Rewind album: Synchronicity, by The Police (1983)
Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung coined the word "synchronicity", but the primary influence on Sting's lyrics for the fifth and final studio album by The Police was Arthur Koestler's 1972 book The Roots of Coincidence. The musician might have felt naming two albums in a row in Koestler's honour would look obsessive: the fourth Police album, Ghost in the Machine, was named after his 1967 treatise.
Synchronicity
The Police
A&M
Then again, obsession is one of the themes of Synchronicity, and Koestler's is not the only literary influence on it. Tea in the Sahara was based on an idea Sting found in Paul Bowles' 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky, while Murder by Numbers and Synchronicity quote W.B. Yeats.
The ghost of Ian Fleming might also have lent a hand. Sting leased the novelist's Jamaican home, Golden Eye, and worked on the lyrics at the desk where Fleming wrote the James Bond novels.
The pertinent point was his gift for coming up with instantly memorable pop singles, and Synchronicity yielded four: Every Breath You Take, Wrapped Around Your Finger, Synchronicity 11 and King of Pain.
The Police were initially a punk trio, but were really too sophisticated for their early material. Having abandoned the pretence of being rough-and-ready amateurs, Sting, guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland evolved the "white reggae" sound which dominated their first three albums and gave them a framework for group improvisation during live performances.