Pop Song 408 of 500 'Synchronicity II' The Police 1982

Pop Song 408 of 500 'Synchronicity II' The Police 1982

The song, which refers to Carl Jung's theory of synchronicity, nominally tells the story of a father whose home, work life, and environment are dispiriting and depressing. Lyrics refer to "Grandmother screaming at the wall", as well as "mother chants her litany of boredom and frustration, but we know all her suicides are fake". Later, we hear about humiliation by his boss ("and every single meeting with his so-called superior/is a humiliating kick in the crotch"), all the while he "knows that something somewhere has to break". Meanwhile, something monstrous is emerging from a "dark Scottish lake/loch", a reference to the Loch Ness Monster—a parallel to the father's own inner anguish.

There's a domestic situation where there's a man who's on the edge of paranoia, and as his paranoia increases a monster takes shape in a Scottish lake, the monster being a symbol of the man's anxiety. That's a synchronistic situation.

— Sting, 'A Visual Documentary', 1984
Interpretations of the lyric vary widely. Writing in Entertainment Weekly about a 1996 Sting tour, Chris Willman said:

"The late-inning number that really gets [the crowd] galvanized is the edgy old Police staple that has the most old-fashioned unresolved rock tension in it, 'Synchronicity II'—which, after all, is a song about a domestic crisis so anxiety-producing that it wakes up the Loch Ness Monster."

Sting explained the theme of the song to Time magazine:
"Jung believed there was a large pattern to life, that it wasn't just chaos. Our song Synchronicity II is about two parallel events that aren't connected logically or causally, but symbolically."

"Synchronicity II" also may have taken inspiration from the poem "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats.The theme of "The Second Coming" is similar to that of "Synchronicity II"—a civilisation beginning to collapse, and the rise of something new, something perhaps savage, to take its place.

In "Synchronicity II" guitarist Andy Summers "forgoes the pretty clean sounds for post-apocalyptic squeals and crashing power chords", writes Matt Blackett in Guitar Player magazine.Summers recalls how the feedback was created: "So I was in the studio with the Strat and two Marshalls full up, waiting for them to run the track. I put the headphones on and started messing around with the feedback, really giving it one... six minutes of screeching with my life passing before me on the guitar!"

According to Summers, there was originally going to be a link between this song and counterpart "Synchronicity I":

Another suburban family morning
Grandmother screaming at the wall
We have to shout above the din of our rice crispies
We can't hear anything at all
Mother chants her litany of boredom and frustration
But we know all her suicides are fake
Daddy only stares into the distance
There's only so much more that he can take
Many miles away something crawls from the slime
At the bottom of a dark Scottish lake
Another industrial ugly morning
The factory belches filth into the sky
He walks unhindered through the picket lines today
He doesn't think to wonder why
The secretaries pout and preen like cheap tarts in a red-light street
But all he ever thinks to do is watch
And every single meeting with his so-called superior
Is a humiliating kick in the crotch
Many miles away something crawls to the surface
Of a dark Scottish loch
Another working day has ended
Only the rush hour hell to face
Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes
Contestants in a suicidal race
Daddy grips the wheel and stares alone into the distance
He knows that something somewhere has to break
He sees the family home now, looming in his headlights
The pain upstairs that makes his eyeballs ache
Many miles away there's a shadow on the door
Of a cottage on the shore
Of a dark Scottish lake
Many miles away
Many miles away
Many miles away
Many miles away