1978 · Behind the Songs
It flopped twice before it hit — the reggae-rock plea that made the world learn the band’s name.
Sting wrote “Roxanne” in Paris in 1977, inspired by the street life around the band’s cheap hotel — and by a poster for the play Cyrano de Bergerac in the lobby, whose heroine was named Roxane. The narrator pleads with a sex worker to change her life, a premise that made record executives nervous.
Listen closely to the top of the track and you will hear Sting laugh — a genuine accident. He sat on a piano keyboard during the take, and the band kept it in. Some of rock’s best moments are mistakes nobody had the heart to fix.
The single was released twice to indifference before finally breaking in America in 1979, after the band’s relentless touring. The reggae lope, the jazzman’s drumming, the climbing chorus — nobody sounded like this.
It became the signature song, the one the band could never drop from the setlist. Flops twice, then forever: a reminder that hits find their own time.