The Police have joined the billion views club on YouTube with their 1983 music video for “Every Breath You Take,” making it the 225th video to achieve this huge milestone.
The Godley & Creme-directed clip, uploaded to the video platform 12 years ago, is the seventh music video from the ‘80s to have amassed more than 1 billion views.
Other artists from that era in the club are Michael Jackson (“Billie Jean”), Cyndi Lauper (“Girls Just Want to Have Fun”), Guns N’ Roses (“Sweet Child O’ Mine”), Europe (”The Final Countdown”), Rick Astley (“Never Gonna Give You Up”) and A-ha (“Take On Me”).
Filmed in black and white, “Every Breath You Take” revolves around The Police (composed of Sting, Andy Summers and Steward Copeland) performing the song, joined by a four-piece string section and grand piano highlighting the underlying musical parts of this classic track.
In 2019, it was named the most performed song at the BMI Pop Awards, with 15 million radio plays, from BMI’s catalog of over 14 million musical works.
Written by Sting, reportedly when he was suffering a mental breakdown following the end of his first marriage, the song won the Grammy Award for song of the year in 1985.
The video went on to win a MTV Video Music Award, too.
It remains one of the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer’s best-known tracks.
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