Synchronicity is the fifth and final studio album by the British rock band the Police, released on 17 June 1983 by A&M Records.

The band's most successful release, the album includes the hit singles "Every Breath You Take", "King of Pain", "Wrapped Around Your Finger", and "Synchronicity II".

At the time of its release and following the Synchronicity Tour, the Police's popularity was at such a high that they were arguably, according to BBC and The Guardian, the "biggest band in the world".

In 2023, the album was selected for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Frontman Sting was an avid reader of Koestler, and also titled the Police's prior studio album Ghost in the Machine (1981) after one of his works.

Sting explains:I enjoyed making Ghost in the Machine and playing with the tools of the studio, just building things up and sticking more vocals on.

[10]As with Ghost in the Machine, the recording for Synchronicity took place over a period of six weeks, at AIR Studios in Montserrat beginning in December 1982.

If we played together like that in the same room, we wouldn't be able to hear anything except the drum, because the guitarist has to have a lot of volume to hit a certain level of distortion or passion or emotion.

I play in the studio next to the engineer [Hugh Padgham] so I can hear the instruments balanced and mixed roughly as they'll sound on the record.

[11] This album also marked Sting's first time using a sequencer, which features heavily on "Walking in Your Footsteps" (said to be the first track he programmed with it) and "Synchronicity I".

Final overdubs and mixing were done within two weeks at Le Studio in Morin-Heights from mid-January to February 1983 using an SSL console.

[15][16] Contrary to this, however, in later interviews he recalled that due to tensions within the group, at least one member of the band would be present at the studio while the other(s) would be skiing.

"[17] The album's original cover artwork, conceived by Jeff Ayeroff and Norman Moore, consisted of a series of photographs overlaid with transparent horizontal stripes of blue, red, and yellow.

[20][21] In the United States, the album topped the Billboard 200 in late July and ultimately spent 17 nonconsecutive weeks at number one on the chart,[22][23] interrupting the dominance of Michael Jackson's Thriller (1982).

Original A&M vinyl pressings were made with a Quiex II process where the record appears black on the turntable but when held up to light turns an opaque purple.

Richard Cook of NME called Synchronicity "a record of real passion that is impossible to truly decipher", and felt that "although [the album] magnifies the difference between Sting and Summers and Copeland it also evolves the group into a unique state: a mega-band playing off glittering experimentation against the sounding board of a giant audience.

"[2] In Melody Maker Adam Sweeting was less enthusiastic, saying, "I would guess that devotees of this extremely sussed trio will find plenty to amuse them, and indeed Sting has sown all sorts of cryptic little clues and messages throughout his songs...

However impressive bits of Synchronicity sound, I could never fall in love with a group which plans its moves so carefully and which would never do anything just for the hell of it".

[33] Reviewing the 2003 reissue, Mojo's David Buckley stated that "Synchronicity [...] was already, in the time-honoured words of rock journo cliché, 'the work of a disintegrating unit', yet 20 years on it hangs together well".

[27] Although noting what he felt was a clear gap in quality between the first and second halves of the album, AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine concluded that the "first-rate pop" of the second half ranks among Sting's best work, while also illustrating "that he was ready to leave the Police behind for a solo career, which is exactly what he did.

Andy Summers, who wrote the song, explained why it was put on the album: "We all have our family situations, and I had a pretty intense mother who was very focused on me.

"[34] In his review of Synchronicity, Stephen Holden from Rolling Stone noted that "corrosively funny 'Mother' inverts John Lennon's romantic maternal attachment into a grim dadaist joke.

Additional songs recorded during the Synchronicity sessions can be found on other releases: Adapted from the album's liner notes and AllMusic.