Loud and Clear: The Police: “Message in a Bottle”

The Police’s 1979 hit, “Message in a Bottle” is their reggae-pop-rock take on isolation and alienation. It’s the (allegorical) story of a castaway on an island who sends out a communication, an “S.O.S. to the world,” and in return receives a uniquely poetic form of salvation.

The lead singer, Sting goes on to tell about how “Love can mend your life/But love can break your heart.” Yet one morning after more than of year of solitude, the castaway wakes to find “a hundred billion bottles/washed up on the shore/Seems I’m not alone at being alone/a hundred billion castaways/looking for a home.” Seemingly it’s validation and a sense of camaraderie between the faceless message writers that serve as (spiritual) rescue.

What Lies Beneath: The Police: “Synchronicity II”

The yell expelled by Sting at the top of The Police’s 1983 “Synchronicity II” evokes memories of early MTV. The band, along with a a core group of artists, were creating new material and offering it to the public in an innovative form—the music video.

The post-apocalyptic vision of “Synchronicity II” featured a windblown Sting with his spiky Dune-era hair and colorful shredded jacket, standing atop a mountain of wreckage. Loose sheets of paper and other debris blew around haphazardly, as he sang the opening lyric: “Another suburban family morning/Grandmother screaming at the wall.” Andy Summers’ distinctly mysterious guitar riffs and Stewart Copeland’s forceful drums and cymbals were ever present, as Sting shared the story of a family’s descent into madness. Even on Daddy’s way to work, destruction is evident in the environment: “Another industrial ugly morning/The factory belches filth into the sky.” And don’t think Daddy’s commute home is any better, as he deals with “Contestants in a suicidal race/Daddy grips the wheel/and stares alone into the distance/He knows that something somewhere has to break.”

But wait… “Many miles away/Something crawls from the slime/At the bottom of a dark/Scottish lake,” serving to foreshadow and solidify the end of peace and innocence, and an ominous transition toward something dark and mythical (the rising ness from the loch).