The story behind The Police’s ‘Every Bomb You Make’, a Spitting Image TV satire on ‘Every Breath You Take’
The story behind The Police’s 'Every Bomb You Make', a Spitting Image TV satire on 'Every Breath You Take'
The 40th-anniversary extended reissue for The Police album “Synchronicity” also re-surfaced the track “Every Bomb You Make”. It was not an alternate studio draft of “Every Breath You Take”, instead it was a one-off commission for television.
In 1984, Spitting Image was building its reputation as a Sunday-night ITV satire. The series used latex puppets of political leaders and public figures and often paired sketches with pop-music pastiches. One of those pastiches repurposed The Police’s 1983 hit “Every Breath You Take”. The show’s approach was simple: keep the melody audiences already knew, then replace the romantic obsession with contemporary political targets.
The vocal did not come from an impersonator. instead the show asked Sting to sing it.
Where the original line fixates on surveillance and control in a personal relationship, the parody shifts the gaze outward to state power and violence.
For years, “Every Bomb You Make” circulated mainly as an archival curiosity: a memory among UK viewers, a clip traded online, and a footnote in documentation of Spitting Image.
That changed with the 40th-anniversary campaign for “Synchronicity”. On May 29, 2024, an official announcement posted on Sting’s site detailed a multi-format reissue program timed for July 26, 2024, including a 6CD set with the track and multiple vinyl editions.
About The Police
The band formed in London, England, in 1977. The band’s best-known core line-up is Sting (Gordon Sumner) on lead vocals and bass, Andy Summers on guitar, and Stewart Copeland on drums.
The group began as a trio with guitarist Henry Padovani, before Summers replaced him in 1977 and the trio format became the band’s long-term structure.
Across five studio albums – “Outlandos d’Amour” (1978), “Reggatta de Blanc” (1979), “Zenyatta Mondatta” (1980), “Ghost in the Machine” (1981), and “Synchronicity” (1983) – the trio combined punk-era economy with reggae and pop elements and became one of the defining bands of late-1970s and early-1980s British rock.
About Spitting Image
“Spitting Image” is a British satirical television series built around latex puppet caricatures of politicians, royals, and entertainment figures. It premiered on ITV on February 26, 1984, and ran until February 18, 1996.
The show was created by Peter Fluck, Roger Law, and Martin Lambie-Nairn, and produced by Spitting Image Productions for Central (Central Independent Television) across 18 series and 134 episodes.
After the original ITV run, the franchise returned as a revival series on BritBox in the UK from October 3, 2020. In July 2025, the brand re-emerged again as a YouTube series, “Spitting Image: The Rest Is Bulls*!t”, with Avalon announcing a teaser episode released on July 4, 2025.
The series also built a track record for music parodies and pop-culture pastiches. That format included commissioning Sting to sing “Every Bomb You Make” for the original run’s “Spitting Image” segment that aired on June 17, 1984.
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