Though Juliana Hatfield’s loyal legion of diehard fans are already familiar with her impressive work(horse) ethic, I think it’s fair to assume that many people aren’t aware of just how prolific her recorded output has been across the past three decades. Since launching her solo career with 1992’s Hey Babe following a whirlwind three-LP run with the Blake Babies, Hatfield has released a total of seventeen solo albums, along with a handful of moonlighting efforts curated with her side projects Some Girls, Minor Alps and The I Don’t Cares, with the Blake Babies’ fourth long player (2001’s God Bless The Blake Babies) thrown in for good measure.
Perhaps most remarkable of all, the quantity of Hatfield’s recorded repertoire hasn’t compromised its quality, as each successive record has constituted must-listen material. Her two most recent albums—2018’s Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John and Weird, released earlier this year—offer prime examples of this rarely achieved balancing act. The former LP proved a particularly intriguing (and rewarding) proposition, as it was the first time that she decided to pay homage to one of her musical heroes in such a cohesive, comprehensive fashion.
Her Olivia Newton-John covers tribute also represented the inaugural installment of a recurring series that finds the singer-songwriter-instrumentalist doubling down on her commitment “to go deep into covering artists that were important to me in my formative years.” And though many of us wouldn’t have necessarily anticipated its successor arriving so soon, this week brings us Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police, the self-produced, 12-song-strong affair that pays reverential, high-energy homage to Stewart Copeland, Andy Summers and Sting’s musical legacy, while reinforcing Hatfield’s distinctive and dynamic voice. “I listened to a lot of The Police when I was preparing and making this album and their recordings are as refreshing and exciting as ever,” Hatfield reflects. “I hope that my interpretations of these songs can inspire people to keep loving The Police like I did, and still do.”
In advance of the album’s official American Laundromat Records sanctioned release this Friday, November 15th, Hatfield generously took the time to share more about the inspirations and interpretations that governed the recording process. As her track-by-track musings below immediately reveal, Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police was an endeavor she took very seriously, but also had a ton of fun with in the process.
“Can’t Stand Losing You”
What this song is saying is pretty morbid, but it’s so catchy and bouncy that if you’re not paying attention, you might miss the self-annihilation part. If you just focus on the chorus (“I can’t I can’t I can’t stand losing you”), you might think it’s a nice little lovesick ditty. But you’d be wrong!
“Canary In A Coalmine”
Every time I try and type the title of this one my fingers make it say “Canary in a Colamine” at first and then I have to fix it. But I like the idea of a cola mine, a place in the hills where sweet fizzy soft drinks are dug out of the earth. I have a little bit of quasi-dyslexia, but only when I am typing on a computer. Lots of words come out twisted.
As for this song, it is one of my favorites on my album and it’s also one of my faves of the whole Police oeuvre. It was SO much fun to sing—so punchy and rhythmically satisfying and such great imagery describing to a T a certain exhausting personality type.
“Next To You”
This was the first song on the first Police album [1978’s Outlandos d'Amour] and they hit it so hard right out of the gate. It is raw and aggressive, but also sugary and romantic. I didn’t want to try and attempt to get anywhere close to capturing the vibe of their version because I knew I would never be able to tap into that particular energy—the energy they had in the beginning when they were so blonde and hungry. I took it in the other direction, rewrote it in a sense, slowed it down and came at it from a remove like I sort of wanted to be next to you, but not totally.
“Hungry For You (J'aurais Toujours Faim de Toi)”
I studied French for a lot of years in school and it’s fun to try and sing in French even if my French is really sloppy. Sting’s French seems a little sloppy, too, in the Police version of this song, which comes across as charming and unpretentious, even if the sloppiness was calculated (I don’t know if it was or not but it seems like nothing the Police ever did was an accident).
Some of the pronunciations are a little bit off, or he Anglicizes some parts of some of the words. It’s authentic, in a way, because he isn’t pretending to be French; he is singing as an Englishman—whose first language isn’t French—trying to sing in French. And then when the song goes into English near the end, it’s like a cherry on top.
“Roxanne”
I don’t know if you can hear the subtext, but when I sang the song this was my concept: I am singing to my (fictional) friend Roxanne, a sex worker, and trying to express compassion, but also trying to get her to leave the streets and to convince her that she can make a better life for herself. I am not trying to diss the whole sex work trade—I believe a person should have the freedom to do what she wants with her body. But I am trying to say that that kind of work can be so soul-damaging and degrading and painful. And I want my (fictional) friend (Roxanne) to take my hand and let me help lead her out of the red-light zone and take the first steps together into a different, better future.
“Every Breath You Take”
This is another one of those deceptive creations that at first makes you think you are listening to a straight-up love song. But really it’s pretty twisted, sung from the point of view of a creepy stalker, a person who won’t go away, who is obsessed with an ex. The song structure—the way it moves and flows and builds—is perfection. It’s sonic ambrosia. I can’t get enough of it. This song is the gift that keeps on giving.
“Hole In My Life”
We changed this song from 4/4 time into 6/8 time. Or is it 3/4? The drummer (Chris Anzalone) who played on it was feeling it as 12 beats-per-measure. At any rate, we changed the feel so that it swings in a different way from the Police recording. Ed Valauskas, who played bass on it, suggested doing it this way (in three) and it worked really well. Ed was thinking of “These Arms of Mine” by Otis Redding—a slow soulful groove. But I envisioned it as more tortured and aggressive, like a head-banging waltz.
“De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da”
What can I say about this one? I didn’t radically reinvent it; I just tried to get the point across: I have trouble expressing myself, trouble communicating, so this song really speaks to me.
“Murder By Numbers”
It seemed so obvious to do this one fast and punky. Why hasn’t anyone else done it like this? Or has someone and I just don’t know about it? The Police’s jazzy version is at an ironic remove, but I bonked all the nuance on its head and made all the disturbing, faux-violent imagery literal and slammed it on the table like a big dead fish.
I almost passed out in the studio the first time I played and sang this one through. It took a lot of energy to get all the words out at that pitch and speed.
“Landlord”
This is a righteous protest song. It still works because there have always been and will always be greedy, heartless thugs in suits who get rich off the exploitation of the vulnerable.
“Rehumanize Yourself”
I wanted to do this one because it felt relevant and current. Police brutality, white supremacy, etc., are still alive. The uglies—they walk among us.
“It’s Alright For You”
I don’t really know what this song is about. I never concentrated on what the words were saying. There are just so many of them, flying past my ears. It’s Too Much Information.
The music of it is what grabs me. In the verses, the words are like a percussive instrument spitting out a chain of sounds until it all coalesces in the repeated refrain (“it’s alright for you”). I have a general sense of how the words, all together, make me feel, but I couldn’t’ explain to you what it means. I could maybe grunt and wail it in a primal facsimile of a synopsis.
When I sang this in the studio, I had all the lyrics written down and I was reading them word by word out of my notebook on the music stand in front of me, and I was making no connection between what the letters and lines were saying and what they meant. I was reading (singing) phonetically, pretty much, which was awkward, physically. I couldn’t lose myself and fly away like a bird with the melody.
There were just too many words to memorize. What I mean is that I didn’t feel like memorizing them because it shouldn’t be that difficult. Normally lyrics quickly and automatically lodge themselves in my brain after a few listens, like vivid memories, impossible to forget. Songs from my childhood, radio songs I sang along to, will instantly come back to me if I hear them now, after decades of not having heard them, and I can sing along like no time has passed. I don’t usually need anything written down as reference or reminder. This song is one of the only ones whose words never fused onto my brain receptors.
LISTEN: