The Police
Outlandos D'Amour

THE REVIEW

The progenitor of Police’s works, “Outlandos D’Amour”, was released in 1978, right in the midst of the wave of excitement caused by the punk wave that began spreading the previous year after a short period of gestation. And while various groups were forming here and there, destined to leave a profound mark on the future global music scene, three musicians of different skills and experience joined their forces to express their particular approach to rock music by founding The Police.

The individuals in question are: the bassist, composer, and singer with a jazz background Sting, whose real name is Gordon Matthew Sumner, the experienced guitarist Andy Summers, who had already worked with the Animals, and the American-born drummer Stewart Copeland. After their first single, “Fall Out” (produced with the modest guitarist Henry Padovani still in the lineup) and several attempts to get noticed by playing alongside purely punk groups like the Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks, the three hit the right path with the release of a song written by Sting, “Roxanne”, which skillfully blends reggae and punk. The piece in question, which narrates a boy's attempt to persuade the prostitute he loves to leave her "job," was censored by the BBC, but as often happens in these cases, it had the opposite effect. The Police indeed, riding the wave of success earned by the single, secured a contract with A&M for three albums over three years and recorded their debut album, almost entirely composed by Sting: “Outlandos D’Amour”.

This is a hybrid work, still utilizing elements of punk origin, but already containing the reggae germs that would characterize the subsequent “Reggatta De Blanc.” These are evident in the second track, “So Lonely”, a remarkable song with alternating rhythm, reggae in the verse, and vigorous in the chorus, enriched by lyrics that very well describe the loneliness after a love story, in the second beautiful single “Can’t Stand Losing You”, also with a dual structure and on the subject of the unbearable nature of the end of love and in the fourth track, “Hole In My Life”, musically somewhat repetitive and once again centered on the lack of love, the true thread of the work. Besides the famous “Roxanne”, the album contains other impactful songs, such as the rhythmic “Truth Hits Everybody”, “Born In The 50’s”, and “Peanuts” (written jointly by Sting and Copeland and accompanied by a saxophone solo). The last two compositions of the album deserve a separate discussion: the unique “Be My Girl-Sally” (by Sting and Summers) in which the musical background is interrupted for a poetry reading by Summers himself and the instrumental “Masoko Tanga”, in which the desire to experiment and have fun with the music prevails among three musicians proficient with their instruments. It is precisely this fact, the technical superiority of the three "policemen" compared to others from the post-punk cohort, and their use of it to renew the song form with insertions of other genres, combined with Sting's excellent melodic ability, that would constitute their fortune already starting from this work.

A seminal album for the Police genre.