Sting is out on the road this summer, his setlists a blend of solo anthems and Police classics. But while audiences are hearing Roxanne, Every Breath You Take and Message in a Bottle as evergreen rock staples, in the background, the songs are at the centre of a bitter civil case.
Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland, Sting’s old bandmates, have filed at the High Court claiming they’re owed royalties that have never been paid. It’s the latest skirmish in a story that underlines how creativity and money have always been intertwined, awkwardly, and often destructively, in The Police.
The public record is simple: the hits are credited to Sting alone. But Summers has long maintained that his guitar lines are as essential to Every Breath You Take as the lyrics or melody. “That song was going in the trash until I played on it, and that’s all there is to it,” he has said. “And I think that’s composition, absolutely.”
Beyond that dispute, there was an arrangement as far back as 1977 that whoever wrote the song would share a percentage of publishing, 15%, usually, with the other two, framed as an “arrangers’ fee.” It was formalised in 1981, revisited in 1995, and again in 2016. The contention is what those agreements actually mean.
Sting insists it covered only mechanical royalties, money from reproductions, whether vinyl, CD, download, or streaming. Summers and Copeland argue it should also include performance royalties: radio spins, TV usage, streaming plays, and, most pointedly, live shows. If you’ve watched Sting perform Don’t Stand So Close To Me this summer, they believe they should share in that.
Their lawyers say Sting owes them around £1.5 million. His camp disputes that and counters that they may even have been overpaid. They further argue that the 2016 deal prohibits Summers and Copeland from bringing fresh claims, historic or future. Their side disputes that clause’s validity entirely.
So at heart, this isn’t about whether Roxanne still electrifies audiences, it is about whether those who gave the song its distinctive sound are still being fairly compensated for it. For a band whose chemistry was famously volatile, it’s telling that the arguments that once took place in rehearsal rooms are now playing out in courtrooms.
