In 1978, the Police were emerging in the British punk rock scene when they recorded their debut album, Outlandos d’Amour. But one of the singles from the album didn’t immediately impress bandmates Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland.
“Roxanne” was the Police’s breakthrough single. Penned by Sting, the song featured elements of reggae, rock and tango—a departure from the punk/new wave scene the band was playing in—as well as unconventional lyrics about falling for a prostitute. The single reached No. 32 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1979 and became a signature track for the band.
Sting had been inspired to write the song after seeing prostitutes in Paris while touring with punk rockers The Damned. He imagined falling in love with one of the women and penned the ballad, but his bandmates weren’t so sure about it and were embarrassed to play it for their manager.
“We were a bit embarrassed about ‘Roxanne,’” Summers once told Classic Rock. “Because this was the raging punk scene, where everything was at furious speed. And we had this kind of ballad.”
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Copeland agreed, telling The Bob Lefsetz podcast in 2024 that he originally considered “Roxanne” to be a “throwaway song.”
“We were struggling and starving and going nowhere for about a year and a half, and [Sting] wrote it without any agenda,” the drummer recalled. “It was certainly not a Police song because we were still theoretically a punk band.”
“I gave it a drum beat that was kind of bass-ackwards and made it into a Police song,” he continued. “It wasn’t punk-o-rama, but it was still a rock song, even though it was kind of a lament.”
While Sting’s bandmates were wary, it was the Police’s manager, Miles Copeland, who saw the real potential in “Roxanne.” He took a recording of the song to A&M Records, and it was picked up by radio stations in Texas and Boston.
“Roxanne” became a hit in the U.S., but the song had a little more trouble in the UK. The BBC initially refused to allow the song to be played on air, according to American Songwriter. The band advertised “Roxanne” as “banned by the BBC” in the hopes it would attract fans.
Sting took offense over the BBC’s stance, noting that “Roxanne” “wasn’t a smutty song in any sense of the word.” “It was a real song with a real, felt lyric, and they wouldn’t play it on the grounds that it was about a prostitute,” he said, per the outlet.
Despite the initial drama over the song, “Roxanne” became a career-defining classic for the Police and remains one of the band’s most beloved songs nearly 50 years later.
“Before ‘Roxanne’ we were just an unknown band with no legs at all,” Summers told Classic Rock. “Then everything seemed to accelerate. It went like a rocket once we started going. That was the really thrilling part of The Police’s history. It was an amazing experience.”
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