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Sep 26, 2019 By Christopher Roberts Photography by David Doobinin The Police

Juliana Hatfield is releasing a new album where she covers the songs of The Police, the fittingly titled Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police, on November 15 via American Laundromat. Now she has shared another track from the album, a cover of The Police’s “Next to You.” “Next to You” is the first track on The Police’s 1978-released debut album Outlandos d’Amour. Listen below via Billboard (who premiered it).

Hatfield had this to say about “Next to You” in an interview with Billboard: “Their recording of it is so perfect in its imperfection. It’s unpolished and raw. That whole album sounds like three guys bashing out a song in a room together. So I didn’t even want to attempt to do a rocking version of it like that. I don’t want it to be compared to the original. There’s no way I could come close. So I just went in a completely different direction and slowed down to half time.”

Previously Hatfield shared the album’s first single, a cover of “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da.” The album is the next step in Hatfield’s covers project, in which she plans “to go deep into covering artists that were important to me in my formative years,” as she puts it in a press release. The first installment was 2018’s Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John, although in between she also released an album of originals, 2019’s Weird.

Hatfield self-produced Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police and played most of the instruments on the album, save for a little help from Chris Anzalone (Roomful of Blues) and Ed Valauskas (The Gravel Pit).

“I listened to a lot of The Police when I was preparing and making this album and their recordings are as refreshing and exciting as ever,” Hatfield said in a previous press release. “I hope that my interpretations of these songs can inspire people to keep loving The Police like I did, and still do.”

Of the tracklist, Hatfield said in the press release: “The songs I’ve chosen seem to resonate in the present moment. ‘Rehumanize Yourself,’ ‘Landlord,’ and ‘Murder By Numbers’ explore ugly kinds of nationalism, abuses of power, and the mendacity of large swaths of the ruling class. And then there are the timeless, relatable psychodramas: ‘Every Breath You Take,’ ‘Can’t Stand Losing You,’ and ‘Canary in a Coalmine.’”

Read our Self-Portrait feature with Juliana Hatfield.

Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police Tracklist:

1. Can’t Stand Losing You
2. Canary in a Coalmine
3. Next to You
4. Hungry For You (J’Aurais Toujours Faim De Toi)
5. Roxanne
6. Every Breath You Take
7. Hole In My Life
8. De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da
9. Murder By Numbers
10. Landlord
11. Rehumanize Yourself
12. It’s Alright For You

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