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Don't Stand So Close to Me
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Don't Stand So Close to Me
"Don't Stand So Close to Me" is a hit song by the English rock band the Police, released in September 1980 as the lead single from their third studio album Zenyatta Mondatta. It concerns a teacher who has sexual fantasies about a student.
The band's third No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart, it was the best-selling single of 1980 in the UK, selling 808,000 copies in that year alone. The song also charted in the top ten in Australia, Canada, and the US Billboard Hot 100. The Police won the 1982 Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal at the 24th Annual Grammy Awards for this song. Record World praised the song's "ingenious percussion, arrangement and hook".
The music and lyric of the song were written by the lead vocalist of the Police, Sting. It deals with the mixed feelings of lust, fear and guilt that a schoolteacher has for a student and the fallout when the inappropriate relationship is discovered by other adults. The line "Just like the old man in that book by Nabokov" alludes to Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita (1955), which covers similar issues. The line was criticised for rhyming "shake and cough" with Nabokov. Sting replied, "I've used that terrible, terrible rhyme technique a few times."
Before joining the Police, Sting had worked as an English teacher. He referred to the song's story progression as "the teacher, the open page, the virgin, the rape in the car, getting the sack".
Sting has been inconsistent on sources of inspiration for the song. In a 1981 interview, he stated, "I'd done teaching practice at secondary schools and been through the business of having 15-year-old girls fancying me - and me really fancying them! How I kept my hands off them I don't know... Then there was my love for Lolita which I think is a brilliant novel."
Yet he spoke somewhat differently in a series of 1993 interviews, saying, "You have to remember we were blond bombshells at the time and most of our fans were young girls, so I started roleplaying a bit. Let's exploit that." He further distanced himself, citing business reasons: "To be frank, it was right in our market. A lot of teenage girls were buying our records. So the idea was, let's write a Lolita story." In a 2001 interview for the concert DVD ...All This Time, Sting again denied the song being autobiographical.[full citation needed]
"Don't Stand So Close to Me" appeared on the Police album Zenyatta Mondatta (A&M), and became a No. 1 single on the UK Singles Chart, with a corresponding music video. In the US, it reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at No. 10. In the UK, the track was confirmed by the end of 1980 to have been the biggest-selling single of that year.[citation needed]
The B-side, "Friends", was written by Andy Summers and is inspired by Stranger in a Strange Land, a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein. Summers described the track as "Very quirky. A touch of Long John Silver on Acid."
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Don't Stand So Close to Me
"Don't Stand So Close to Me" is a hit song by the English rock band the Police, released in September 1980 as the lead single from their third studio album Zenyatta Mondatta. It concerns a teacher who has sexual fantasies about a student.
The band's third No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart, it was the best-selling single of 1980 in the UK, selling 808,000 copies in that year alone. The song also charted in the top ten in Australia, Canada, and the US Billboard Hot 100. The Police won the 1982 Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal at the 24th Annual Grammy Awards for this song. Record World praised the song's "ingenious percussion, arrangement and hook".
The music and lyric of the song were written by the lead vocalist of the Police, Sting. It deals with the mixed feelings of lust, fear and guilt that a schoolteacher has for a student and the fallout when the inappropriate relationship is discovered by other adults. The line "Just like the old man in that book by Nabokov" alludes to Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita (1955), which covers similar issues. The line was criticised for rhyming "shake and cough" with Nabokov. Sting replied, "I've used that terrible, terrible rhyme technique a few times."
Before joining the Police, Sting had worked as an English teacher. He referred to the song's story progression as "the teacher, the open page, the virgin, the rape in the car, getting the sack".
Sting has been inconsistent on sources of inspiration for the song. In a 1981 interview, he stated, "I'd done teaching practice at secondary schools and been through the business of having 15-year-old girls fancying me - and me really fancying them! How I kept my hands off them I don't know... Then there was my love for Lolita which I think is a brilliant novel."
Yet he spoke somewhat differently in a series of 1993 interviews, saying, "You have to remember we were blond bombshells at the time and most of our fans were young girls, so I started roleplaying a bit. Let's exploit that." He further distanced himself, citing business reasons: "To be frank, it was right in our market. A lot of teenage girls were buying our records. So the idea was, let's write a Lolita story." In a 2001 interview for the concert DVD ...All This Time, Sting again denied the song being autobiographical.[full citation needed]
"Don't Stand So Close to Me" appeared on the Police album Zenyatta Mondatta (A&M), and became a No. 1 single on the UK Singles Chart, with a corresponding music video. In the US, it reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at No. 10. In the UK, the track was confirmed by the end of 1980 to have been the biggest-selling single of that year.[citation needed]
The B-side, "Friends", was written by Andy Summers and is inspired by Stranger in a Strange Land, a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein. Summers described the track as "Very quirky. A touch of Long John Silver on Acid."