Decades After The Police Split, A Legal Battle Over Sting’s Biggest Hit Returns
Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland have sent an SOS to the courts, demanding Sting pay up.
Sting’s former Police bandmates claim that the bass player-singer is unjustly hoarding the royalties to the band’s hit song “Every Breath You Take.”
Across the band’s 11-year history, they have never produced a more successful song than this hit. Nearly four decades after their tragic breakup, the song remains their most influential work. The beloved rock track spent eight weeks at the top of the chart when it was released in 1983. The slow romantic jam with a creepy stalker undertone is undeniably a huge moneymaker for the group, but the dispute goes beyond money. Copeland and Summers want to be included in the legacy of the hit as songwriters and collaborators.
The Police’s Biggest Hit Still Brings In Massive Royalties
The impact of “Every Breath You Take,” is difficult to overstate. The song defines the state of American music in 1983. The song continues to receive accolades decades after its release; it holds a place on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 best songs of all time, surpassing 195 other songs at number 305. The track has amassed 3 billion streams on Spotify, an app that was released 25 years after the song.
The song has been used in countless movies and TV shows, perhaps most famously in “The Sopranos” and “Just Go With It.” The song’s appearances across the media, online streams, and single sales combined amount to huge pay days for those entitled to the song’s royalties. Copeland and Summers claim they are not getting a fair cut. According to the lawsuit, Sting is raking in £550,000 every year in royalties from “Every Breath You Take,” alone.
Old Band Tensions Resurface In A New Legal Battle
The three-piece never truly experienced harmonious collaboration. From their inception, they weren’t a tight-knit group of friends, they were more akin to coworkers with a common goal. Although Sting, Copeland, and Summers all had songwriting aspirations, Sting felt that his work was more sophisticated than the work of his bandmates. Sting later felt that he suffered from this dynamic just as much as his stifled collaborators. He told Rolling Stone in 2007, “it’s difficult to tell somebody it’s not a good song, and it was usually me.”
Copeland and Summers both contributed to the writing of “Every Breath You Take.” Although Sting wrote the lyrics, Summers came up with the song’s iconic guitar riff and Copeland’s unique approach to the kit that defined the Police. The tensions that caused the band’s untimely demise in the midst of their stardom are echoed in the grievances found within the lawsuit.
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