I'll Be Watching You...

I always loved The Police - Sting's band, that is. It's rare to hear something that strikes you as utterly original and appealing, and continues to do so every time you hear it, for decades.

At first encounter, "Every Breath You Take" struck me as a new take on the age-old obsessive love song. But before the song was over, I was realizing that the "I'll Be Watching You," which also felt like the title of that song, was more than personal. It was social, and the "I" was the omnipresent Eye of Big Brother.

That was 1983, just a year before 1984, so of course I was thinking of Big Brother. But 1984 came and went, and the song stayed, just below the surface but somehow always relevant, and it was just recently that I realized how it really applies:

It was and is a harbinger of YouYube, of cams and videocams in cell phones, or the personal media that make every one one of us a producer who can take clip of you and put it up on YouTube where it can be viewed by millions in a few minutes.

"I'll Be Watching You" is a mantra to this new all-seeing transparent world. I enjoy it - I like being public, that's why I write and go on tv and radio. But it doesn't really matter if you want to be a star in someone's video or not. The point is that you can, and that getting on YouTube is becoming as natural as someone looking at you as you walk down the street...

So "I'll Be Watching You - Every Breath You Take, Every Move You Make" has more relevance than ever. It could be programmed to play in every cell phone, and that would be all right.

In the meantime, you can hear it in the new police cd - 30th anniversary, double disk. "I'll Be Watching You" is by no means the only great Police recording. "Spirits in the Material World," "Roxanne," and lots of other gems are on this police cd.

Hey, don't surprised if, as you're listening to it, and grooving to it, someone will be watching you...

Win a New York fly-away to see The Police live.