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The Police – Walking On The Moon
‘Regatta de Blanc’ came out in 1979. as the rise of reggae music began to creep across the U.S. The Police were heavily influenced by that sound and very specific rhythm and it stays in most of the band’s songs.
“Walking On The Moon” was very reggae and was written by a drunk Sting in a hotel. He was stumbling around his hotel room and started singing to himself, “Walking around the room..” as he was trying to sober up. That line had a rhythm built into it just by the syllables and it fit inside a reggae beat.
After working the song in many different ways, they dropped the rock sound and peeled at back to simple riffs. One bass hook that repeats, a guitar chord hit, in rhythm as a punctuation to the bass riff and originally just a time keeping drum part. Then, it all just congealed into the complex, understated and simple song we know today.
It became The Police’s second #1 on the U.K. and a favorite of Police fans and FM rock radio.
