This week’s Tape of the Week holds the first two Police albums, and the song I want to pull out is “Can’t Stand Losing You.” Sting has said he wrote it in his basement flat in Bayswater in 1978. It came out as a single in August 1978. It stalled at first, but a June 1979 reissue nearly topped the UK chart, held off only by “I Don’t Like Mondays” by the Boomtown Rats.
The single sleeve had Stewart Copeland standing on a block of ice with a noose around his neck, which got the record into trouble with the BBC. Even better, Copeland says the instrumental “Reggatta de Blanc” began as a stage jam in the middle of this song. That means the two albums on this tape are connected by this one track. Turn it up.
Want more? Browse our Song of the Day archive.
