is one of their best for that I think

anyone want to say anything about the differences between the police and the clash in how they approached dubby sounds? clash always seem to use dub for political songs, police use it for creating haunted spaces

I mean I could develop that thesis further myself but I know fuck all about the clash tbf

https://i.imgur.com/QlqmmEK.jpg

36. Murder by Numbers
From: Synchronicity
Released: June 17, 1983
Bonus track on cassette and CD editions
149 Points, 5 Votes

lol, i did not relate images with songs but in this case it works.

I think the Police incorporated dub more organically than the Clash did — as a core part of their Sonic foundation rather than an adventurous add-on. Though some things on Combat Rock got close, like “Ghetto Defendant.”

lol