The Police (Band)
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50 free The Police (Band) trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
For a few years in the early 1980s the Police were arguably the biggest band in the world, and then they stopped. In well under a decade, three bleached-blond musicians went from London punk clubs to stadiums and left behind a run of singles that radio has never stopped playing: Roxanne, Message in a Bottle, Don't Stand So Close to Me, Every Breath You Take. This quiz is built around those hits. It asks where the songs came from, what they are really about, how they were recorded and filmed, and what became of them afterwards, from chart battles to samples and cover versions. Other questions follow the albums, the tours, the arguments in the studio and the reunion, along with the lives of Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland before and after the band. The early questions suit anyone who knows the songs from the radio, and the later ones are for fans who can tell a B-side from an album track. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you should leave with a few stories worth retelling.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Often taken for a tender ballad, the Police's "Every Breath You Take" is sung from whose point of view?
A possessive lover
A possessive lover keeping watch is the narrator, and Sting has called the song sinister and ugly. He wrote it in half an hour after waking in the night with the idea.
Q 02The Police frontman got the nickname Sting from which black-and-yellow striped garment he often wore?
A sweater
A sweater (a jumper, in British English) in black and yellow hoops made him look like a wasp, a jazz bandleader remarked. Sting says even his mother and children use the nickname.
Q 03Sting named the Police song "Roxanne" after a character in which play, seen on a Paris hotel poster?
Cyrano de Bergerac
Cyrano de Bergerac was advertised on an old poster in the foyer of the seedy hotel where the Police stayed in October 1977. Sting took the name of the woman Cyrano loves for his title.
Q 04Before the Police, Sting held which job, the one at the centre of his hit "Don't Stand So Close to Me"?
Schoolteacher
Schoolteacher was Sting's trade for two years in Cramlington, near Newcastle, before music paid the bills. He has denied that the song's story is autobiographical.
Q 05Which 1997 tribute to the Notorious B.I.G. was built on a sample of the Police's "Every Breath You Take"?
I'll Be Missing You
I'll Be Missing You came out before Puff Daddy had cleared the sample, a mistake that handed Sting the publishing royalties. The two later performed it together at the MTV awards.
Q 06At Shea Stadium in 1983, Sting of the Police thanked which earlier band for lending the venue?
The Beatles
The Beatles got Sting's thanks near the end of a show for 70,000 fans in New York. He later called that night his Everest, and it was there that he decided to go solo.
Q 07Stewart Copeland of the Police grew up in Cairo and Beirut because his father worked for which organisation?
The CIA
The CIA sent Miles Copeland Jr., a founding member of the agency, to the Middle East a few months after Stewart was born. The future drummer began lessons at the age of 12.
Q 08In the Police's "Message in a Bottle", what does the castaway learn when replies finally wash up on the shore?
Many others feel the same
Many others feel the same, he sees, when a flood of answering messages lands on the beach a year after he sent his plea. Sting has named it his favourite of the Police's songs.
Q 09While fronting the Police, Sting played the villain Feyd-Rautha in which David Lynch science-fiction film?
Dune
Dune gave Sting his first big-budget film role, shot in 1983 while the Police were at their peak. The orange hair he wore on the Synchronicity tour was left over from the part.
Q 10Sting earned a co-writing credit on which Dire Straits hit for a melody borrowed from "Don't Stand So Close to Me"?
Money for Nothing
Money for Nothing has Sting singing its MTV refrain to the tune of his own hit, which brought his lawyers in. Early pressings credit Mark Knopfler alone, and later ones add Sting.
Q 11The Police first bleached their hair blond in 1978 to appear in a TV commercial for which product?
Chewing gum
Chewing gum, Wrigley's Spearmint, was the product, and its makers wanted a punk group, so the broke trio dyed their hair. The commercial never aired, but the look became a trademark.
Q 12The Police's Synchronicity topped the US chart for 17 weeks, interrupting which Michael Jackson album's long reign?
Thriller
Thriller had the last laugh, though: it beat Synchronicity to the Grammy for Album of the Year. The Police album still sold more than eight million copies in America.
Q 13Which Police single, modelled on Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry", is famously misheard as "Sue Lawley"?
So Lonely
Q 21The Police mimed "Walking on the Moon" beside real rockets for a video filmed at which American site?
Kennedy Space Center
Kennedy Space Center in Florida hosted the shoot in October 1979, with Stewart Copeland tapping his sticks on a Saturn V moon rocket. Sting mimes on a guitar instead of his bass.
