Police’s “Every Breath You Take” hits 1 billion views on YouTube

The music video for The Police’s 1983 single “Every Breath You Take” has surpassed one billion views on YouTube.

Added to the platform in 2010, “Every Breath You Take” is the 225th video to join YouTube’s Billion Views Club and the seventh video from the 1980s to reach that milestone. The Sting-penned ballad was originally released as part of the band’s final studio album, 1983’s Synchronicity.

Directed by English musical duo Godley & Creme, the music video captures the trio in black and white, with Sting on double bass, Andy Summers on guitar and Stewart Copeland on drums.

In 2019, “Every Breath You Take” was named the most-played song at the BMI Pop Awards with 15 million radio plays. The song was also included in Spotify’s Billions Club last year after hitting over a billion streams on that platform.

Emerging from the original British ‘New Wave’ of the late 1970’s, The Police are known for such hit albums as 1979’s ‘Reggatta de Blanc’, 1980’s ‘Zenyatta Mondatta’ and ‘Synchronicity’. The multi-award winning trio have sold over 75 million records worldwide and have received two Brit Awards, an MTV Video Music Award and six Grammys – including Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group for “Every Breath You Take”. In 2003, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The police YouTube channel has over 1.5 million subscribers, and according to the platform, their music video “Every Breath You Take” has been viewed an average of more than 300,000 times a day so far this year.

The song’s popularity continues as well, having been licensed for other uses that keep music fans listening to the original over and over again, from a sampling for Puff Daddy’s “I’ll Be Missing You” to its current use in a DuckDuckGo advertising campaign.