This Day in Music History: The Police/Synchronicity (06/01)

Synchronicity is the fifth and final studio album by English rock band The Police, released on this date in 1983.

The album was number one on both the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200, and sold over 8 million copies in the US. The album includes the chart topping hit singles "Every Breath You Take" (#1), "King of Pain" (#3), "Wrapped Around Your Finger" (#8) and "Synchronicity II" (#16).

The album's title was inspired by Arthur Koestler's The Roots of Coincidence, which mentions Carl Jung's theory of synchronicity. Sting was an avid reader of Koestler, and also named Ghost in the Machine after one of his works.The album's original cover artwork was available in 36 variations, with different arrangements of the color stripes and showing different photographs of the band members, which they took themselves. In the most common version Sting is reading a copy of Jung's "Synchronicity" on the front cover along with a superimposed negative image of the actual text of the synchronicity hypothesis. A photo on the back cover also shows a close-up, but mirrored and upside-down, image of Jung's book.

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