We love stories about bands that don’t get along the way we idealistically expect they should. Aaaaand we also find Sting pretentious. Of course this story has legs! But no teeth.
Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers don’t and likely won’t own any of the publishing on “Every Breath You Take,” no matter how much we love that guitar part or Stewart’s restrained and meticulous drumming. Sting is the sole credited songwriter of the musical work. That’s the melody, lyrics, and harmony; the stuff that, in this case, I and copyright law call the composition. Andy Summers’s arpeggiation of Sting’s chords is more of an arrangement and performance that live in the famous sound recording off the Synchronicity album. It’s not composition, so it doesn’t create authorship unless someone (Sting) decides to for some reason share it. There could be reasons and I know cases where if you’re even in the room, your rockstar boss puts your name on the song right beside his own. Not because he has to though, and not in this case. Here, the publishing checks route to Sting. Or actually his assignee. He sold his catalog to Universal in 2022.
We wouldn’t be here except that while the Police had a huge hit with “Every Breath You Take,” the real money is in the remake. When Puff Daddy released I’ll Be Missing You in 1997, built atop “Every Breath You Take,” the revenue firehose opened. This song REALLY made money, but only for Sting, because Puff Daddy used the composition and not the sound recording. Sting, as the sole credited songwriter controlled 100% of that stream. Despite a lot of talk of “sampling,” Summers’s guitar part, the undeniable hook of the famous Police recording, and a lot of what we think of as “Every Breath,” wasn’t a part of the copyright that Puffy licensed. Stevie (Stevie J) Jordan played the “Every Breath” guitar part on the Puff Daddy record, so Summers and Copeland got nothing from it, while Sting had a publishing windfall. This is the archetype, btw; my favorite real-world demonstration of how the law privileges composition over arrangement. No question, that riff does a lot of the work toward making both records iconic, but the check for I’ll Be Missing You goes where the songwriting credit lies, to Sting.
In this new Police litigation, Summers and Copeland are suing in London over lost royalties and lack of writing credit on “Every Breath You Take”; and there’s some other stuff going on, but the core of their argument is exactly this composition/arrangement line.
In copyright practice, a “musical work” is the underlying song, mostly melody, lyrics, and harmony. There are other elements and a forensic musicologist will look at several, but melody, lyrics and harmony are the core. The sound recording is merely the capture of a performance and production of that song. They’re two different copyrights too. We may be sympathetic to Summers here certainly. Brilliant parts (grooves, riffs, voicings) that transform a record live on the recording side and unless the writers choose to recognize them as composition, there’s no reason to assume they’ll be regarded that way. I’ve personally been a studio musician who walked in, cut that turkey, and left behind the coolest catchiest little riff on the record. But I took my check and went home afterward, clean and cut. There’s some nuance here. An arrangement can be protectable as a derivative work if it contains original authorship, but those little elements I imparted in those studios didn’t turn me into a co-author of those underlying songs except once when I was really young and a payment didn’t go smoothly. “Hey, that’s okay, let’s talk points.” I said, feeling my oats. It needs to be agreed upon and credited.
There’s the pattern: unforgettable record elements that don’t translate to song authorship. Composition versus arrangement
There’s a bit going on here. It’s gotta be frustrating. “I’ll Be Missing You” wasn’t just a hit — it sold millions, topped charts globally, and continues streaming today. Sting might be getting 5k a day from it. If the Police master had been sampled, and it could soooo easily have been, Summers and Copeland would likely have seen seven-figure payouts over time for the master-use license. Puffy and Stevie J were very much in the remake business. They knew what was up. Puffy interpolated, not sampled, and all the money was routed to Sting.
The Police, like many bands, had side agreements about how money would be split internally, and some of this current litigation involves how best to read those deals made well before the streaming era. Did they cover just record sales, or all publishing income streams? Personally, I’m sympathetic on these aspects, but that’s a lawyer’s fight over contract interpretation. It may well be the stronger part of the case. It would almost have to be. But that isn’t musicology, and I’m not a lawyer, so I’ll leave that angle to the courts and look forward to reading more about it.
I’ll leave you with this though. Hey you guitarists! Or you Bob Seger sax players, or stop to consider it, actually Bob Seger anything. Mainstreet? Here I Go? That catalog has got some catchy riffs in it! If you want a riff/groove recognized in the composition, you negotiate it up front (or be very, very indispensable and lucky later). Otherwise, your genius lives in the master, not the song.
