The Police: So Lonely
[purchase]
Admittedly and unabashedly based on Bob Marley's No Woman, No Cry - itself an admonition to a lonely subject - this deliberate attempt to hybridize Thrash Punk with Reggae came into being on Outlandos D'Amour, but didn't chart until its 1980 re-release as a single.
Throbbing with Punk's alienatation, but like so much of The Police canon bereft of its class consciousness, the second verse comes across as a bit too theatrical, perhaps a fitting harbinger for Sting's later solo career as a sensitive popstar. But I like the speed-up-slow-down of plodding verse and driving chorus; with it, the song plays out as an apt rhythmic portrayal of the alternately maudlin and angry character of so much of our own loneliness.
