Wrapped Around Your Finger, 12''

'Wrapped Around Your Finger' appears on The Police's 1983 album, 'Synchronicity'. Apart from the standard release, this single was officially available in no less than six other formats. There were three different coloured sleeves (red, yellow and blue) each containing the standard black vinyl release, and the three picture discs available in clear plastic wallets, with each obverse featuring one of the band members. Record Collector magazine reported that 12,000 of the picture discs were pressed, but here's the rub: 10,000 of these were pressed with Sting's picture (see above) , with only a 1,000 each of Andy and Stewart. Whilst this allocation may have reflected A&M's perception of the importance of the various members of the band it was hardly tactful marketing for a band with tensions close to critical mass. The long and short of this, is if you get the chance, get copies of these singles - especially the Stewart and Andy ones. Amazingly, this song hasn't been covered by Sting since he went solo.

Review from Smash Hits

"Gorgeous, light and perfect music to have playing as someone massages that coconut sun oil between the shoulder blades. What you doing on Sunday afternoon. Sting? Andy? Stewart?"

Review from Sounds by Garry Bushell

"Amongst the talentless menagerie of nauseating narcissistic no-hopers who constitute today's chart 'acts' few are more revolting than this toad-like trio of dyed blonde pop midgets. I don't know which one's more unlikely, decrepit Curved Air drummer Stewart 'son-of-CIA' Copeland, Andy Summers or would-be cracked actor Sting (aka Gordon), the very plain pin-up with a face more lived in than a block of rotting tenement slums. Here 40 year old Gordon fancies himself as "a young apprentice" waxing all spirit-in-the-material-bank-vault to some ageing maharishi over the usual soporific plastic reggae beat. He sounds about as soulful as a drunken rambler with his privates hooked on a barbed wire fence. The pantomime mysticism of the verse leads into a chorus reminiscent of their real contemporaries, the Eagles, that the sycophantic slags who pose as radio programmers will willingly hammer into our brains as relentlessly as Chinese water torture. But the song's so mind bogglingly dull people are probably even now falling asleep listening to it on their car radios and causing nasty pile-ups. The worst thing about the Police is that they're somehow viewed as 'new wave', even radical in some quarters. But let's make no mistake, they've got very rich indeed by sucking the neck of Jamaican music like famished vampires and haven't put ONE PENNY back. At least Bowie raised 75 grand for his Brixton birthplace, what's "socialist" Sting done for Newcastle? How many homegrown reggae bands have the Police got behind after shamelessly building a career on ripping off black music. Answer on a postcard, c/o the Cayman Islands..."