Sting turns 75: five Police albums, then a solo career

Sting turned 75 on October 2, 2026. He was born Gordon Sumner in Wallsend, England, on October 2, 1951. In under five years with The Police he made five studio albums, all of them hits, and then left the band at its peak to go solo.

Five albums, November 1978 to June 1983

The Police released Outlandos d'Amour in November 1978, followed by Reggatta de Blanc (1979), Zenyatta Mondatta (1980), Ghost in the Machine (1981) and Synchronicity (1983).

Ghost in the Machine came out on October 2, 1981, Sting's 30th birthday. It was recorded at AIR Studios on Montserrat and at Le Studio in Quebec, went to No. 1 in the UK for three weeks and reached No. 2 in the US.

Synchronicity and the song of 1983

Synchronicity was released on June 17, 1983. On the Billboard 200 it spent 17 weeks at No. 1, pushing Thriller off the top for most of the late summer and autumn. It has sold more than 8 million copies in the US.

Every Breath You Take was No. 1 on the Hot 100 for eight weeks and Billboard's No. 1 song of 1983. In 2019, BMI said it was the most performed song in its catalogue, with nearly 15 million radio plays. Sting has said people misread it as "a gentle little love song" when it is "very, very sinister and ugly."

Going solo

The Synchronicity tour ended in March 1984, and the band stopped there. Sting's first solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, came out on June 17, 1985, two years to the day after Synchronicity. He made it with jazz players including Branford Marsalis and Omar Hakim. It reached No. 2 in the US.

The Police never formally split. They played three Amnesty International shows in 1986 and came back for a world tour in 2007 and 2008.