This Dad-Rock Tuesday, I was assigned The Police’s debut, Outlandos d’Amour. Going into this listening, I knew one thing about The Police: that Message in a Bottle is a song of theirs—ah, the Guitar Hero days.
So this record is pretty hit-or-miss for me. I can’t deny that songs like Peanuts or the classic Next to You got a fair amount of foot tapping out of me, but unfortunately, the whole record fails to meet the standard of those few songs.
The tracks that miss, in my opinion, are the extremely repetitive ones. Guess what word gets said about a hundred thousand times during So Lonely. I’ll give you a hint; it rhymes with “only.” That’s not the only stuttering song on the record. All I’ll say is, whoever you are, Roxanne, you’re supposed to remember to put on your red light.
Sting’s vocals can become obnoxious as well. When he uses his normal voice, everything’s fine. I’ll go as far as to say it sounds great. If only he sang every song like Next to You. Unfortunately, he decides to use a really annoying falsetto for far too much of the record. Maybe songs like Hole in my Life or Truth Hits Everybody could have been somewhat listenable if the singer didn’t sound like a whiny toddler.
I’ve never really been a big fan of new-wave, so the fact that I didn’t love this record didn’t come as a huge surprise to me. Looking back, I always avoided playing Message in a Bottle on Guitar Hero…I’ll send an SOS to the world (∞x)…
Swole Ear 
Interesting thing in your review is the non-appearance of the word “reggae”. When this album came out, the big hype was that it was the first attempt to fuse punk with reggae. I am wondering if this sort of cross-over has now become so routine that it does not even jump out at you. For me, your review is pretty much on the mark, though I would give a little respect to Stewart Copeland’s drumming and point out that the Police actually were a pretty great live act in their early days. Also, I would encourage you to check out Stewart Copeland’s humorous alter-ego Klark Kent from the early days of the Police: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIrrkBpPJMA
Right on to Klark Kent and good point about reggae/punk (they were neither)becoming routine. This review made me think — is the music good — or am I just sentimental. I still like some of it — and I have to say that repeating “so lonely” a hundred times is what you want to do when you are so lonely, so I think Der Sting may have been on to something before he became one of the biggest jokes in music. Gotta go — my red light is on.