Q 22The Police hit "Don't Stand So Close to Me" name-checks the author of which controversial 1955 novel?
Lolita
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, is the book in question, and critics mocked the rhyme Sting built on the author's surname. He owned up to using that terrible technique a few times.
Q 23Sting first imagined the Police's "Roxanne" as a bossa nova until Stewart Copeland suggested which dance rhythm?
Tango
So Lonely topped a 2020 British survey of misheard lyrics; Sue Lawley was a BBC newsreader when it came out. Sting admits he lifted the chorus from the Marley song.
Q 14Sting wrote the Police's "Every Breath You Take" at Goldeneye, the Jamaican estate once owned by which novelist?
Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, left his writing desk at the house, and Sting began the song at it. He had retreated to the Caribbean to escape the public eye.
Q 15The Police's "Synchronicity II" sets a family man's despair against the stirring of which legendary creature?
The Loch Ness Monster
The Loch Ness Monster wakes as the man's anxiety grows, two events linked by symbol and not by cause. During the video shoot, the scaffolding tower under the drummer caught fire.
Q 16Sting of the Police says nobody, not even his mother, ever called him by which real first name?
Gordon
Gordon is the name he was given at birth, but he told Time that if you shouted it in the street he would just move out of your way. He has never legally changed it.
Q 17The title of the Police's second album, Reggatta de Blanc, is a loose French rendering of which phrase?
White Reggae
White Reggae is the meaning, in the same made-up Franglais as the debut album's title. The instrumental title track won the Police their first Grammy.
Q 18Which Police song did Sting first give to Grace Jones, then re-record for a 1993 Sylvester Stallone action film?
Demolition Man
Demolition Man reached Grace Jones as a demo, and her version came out before the Police recorded their own in 1981. Sting wrote it while staying at Peter O'Toole's house in Ireland.
Q 19In 1992 guests pressured the three members of the Police into a surprise reunion at which event in Sting's life?
His wedding
His wedding to Trudie Styler, in an 11th-century Wiltshire chapel, had both bandmates among the guests. Stewart Copeland said that after about three minutes it was the old band again.
Q 20A 1986 attempt at a new Police album collapsed after Stewart Copeland broke his collarbone falling from what?
A horse
A horse was to blame: he fell off the night before the sessions began, so the trio could not even jam together. All that came out at the time was a remake of an old hit, their final single.
Tango became the song's final rhythmic form, and the drummer also told Sting where to place the bass notes. The band were at first embarrassed by how slow and quiet it was beside their usual material.
Q 24The Police kept a stray chord and a laugh at the start of "Roxanne" after Sting accidentally did what?
Sat on a piano
Sting sat on a piano by mistake in the studio, and the atonal clang and his laughter were left on the finished record. The song went on to win the band its first deal with A&M.
Q 25Which Police hit has a video in which Sting runs through a maze of tall candles and finally knocks them over?
Wrapped Around Your Finger
Wrapped Around Your Finger was filmed with the music sped up, so the band seem to drift in slow motion at normal speed. Andy Summers felt Sting made a meal of toppling the candles.
Q 26On the best-known sleeve of the Police album Synchronicity, Sting reads a book of that name by which psychologist?
Carl Jung
Carl Jung used the word for events connected by meaning instead of cause. The sleeve came in 36 versions, each with different photographs and colour stripes.
Q 27Which Caribbean island was home to AIR Studios, where the Police recorded Ghost in the Machine and Synchronicity?
Montserrat
Montserrat was, in Stewart Copeland's words, a 12-hour flight from the nearest record company. He set up his drums in the studio's dining room to get a livelier sound.
Q 28Which singer joined the Police at Giants Stadium in 1986 to sing the final verse of their last pre-split show?
Bono
Bono sang the closing verse, and the Police then handed their instruments to U2 for the all-star finale. He called it a very big moment, like passing a torch.
Q 29The Police ended their reunion tour in August 2008 with a final show at which New York venue?
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden saw the trio open with a New York police brass band and later salute Cream and Jimi Hendrix. The tour had sold 3.7 million tickets.
Q 30Although their drummer was American, the Police won which Brit Award at the 1982 ceremony in London?
Best British Group
Best British Group went to a trio whose drummer, Stewart Copeland, was born in Virginia. Three years later the Brits honoured the band for Outstanding Contribution to Music.