Well, this interview would seem to slightly favor your point...

RICHARD: I want to know what is your reason for writing Every Breath You Take? What was the background for that?

STING: Oh, I don't know. Do I have to have a reason for that? Well I suppose it's a pretty dark song. It was written in a pretty dark period in my life: my life seemed to be crumbling. The band I was in was breaking up, my first marriage was breaking up, I was breaking up, things were very bleak and I wrote this very obsessive, paranoid song called Every Breath You Take, which has a sort of seductive charm to it as well and I suppose umm thats why its been a successful song. I think because its so ambiguous; it's both dark and light.

IAN: Right now we are going to play Every Breath You Take from Sting, another unplugged recording. I also heard it was a song about stalking as well, or had been taken that way?

STING: Oh that's rubbish! (laughing)



But this page supports Tony's assertion...

The song is actually about stalking, as Sting explained to critic Bill Flanagan. "It’s about surveillance and owning, controlling someone, but the reaction," Sting says, "has been one of seduction. They [audiences] want this feeling." In live performances Sting has been known to ad-lib "Hurt me, Baby" into the traditional lyrics. The crowd goes wild every time. "It’s the same idea of sadism, of masochism in a romantic relationship," he says.

So who knows. That's the beauty of lyrics, they don't need to mean the same thing to everyone who hears them, and artists like to keep people guessing.

Not a bad time to mention that SongMeanings is back up and running.