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Juliana Hatfield Brings A Punk Edge To Her Police Covers Album

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When alt-rocker Juliana Hatfield was conceiving her next all-covers album that paid tribute to a particular recording artist (her previous one focused on Olivia Newton-John), she initially considered tackling the songs of Phil Collins. She started revisiting and picking out certain tracks by the veteran British rock star to possibly record. But when Hatfield listened to the haunting ballad “Long Long Way to Go” from Collins' massively-successful No Jacket Required album, she discovered that Sting – the then-lead singer and bassist of the Police – performed backing vocals on that track.

“That just led me to thinking about Sting and remembering what a huge Police fan I was back when I was younger,” says the Boston-based Hatfield. “And then I just kind of switched over from Phil Collins to the Police because I have a much more of a connection to the Police. I know all of the songs on those five albums backwards and forwards, and inside and out. So it just made more sense to me to do the Police.”

The result, Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police, which comes out Friday via American Laundromat Records, is devoted to the music of the legendary British New Wave band of Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland. It features a number of the Police’s classic hits such as “Every Breath You Take,” “Roxanne,” “Can't Stand Losing You” and “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da,” all of them performed in Hatfield’s inimitable musical style.

“I might have been really obsessed with Synchronicity, because that's when I was going to see their concerts around that era when they were playing like the huge stadiums,” Hatfield recalls of her early encounter with the Police’s music. “I was a little too young to appreciate the first albums [Outlandos d’Amour, Reggatta de Blanc and Zenyatta Mondatta) when they came out. I went backwards listening to Ghost in the Machine and then the first three albums. I just came to love the earlier stuff the most. For me, that stuff has held up and aged the best.”

Most telling about her new record is that a majority of it features some really deep Police cuts that die-hard fans of that band would only know about–such as “Hungry for You,” “It's Alright for You,” and even a rare B-side titled “Landlord” that Hatfield does an almost letter perfect version of Summers’ spiraling guitar intro.  “I chose songs that I connected to and that I felt has meaning for me,” she explains. “I was such a fan that I knew all of the albums, the B-sides. So I had a lot to choose from. And “Landlord” happened to be one of those ones that I always loved. It's so angry but fun. A lot of people don’t even know that song exists. So I was glad to kind of show that one off to people.”

While the Police's music achieved success on the pop charts in the early 1980s, Hatfield's versions unearth the early and edgy punk rock side of the band. “Their first albums was pretty aggressive,” says Hatfield. “Even the pop songs were unpolished and not too heavily worked over. It sounded like three guys in a room bashing out these songs. And what made it interesting and different than punk was that pop side of it. Also the way they played was unique, each of them. So they were pretend punks, but they could play really well.”

On the whole, the tracks on Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police retain the familiar hooks and melodies of the original Police versions. But there are some songs that have been rearranged quite dramatically: “Roxanne,” for instance, is treated as a slow and burning moody ballad, as is “Hole in My Life” – while “Murder by Numbers,” is transformed from its original jazz-pop incarnation to a noisy, stomping rocker. “There was no way I could have done it like the Police did it,” she says of the latter track, “because that jazzy vibe is not really in me. I just kind of cut to the essence of the song, which to me, it's pretty aggressive, in its ideas, you know, about it. They do it in a kind of ironic way. But I did it in a non-ironic way, and I took it literally all the talk of horrible people murdering [others] they want out of their lives.”

Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police was recorded after the singer-songwriter's most recent studio album of original songs, Weird, which came out earlier this year. While both of those albums obviously differ in that one features Hatfield’s own songs and the other is made up of covers, they do share a tenuous connection in tackling dark psychological themes.


“If that's true, it was not deliberate,” she says. “I think a lot of [the Police stuff is] more outward-looking in talking about society, culture and stuff. Weird is pretty internally focused. That's part of what I love about the Police. I feel an affinity for what they're talking about, and there are those songs about personal darkness, like “Hole in My Life” as an example. I guess “Hole in My Life” thematically resembles some of the stuff from Weird for sure. “Paid to Lie,” that's kind of like [the Police’s] “Rehumanize Yourself” in a way.”

Hatfield  will tour next year, playing both her own songs as well as tracks from the Police covers record. It has been such a prolific period for the musician, having released four albums in the last two years. And it doesn't appear she'll be taking a break even after this record and tour. “I just like  to keep doing it, because it's what I do,” Hatfield explains. “So I don't really want to stop for too long if I can help it. My situation is very streamlined and I'm able to get stuff out pretty quickly with the setup that I have right now.”

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