CLASSIC POP
TOP TEN
WEEK BEGINNING 08 NOVEMBER 1981
EURO-FLAVOURED CHART, WITH ONE SPANISH-LANGUAGE SINGLE AND TWO GALLICINFLUENCED SONGS FROM SQUEEZE AND OMD
STEVE O’BRIEN
EVERY LITTLE THING SHE DOES IS MAGIC THE POLICE (A&M)
The second single off Sting and co.’s fourth long-player Ghost In The Machine was the band’s third No.1, topping the LP’s lead platter, Invisible Sun. Though recorded in 1981, the song’s origins went back fi ve years to the formation of The Police. In fact, Sting even laid down a demo in 1976, a version which fi nally saw daylight on the 1997 album Strontium 90: Police Academy. A second demo was recorded in early ’81, but Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers believed the song was “too soft” for The Police, and decided to re-record it from scratch to ‘Police-ify’ it up. Afterwards they agreed that the new version didn’t have the same oomph, and so Sting suggested that Copeland and Summers simply overdub the second demo, and thus a mega hit was born.
LABELLED WITH LOVE SQUEEZE (A&M)
Chris Difford dreamed up the idea for this one after discovering a photograph of an old lady sitting at a Parisian bar in the mid-1930s. “Labelled With Love was an adult lyric in a way that the older generation could latch on to and understand,” the songwriter explained. “My mother absolutely loved it. The story is about the end of a relationship after the war. I’d been reading about American soldiers in Britain during the war who married English girls and whisked them off their feet to the States.” Co-produced by Elvis Costello, this country-tinged number would be the band’s last Top 10 hit in the UK.