Sting is being sued by his former Police bandmates Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland over alleged missing royalties for their signature song “Every Breath You Take,” according to reports published by the Los Angeles Times and other titles.
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Summers and Copeland filed their lawsuit in London High Court, in which they claim they were never properly credited as songwriters on “Every Breath You Take,” their biggest hit in the U.S. The pair also claim they never received royalties for their contributions to it.
Sting (real name: Gordon Matthew Sumner) and his publishing company, Magnetic Publishing, are listed as defendants in the suit.
Released in 1983, “Every Breath You Take” went all the way to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, the band’s first and only leader on the chart, and won a brace of Grammy Awards, for song of the year and best pop performance by a duo or group with vocals.
The evergreen number grew wings when Summers’ arpeggio was sampled on Puff Daddy and Faith Evans’ Notorious B.I.G. tribute from 1997, “I’ll Be Missing You.” In 2023, Puff Daddy went on the record as saying he pays Sting $5,000 every day for the use of that sample, a comment he later walked back.
In 2022, Sting sold his entire song catalog from his early days in The Police through his solo career to the Universal Music Publishing Group, a business decision that reunites his music publishing rights with his master recordings.
While terms of that deal were not disclosed, Billboard previously reported that Sting had been shopping a music asset bundle that produced an annual royalty income stream of about $12-$13 million and was looking at a roughly $360 million payday.
With their bleach-blonde hair, tight performances, and collection of radio friendly hits, including “Roxanne,” “Message In A Bottle”, “Walking On The Moon”, “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”, “Every Little Thing She Does,” “King Of Pain” and more, The Police were arguably the biggest band in the world, certainly for an album cycle or two.
In the UK, the band landed five consecutive No. 1s on the Official UK Albums Chart. The bandmates went their separate ways after completing the 1984 world tour in support of the Synchronicity album, before reuniting briefly in 1986 for a rerecording in “Don’t Stand So Close To Me,” which appeared on a greatest hits collection.
The former bandmates settled their differences to mount a 2007–2008 world tour, marking the 30th anniversary of their formation. Sting is booked to perform at QPAC’s Glasshouse Theatre in Brisbane next year, where he will present his musical The Last Ship.
