The Police were among the bands I really dug as a teen. I came to appreciate them more as I got older, after they had broken up. On their early albums, the band was punk rock adjacent, a virtuosic power trio who gave the world “So Lonely,” “Can’t Stand Losing You,” “Regatta De Blanc” and a lot of others I still queue up from time to time.
Frontman Sting later decried their biggest hit, “Every Breath You Take,” as being ”sinister,” as in stalkerish. But to me as a 17-year-old, the sentiment of his first solo single, 1985’s “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free,” seemed a lot more sinister than “Every Breath You Take.” “Look, I don’t even have a girlfriend, Sting, but supposing I did, why exactly would I intentionally try to get rid of her?” my young self wondered.
Sting set to perform May 25, 26 in Bend The notion of trying to huck love like some kind of boomerang seemed facile and pretentious. I was completely certain that any girl who deigned to reciprocate my affections would wise up the second she escaped my orbit. Absent the privilege Sting’s talent, wealth and fame might afford, any relationship I could see myself entering would be far too precarious for such an experiment.
Of course, there is a fuller version of the saying that predates the song. It’s sometimes attributed to Richard Bach, author of “Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” but no one seems to know where it comes from : “If you love something, set it free. If it returns.
