Pros: Some tight, reggae influence punkishness, including Roxanne, So Lonely
Cons: Some icky filler
The Bottom Line: It's one of the Police's two good albums, well worth owning if only because it will show you why you are morally required to hate Sting now
Mr.Eyore's Full Review: Outlandos d'Amour by The Police
I’m so old I remember when Sting wasn’t an obnoxious, cultural cherry-picking windbag writing commercial jingles. I’m old enough to remember when the Police were considered edgy, and girls thought Stewart Copeland was the hot guy in the band, and people knew where that song came from that Eddie Murphy sang in the original 48 hours.
The Police were never punk, but they passed themselves off briefly in this country as a sort of Clash for middle-America. They had tight melodies, spiky hair, an occasional ska or reggae influence, blurry pictures on their album covers, and random use of Spanish, just like the Clash. But unlike the Clash, they had no soul, no point of view and only a facsimile of class-based angst and anger.
That’s okay. You don’t necessarily have to have a soul to make good music. And the Police did make some good music. Outlandos d’ Amor, and their second album Regatta de Blanc, are exceptional. Both contain fantastic, hard-hitting songs with raw vocals and the sort of intuitive songwriting and efficient musicianship that characterizes the very best garage-pop bands, even if the inclination toward tight playing would later lead Sting to think jazz-influenced muzak was acceptable. And in the end, if you have no soul, you end up making songs like “King of Pain” “Wrapped Around Your Finger” and “Every Breath You Take”. You can hide it for a while, but eventually it comes out. In the end, the Police were a glorified ballad band. They wrote love songs. And if you’re a white artist, love songs by and large are the hallmark of no soul. REM knew this, which is why they held off for 7 albums before writing their first love song.
If the Police had ultimately lived up to their introduction on the first track of Outlandos, “Next to You” they may well have become a band with some lasting relevance. Copeland’s perfect drumming drives the song. Sting’s raw, yearning, bluesy vocals raise it to art, even if Andy Summers’ guitar work, while skillful as usual, shows his occasional prog-rock pretensions.
“So Lonely” is a great counterpoint. It begins with a slow, seriously funky, reggae tempo, and Sting singing on the backbeat in his best falsetto:
Well someone told me yesterday
that when you show your love away
you act as if you just don’t care
you look as if you’re goin’ somewhere
but I just can’t convince myself
I couldn’t live with noone else
and I can only play that part
and sit and nurse my broken heart
“Roxanne” also follows the Reggae theme. As almost everyone with ears knows, “Roxanne” is a super-catchy song about a hooker, wherein a john beseeches the little harlot to quit being a prostitute, then, for the sake of the chorus, instead urges her to “put on the red light” thereby sending a mixed message to both the subject of the song and all teenagers out there considering a glamorous life in the beejay arts. Like the prior songs, and many of the Police’s best later efforts, part of what makes these songs great is an under-rated element: The harmonies are provided by Summers and Stewart, who had real vocal talent in their own rights. “Roxanne” is a classic, and if the album only had one or two listenable songs to support it, that alone would justify its purchase. But there are more than one or two other good songs on Outlandos. In fact, there are three. (“Can’t Stand Losing You,” also reggae-influenced is not great, but it’s every bit as catchy as the earlier ones.)
There’s another pair of listenable songs thrown in, but each reveals some unhealthy pretensions that foreshadow the band’s abysmal future. “Hole in My Life” is probably not a good song, being as it’s got some kind of weird, jangly Doobie Brothers meets Chicago buildup, and is packed with Chicago meets Chicago cliches. But I kind of like it anyway. “Peanuts” is nice and hard-driving. Totally could have been a great song, except for the odd horn and guitar solos that interrupt the otherwise nice quasi-punk melody.
“Born in the 50s,” totally gives up the game though. Sting weighs the song down with what would become one of his many signature affectations: The attempt to be more meaningful lyrically than he’s capable of. The Police were never gonna be the voice of a generation, and Sting’s attempt to be just that here makes you want to dick-slap him. The last two songs on the album, “Be my Girl – Sally” and “Masoko Tanga” are pure filler with which the Police could have improved the disc immensely by leaving them off.
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