The Police's iconic 1983 single "Every Breath You Take" was nearly never finished, as the band came close to abandoning its final album, Synchronicity, amid severe interpersonal tensions during recording at George Martin's AIR Studios in Montserrat. Engineer Hugh Padgham recalled bitter fights between Sting and drummer Stewart Copeland over the song's stripped-back arrangement, with ten days of studio work producing nothing usable, prompting a pivotal poolside meeting with the band's manager to decide whether the album would continue at all.

Sting wrote the song's core lyrics in a single half-hour burst after waking with the opening line in his head, later recording a solo demo before bringing it to the band. Clashes centred on Sting's insistence on a simple, unembellished drum part, which frustrated Copeland and led to repeated failed takes in a sweltering, air-conditioning-free studio. Despite the discord, and Copeland's later admission that the recording lacked "groove", the song became the biggest US and Canadian hit of 1983, topping the Billboard Hot 100 for eight weeks and cementing itself as the band's defining, if often misunderstood, legacy.