Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
by The Police
- 161
- BPM
- D major
- Key
- 10B
- Camelot
- 54
- Danceability
- 13
- Acousticness
Sting's demo of "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" turned out to be the record. The Police tried to rebuild it from scratch for Ghost in the Machine and it lacked the energy of the demo. In the end Stewart Copeland played one take over Sting's demo, and Andy Summers did the same on guitar. Copeland said they faced the music and used Sting's arrangements.
Released in 1981, it reached number one in the UK in November and number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 that year. It also hit number one in Canada, Ireland and the Netherlands. In the US it was the band's second-best performing single, after "Every Breath You Take". The B-side, "Flexible Strategies", was an improvised jam made when the label demanded a B-side; Copeland said they played for ten minutes.
Sting wrote the song in early 1977, before the Police existed, and recorded an early demo alone in the loft of Mike Howlett's house in Acton, London. A second demo followed in January 1981 at Le Studio in Morin Heights, Canada. The band thought it too soft. Keyboardist Jean Roussel overdubbed piano, Minimoog and clavinet, and Summers objected to his involvement. Sting rhymed "magic" with "tragic" because he could think of little else. In a 2025 interview he said his inspiration was Trudie Styler.
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic runs at 161 BPM, the tempo of footwork, gabber and fast metal. In classical terms it sits in vivace territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.49 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 373 ms. It is in D major, Camelot 10B, which shares its notes with B minor and mixes cleanly with G major and A major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.