About The Song
“Spirits in the Material World” is a song by the British rock trio The Police, written by Sting. The opening track for their 1981 album Ghost in the Machine, it was released as a single in 1981 and reached No. 12 in the United Kingdom and No. 11 in the US in early 1982.
“Spirits in the Material World” was written by Sting on a Casiotone keyboard while in a truck. It was his first experience using a synthesizer.
‘Spirits in the Material World’ was written on one of those Casio keyboards while I was riding in the back of a truck somewhere. I just tap, tap, tap and there it was, just by accident. That was the first time I’d ever touched a synthesizer, that album.
— Sting, Synchronicity Tour Program, 1983
Andy Summers’ presence on the studio track is considerably less pronounced than on the vast majority of Police songs, and in fact, Sting wanted to record it without him entirely. Having written the song on a synthesizer, he wanted to use synthesizer instead of guitar, and to play the synthesizer part himself. Summers thought the synthesizer part should be replaced by guitar. After considerable argument, they compromised by recording the part on both instruments, with a mix such that the synthesizer drowned out much of Summers’s guitar.
In live performances, this part was played on guitar only, with synthesizer used for background chords. The bass part is distinctively complex, with music producer and cognitive psychologist Daniel Levitin writing that it “takes this rhythmic play to such an extreme that it can be hard to tell where the downbeat even is.” In 2023 Stewart Copeland said that this was the hardest Police song for him as a drummer: “It’s my personal bête noire … because there’s no 1 [beat]. It’s all upbeat.”
Video
Lyrics
There is no political solution
To our troubled evolution
Have no faith in constitution
There is no bloody revolutionWe are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
We are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material worldOur so-called leaders speak
With words they try to jail you
They subjugate the meek
But it’s the rhetoric of failureWe are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
We are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material worldWhere does the answer lie?
Living from day to day
If it’s something we can’t buy
There must be another wayWe are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
We are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
We are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
We are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world