Message In A Bottle — The Police
Being completely on your own, cut off from the world, used to be seen as a terrible fate. As the world gets more selfish and more cantankerous, I suspect a growing number of people might think that wasn’t such a bad way to live nowadays.
It was different in 1979, when The Police released “Message In A Bottle” as the lead single from their second album “Regatta de Blanc”. Back then, we didn’t long for a life of isolation and solitude, we longed for a life of companionship and togetherness…
Just a castaway, an island lost at sea, oh
Another lonely day, with no-one here but me, oh
More loneliness than any man could bear
Rescue me before I fall into despair, oh
Of course Sting, who wrote “Message In A Bottle”, wasn’t just writing about someone physically stranded on a desert island. He was also writing about people who, for whatever reason, felt cut off from the world. The people who were different from everybody else. The people who danced to a tune only they could hear.
For conformists and order-takers, the world is a relatively welcoming place. For people who refuse to go along with the crowd, or whom the crowd has chosen to reject, being physically stranded on a desert island by themselves looks like a pretty attractive option.
